Sea Horse

This is my Sea Horse necklace. There is no special story behind it, I just wanted to try making a St. Petersburg stitched chain. I used size 6 beads in the chain, all different shades of blue, set up in ombre configuration from the top edge of the chain to the bottom edge. The fringe is done in these rice shaped fake pearls.

The above is a view with the peyote stitch toggle clasp.

Also, A close up shot of the sea horse.

I don't have a lot of complaints about this necklace, aside from the use of  nymo thread again. I arranged it for the picture so the focal was on top, but it often slips between and behind the pearl strands, but that was always the intention for this necklace.

A Million Points of light

This necklace was 3 years in the making.

For some reason when I run across something that I like, I will hang on to it forever. Every piece in this necklace was given to me at some point. The gold beads I had forever, given to me by a friend of a friend who was getting out of beading. The bugle beads came from a box of beads I received as a Christmas gift. The pearls made their way to my craft room with a bunch of other beads when I mentioned to my friend (Who will be referred to henceforth as "Dee") Dee that I wanted to get into beading. With that small stash came a container with a broken bracelet inside. A few months later, I helped my mother move, and during the move she gave me the large crystal focal. She knows how much I adore shiny things. Now, all these things sat in my craft room within feet of each other. I would always pull out individual pieces and want to do something with them, but I never knew what they wanted to be.

Once I finished my first necklace I was hooked. I wanted to capture that large crystal in a bezel. I started to use the gold on it and hated the colors that it brought out in the crystal so I dropped the crystal into a bowl of clear beads. Then the light hit it just right and every little bead was reflected inside the crystal. so I started working on an open backed peyote bezel. The first was way to small. So was the second and third and fourth. It took me 7 different attempts before I finally got that crystal encased. I can't even begin to describe the frustration. The only thing that saved me from throwing the whole thing away was the watching the light play off the crystal as I worked. once I got that part done, it sat for a few weeks on the table, just glaring at me. I didn't know what else to do with it until I started going through the other things Dee had brought over. I found that broken bracelet, and found these heart shaped chips that matched my crystal. I turned them into drops, with some wire wrapping. That is when I finally had an idea of what I wanted this crystal to be.

I did a few layers of graduated fringe, embellished the bezel. It became this pendant. The rope is a cellini spiral. I used the same embellishments on the peyote stitch  toggle clasp.

Now for the things I don't like about this piece:

The bugle bead picoting is a pain. Every time I wear it I have to rearrange how they sit, and they never stay put. I am not happy with the way the pendant is connected. While wearing, it hangs right, but when hanging free, the rope bends the picoting forward. I was using nymo thread to assemble the whole thing start to finish, and apparently my knotting was not up to par because the rope is now unraveling in several spots. I have yet to fix this. I will also need to get a better picture of it. Some of the detail in the fringe is lost while sitting on the flat surface 

Perpetual Beginner

Hi, I am Jennifer, and I am a perpetual beginner.

I like being a beginner. It means I am always learning something new. It is exciting. Once I am no longer a beginner at whatever it is I was new at, I start another new hobby. I call it "Going down a rabbit hole". Now, I tend to jump from one thing to another frequently, and ever since I used that phrase in a conversation with a close friend, she thinks I am going down another rabbit hole when I change up what I am working on at the moment. One day I am knitting, the next I am trying to make a corset , I may spend two days drawing. This - I feel like that is the opposite of going down a rabbit hole.

Rabbit  holes take you deep. Somewhere along the lines something catches the eye, and while you are staring at it, you trip and fall headfirst into this yawning darkness of I-don't-know-what-the-hell-I-am-doing. All the sudden, you land (thump) at the craft table with tiny fish bowls filled with seed beads, beading thread, and these obscenely small needles and a sore finger from where you keep stabbing yourself with this bloodthirsty needle, but it is fun and shiny and engrossing. You make a thing. It stares at you. It is just this...thing. You start to wonder what you can do with this thing. Then your brain blossoms into this crazy cacophony of Idea. You praise the god Google for a while, and there is more Idea. Much more. When you sleep, there is the rabbit hole. You dream in color, in shape, in texture. You forget everything you dreamed up because when you take a shower, Idea is there. You end up with incoherent scribbles on paper that never come to fruition because your Idea eclipse your ability and skill level, and most of all your bead stash.

And then out of nowhere...

I like being a beginner. I like my rabbit holes. I probably won't talk about them to much more because this pretty much covers it, but as I add to my beading portfolio, I want to document it, so, Here goes.

A few close ups:

Those "cabochons" are glass stones from the local big box craft store. They were aqua colored, but because I did not have any actual cabochons, I just glues these to some sturdy black fabric, resulting in the black stones pictured. When it is out in the sunlight it has a faint aqua colored shimmer, but nothing like I originally intended. I still love it. The colors are a little more vibrant in person, the gold isn't so washed out. 

I was not happy with how the chain turned out. I was going for a netting type look, but because I  used some pretty nondescript and uneven beads, the netting was not cooperating, so when I wear this piece, I twist the chain into a rope. Some day I will decide how it should be fixed.