Bead Embroidered Necklace - Making Progress

Bead embroidery is one of my loves - it's easy to incorporate it into smaller pieces like here and here and here.

But now and then it's time to take a deep breath and dive into something a little more extreme. Something that will take some serious time and planning. Something that will give you a good excuse to stay indoors when the weather outside is colder than Antarctica. (I wish I was exaggerating.)

So here is my latest big project, shown through a series of progress shots. It's not finished yet, but stay tuned!

Gathering the potential material

The gemstone pieces were the inspiration for the piece.
Everything else grew from them.

This is the first time I've actually sketched out the plan for a piece before diving in.
I've been doing this for twenty years. I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner.

Transferred to the backing and gemstones glued in place.

 

A little progress

Here's today's starting place

The needle's threaded and I'm ready to get moving today - stay tuned for the next progress update!

What I Do

Beadweaving. Creating fabric, structure, texture from myriads of infinitessimal seed beads. Madness? Maybe. Frustrating? Frequently. Obsessive? Magnificently.

While I do a lot of stringing, beadweaving is a special kind of love. So here is a sample of my recent beadwoven work. This one is a poppy jasper donut as the delicious centerpiece of a freeform peyote necklace. Freshwater pearls and some red jasper add spice.

Obsession Results

As promised, here are quick photos of the results of the weekend's earring blowout. This actually isn't all of the earrings I made in that one night, but it does include some beadwoven earrings (along the top row in the picture below) that I had finished a while back, and finally added the ear wires to. They're not all terribly intricate, but they did fit the goal of the evening, which was to find some instant gratification and put together some pieces that will be bread and butter in my next show.

Earring overload!

Last night, I was pursuing instant gratification -- so I sat down to make some earrings. Quick, easy, satisfying.

And twenty-seven pairs later...

Apparently, I had a little pent-up need to play in the bead room. But I'm a little afraid that my picture will be the illustration of the definition of "obsessed" in the next edition of the dictionary.

Pictures (of the earrings) are forthcoming, I promise.