For the Brave! ;)

Oh yes, only the brave one can wear this. The Preciosa Volcano crystal surrounded by Toho beads is an extremely eye-catching piece of jewellery. It is huge as for a pendant - 5 cm (2") in diameter and it will be accompanied by a black beaded crochet rope - as soon as I make one certainly. ;) The photo however doesn't really show how beautiful the crystal is... it can be purple, red, orange and blue, depending on light. Truly amazing mix of colours really.

Well, not much can be written about it. Better to see it, so here it is:

So, who's brave enough to wear it? ;)

Ornamental beaded balls

Looks like I needed to rest a bit from the crocheting. So I managed to make four beaded pendants and two pairs of earrings just over one weekend instead. You can't see the earrings yet, since it's a present and a person who is supposed to get them can't see them before they reach her of course. But at least I have three out of four pendants (the last one needs a photo first ;) ) that I can show to you. ;)

The first one was an experiment with the Twin beads. Wanted to check how well they work for beaded balls. And looks like they really don't work too bad. They are accompanied by some wax pearls, and Toho beads in two sizes - 11 and 15 (Permanent Finish Galvanized Fairy Wings and Opaque Frosted Jet). With just some metal bail it works great as a beaded pendant. That ball is 2,5 cm (1") wide in diameter.

The tutorial for this pendant is available on Craftsy and Etsy.

Another pendant was in fact made a few years ago. Only it was just a simple beaded ball that I wasn't really satisfied with. Added some seed beads to that pattern, as well as ten tiny pink cabochons... didn't have the eleventh one so had to add some charm made of chain instead, to fill the last, bottom hole. And somebody has just commented that it looks like a shower... damn! ;P

The pendant is quite long, 9,5 cm (3,54") with the bail and the chains, while the ball is 3 cm (1,18") wide in diameter.

The last pendant is a little bit similar to the previous one, a bit smaller though (2,5 cm again), but it also consists of some Twin beads (the green one doesn't). They are the transparent ones (if you can see them on this poor picture). The base of that ball is made of turquoise bicone crystals with a very nice frosted effect... too bad the photo doesn't really show how beautiful they are. So thank you Julia for chosing them as a birthday present for me... just like the rest of the beads. ;D

The tutorial for this pendant is available on Craftsy and Etsy.

I have a few more ideas for using the Twins... so you should see more beadwork soon. ;)

Come To The Dark Side... ;)

 

Or to the light one, if that is what you prefer. ;)

 

 

Yep, that is the good thing with that kind of bracelet. It's a beaded crochet rope (of course! ;) ), made of Czech glass silver-lined seed beads, twenty beads per row and flattened, so I can actually wear it with the dark side on the front or the light one if that's what I feel like. The bronze and the beige work well together, and those silver sparkling holes actually make the bracelet look like its colours interfuse. The effect looks better for real though. Anyway, that's how the entire bracelet looks like:



The bronze/beige bracelet has been actually made as a second rope of that style. The first one, which also was my training bracelet, since I was just learning this technique of bead crocheting, was black and red, with a little bit of gold. Used Chech seed beads for that one too. Actually, this shade of red is one of my favourite colours amongst all of Preciosa/Jablonex beads. It has one big flaw though. The colour wears off easily. However, my affection for this colour and the need of using it as often as possible contributed to something good at least - I have found a great way for protecting the beads and no more wearing the colour off for me! ;D Wonder if I should share the secret, though. ;)

Well, that's how the mentioned above bracelet look like:

And it can be worn like this:

 Or this:

And no, the stripes aren't boring! Below you can see the proof that the statement was true for me. ;)
They only need to be finished now... oh well, making the right angle weave endings for all of them will probably require ten years or so... ;P

Hopefully I can finish them sooner, though. ;)