Ombre Cabouchon Necklace

Real life has kind of taken over recently, in a very wonderful way, which has meant slightly less time to bead.  I'm beginning to get back on the beading wagon, with ideas falling out of my head and onto paper.  Until they get to needle and thread time, I thought I'd show you something I made late last year.

I was given a commission before Christmas to make a simple necklace with a layered onyx cabouchon and a simple ombre chain.

The lady I made it for wanted it as a gift for her Mum and she chose the cab, as well as the colours and the base design.  She wanted the colours to bleed into each other and the clasp had to be beaded as well, as her Mum doesn't do well with any metals.

This is what I was given to work with - she wanted black to be the predominant colour in the chain with just a small bit of white showing either side of the pendant dropper:

My first step was to bead the cab. A nice easy job, but for my own hatred of matte beads - the more you handle them, the less matte they become (oils in skin etc) and they really bugger up the thread!  I'm used to working with quite a lot of thread but have to use much smaller lengths as it frays more due to the rougher bead surface.  The trouble is, matte beads really do lend themselves to many projects, and the matte beads against the highly polished surface of the stone was just beautiful.

Then came the rope itself! We opted for a simple 6 round herringbone rope, not twisted, not lazy, just a simple rope.  This made the bleeding of the colours really work and although you can barely tell that the pinky pale brown turns into silver before heading into white, I really like this for the effect. 

Here you can see the rope width against the cabouchon.  Not too clunky and thick, but not so delicately thin that the cab looks ridiculously chunky!  To be honest, it took a little while (and lots of samples!) to settle on this width because although I liked the eight round rope, it would have been far too chunky for the lady in question.  I also always tend to veer towards the large and chunky rather than the thin and delicate.

Getting the rope even on both sides, but still random looking was an absolute nightmare! Not a very good picture below, you can see the warped square found in Geometric Beadwork by Jean Power that I used to hang the cabouchon.  Because we only wanted a small amount of white beads to peep out either side on the rope, I thought Jean's ingenious design was the way forward.

And then we moved to the clasp.  The loop is a simple peyote circle that I beaded and then joined the herringbone rope to and the toggle has a loop that loops through the continuous herringbone loop on the other end of the rope.  I prefer to make my beaded clasps like this rather than a simple loop and toggle (or bigger bead) joined by a few beads because it makes them look a little more interesting and a touch more finished.

The completed piece:

I know the lady's Mum liked it Christmas morning and I hope you do too!  It's very different from all the geometric work I've been doing recently.

Paula's Chakra Necklace

So I took a small break from beading after the momentous piece that is the Heroine Necklace to let my fingers recover and my hands stop being claws!

I was commissioned to make a Chakra Necklace from Rob to Paula, Xander's masseuse.  Xander has been going to see her every other week for the past couple of years and her massage is amazing.  She is absolutely astounding and specialises in soothing massage for kids with all sorts of disabilities, not just autism.  Her patience is amazing and Xander sleeps brilliantly after each session.  Over the years we've become friends and often have dinner together.  Rob decided he wanted something beautiful for her birthday and asked me to make a piece that I would not make again so that it was completely unique to Paula.  He wanted to incorporate chakra colours so that it had meaning for her and the base colour to be a muted copper or bronze.

This is what I came up with:

I used 12mm Swarovski rivolis in Siam, Padparadscha, Sahara, Emerald, Sapphire, Heliotrope and Tanzanite and set them using 3mm bronze firepolished rounds, bronze 15s and Matte Metallic Dark Bronze delicas, adapting a technique used by Sabine Lippert in her book Beaded Fantasies.

Here you can see a close up of the stones and their settings:

In this photo you can see the reverse of the rivolis and just about make out Sabine's very clever way of bezelling so that the stones are safe in their little cocoons but the front shows as much of the colour and sparkle as possible.  The bezels look pretty and show off much more of the stone than the usual peyote bezel that I use and are blooming quick to make - most of the time!  Getting the stone to sit in and close the netted back up is quite fiddly, especially seeing as the netted flaps want to leap open when adding the row of 15s round the centre!  I'm pretty certain that this is more to do with my tension rather than the design - I'm a very tight beadweaver and like to keep everything quite stiff so that I know nothing will slip out!

As I was making the herringbone rope I decided that it looked really odd with both sides plain herringbone so every 20 rows I inserted a couple of the 3mm firepolished rounds with a couple of the 15s either side but only on one side.  I think this slight alteration in the rope gave the necklace a little more balance than if it had been plain both sides.

The side with the stones is completely plain and just a simple 4-bead herringbone rope.

Rob's coming to pick it up today and I really hope Paula likes it when she opens it on Tuesday.