The Rest of the Black Necklace

There are two more beads in the black necklace that I've yet to cover. This one is the same as the one in the bracelet, except it is made larger by building the netting on a basic bead with more rows than are in the bracelet bead. Since there are more rows, you will need more 15/0s before you put on the Fire Polish (FP) beads, in this case there are five 15/0s on either side of the FP. It's that easy, and you can build beads that graduate in length by simply making each basic bead, one, two, or three rounds longer.



Materials Needed
Sixteen #11 Delicas
Twenty-eight #10 Delicas
Twenty-four 10/0 Twisted Hex
Eighty 15/0 Seed Beads
Sixteen 3mm FP
Four 11/0 Seed Beads
WildFire or 6lb FireLine (48")
Needle

Make a basic bead that is four beads around, alternating seven rounds of #10 Delicas with six rounds of 10/0 Twisted Hex beads. The embellishment element consists of five 15/0 seed beads, one 3mm FP, one 11/0 seed bead, one 3mm FP, ending with five 15/0 seed beads.



This other bead is a variation of what I have always called a "versatile" bead. I've had various instructions for it up on my main site (the link's at the bottom of the home page)for several years. It's been pointed out to me that the tutorial up there is way too confusing for some because I spend a lot of time describing the way I turn my hands and how I tighten the threads. If you're interested, you can click here and take a look. I did this because often when I've taught this bead, students beads are floppy and don't hold their shape. One reason is because some people are constitutionally incapable of working with doubled thread. I have a very close friend who suffers from this affliction. If that's true for you, then I suggest two things, one you use a fat thread--10 or 12 lb. Fireline and you work through all the beads twice, pulling very tight after each bead. Setting each bead before putting on the next is also something I do to firm up the new versatile bead. But, it's up to you to work however you choose, with your own technique. There's nothing magical about mine; it's just something that has worked for me for a long time.

The versatile bead is simply a bead made of tubular peyote, beginning as I always do by putting on twice the number of beads in the rounds, taking the needle around and going through every other bead except for the last two, which I also go through before pulling into a tight circle. I make it round by increasing the size of the beads until I get to the largest bead which is the center row and then I start back down or reverse the size of the beads, ending with two rows of 11/0 delicas.


Materials Needed for One Bead
Twenty #11 Delica
Twenty #10 Delica
Ten 8/0 Seed Beads
Five 3mm Fire Polish (FP)
WildFire or 6lb FireLine
Needle

Cut a 30-35" length of Wildfire and work with thread doubled. Begin with ten #11 Delica beads and take the needle through every other one. Work two rows of peyote with #10 Delicas (Substitute with 11/0 seed beads if desired, stepping up at the end of each round. First round of #10 Delicas (row three) is shown in photo. The bead will start to form with the second round of #10s.

Continuing in peyote, work one round of 8/0 seed beads, one round of 3mm FP, and one round of 8/0 seed beads, stepping up at the end of each round. Hold the bead firmly as it forms between your thumb and forefinger.








Add the last two rows of #10 Delicas and finish with two rows of #11 Delicas. Take the needle through the last row of #11s and pull tight. Cut the thread below the needle and tie the ends with a surgeon's or square knot. Clip the thread about 1/16" from the beads. I burn the ends with a thread burner or the flame of a match or cigarette lighter.

The bracelet at the top is made the same as the one in the last post. I used 5mm sterling beads between the beaded beads, finishing with smaller sterling beads, a tornado crimp, and a sterling toggle.

The Beaded Bead Bracelet

I made three more of the beaded beads in the last post to go with the two I had already made. It took me about half an hour to make one bead, and then it took me most of the day to find a clasp. As you can see, I ended up using a Bali toggle. I kept going back into my stash for the perfect clasp, but one was too plain, one was too fancy, one was too big, one didn't have the color stone in the clasp that enhanced the bracelet, several were too hard for me to hook. I was beginning to feel like Goldilocks, but I really didn't want to use a toggle. Short of jumping in the car and heading to my local bead shop, I decided to go with the one in the photo. And, as luck will have it, I like the look, especially since I used chain instead of seed beads to attach the toggle.

Materials Needed:

Beaded Beads (5)
10" beading wire
Beadcaps (10)
6mm Fire Polish (FP) Rounds (7)
Crimps (2)
Wire Guards (2)
Crimp Covers (2)
Toggle Clasp
Chain (1/2")



I used Beadalon's .018 Stringing Wire in Bright. (I don't have a favorite beading wire: I also use Soft Flex, Accu-Flex, C-Flex or whichever I find first in my stash. I use sterling silver, Bali, or Hill Tribe silver in my jewelry, or I use gold-filled findings when I'm working in gold.

I strung the beads first with beadcaps on each end and a 6mm FP bead between. At each end I placed one FP, one crimp, and one FP. Then I slipped the wire guard through the clasp and fed the wire through the guard and back through the FP, crimp, and FP. I pulled the wire tight and closed the crimp. I clipped the wire at the bottom of the second FP and placed and closed the crimp cover over the crimp. I repeated this on the other end of the bracelet. As usual, the design choices are what took the time, much more so than the actual fabrication.

Bullion Rose Showcase

Days of Wine and Roses

Texas Spring has Sprung

A Profusion of Pink

These larger roses (about the size of a quarter) are built on the same 10/0 Delica base as the other roses with eight 11/0 seed beads for the inner petals and six and eight 8/0 seed beads respectively for the outer petals.

Roses Round My Neck

(Instructions for the bullion rose are here).

Flower Power Bracelet - Day 3

Imagine my surprise when I looked down at the bracelet on my arm when I was out shopping today. The center flower looked like a water lily. The five inner petals absolutely refused to stay fanned out and stood right up, surrounding the montee in the center. So, is this a new variation and is it something I can replicate, or is it just a lucky accident? Doesn't matter, because I like it.

I decided that I wanted to show a bit more about the fringe to make clearer the way I work. I created about an inch and a half of the 3-bead peyote with a doubled thread. I realized that I forgot to explain how I get to a single thread. No big deal. I simply make a couple of overhand knots, then clip one of the threads.

Here are some of the fringe elements in my bracelet. This is how it looks before I really get into the whole process. I have a tendency to overdo, although I like to think of my fringe as exuberant rather than overdone.




As a comparison, the photo on the right shows the very first segment I did on the bracelet itself.


I added the two fringe that straddle the middle bead to the sample. Hope this helps. There will be a lot more fringe ideas in the days to come.



Finally, here's a closeup of the picot that is worked along both edges.


Several of my students and friends have asked me about buying beads for the embellishment--the flowers, the leaves, the gemstone chips, the pearls, etc. (I assume these people are probably new to beading because all I have to do is start rummaging through my stash which has been growing for better than 15 years.) Here's my advice to them: start checking out these various types of beads when you're in your local bead store, looking for any strings that have a mixture of colors, or iris or aurora borealis finish which will often enhance very different color schemes. Then there are tubes that are color mixtures of drops, triangles, and cubes. When Suza Beads was still in business, they used to have a huge bowl of beads from which we could buy a small plastic bag full for a very reasonable price. Of course, we weren't allowed to pick out just the beads we wanted, but Nancy never blindfolded us so we always got a great selection. I haven't looked on E-Bay or Etsy, but I'd bet you could find some nice mixtures there for a very reasonable price. And don't forget to check beads leftover from other projects. It's expensive to buy five or six strands just to get the six or seven of each bead that you want to use. There's also no rule about using a large variety of beads either; it's just what I like.

Flower Power Bracelet - Day Two

I've made and sewn the flowers to the bracelet base and now I'm ready for the embellishments/fringe between the flowers. I like my fringe to be very generous and varied, so the first thing I do is start gathering the beads I need. I use a lot of different beads--flowers, drops (all sizes), pearls (top-drilled and keishi), petals, lentils, cubes, triangles,gemstone chips, metal rounds, charms, margaritas, crystals, and on and on. Since I usually repeat the same beads between each flower, I throw at least seven to twelve of each choice into the mix. Then I stir them all up together like I have done in this photo. I have a good mixture of texture (crystal to matte), color (light to dark), and size. Double-click on the photo to see all the different possibilities and the proportion of each.

The fringe is placed through the center bead in the three-bead peyote base, working fringe on both sides of this bead. My reasoning for this placement is as follows: the fringe is supported by the beads on either side of the center bead and the center bead is full of thread so the fringe thread won't be rubbing against the beads (one very good reason why fringe thread breaks). I usually use one color of 15/0 beads for the fringe. For this bracelet I was going to use a light blue, but realized that it wouldn't do anything for the pink to violet flowers, so I switched to a 15/0 cut silver bead.

I bring the thread from right to left through bead #1, string on seven to nine 15/0 beads, a flower bead, a 2mm crystal, skip the crystal and take the needle down through the flower and the 15/0s and back through bead #1. Put on seven to nine beads, a disk bead, a spacer, a 2mm crystal, skip the crystal and come back down through the 15/0s before taking the needle through bead #2. This is the principal thread movement, but sometimes I move to the next bead and sometimes I put two fringe through one bead. The diagram seems to suggest that there are beads on both When the bracelet is worn, these fringes fall and fill in the middle area, but if there's an apparent gap, I will often have one fringe with four or five beads on either side of the focal bead straddle the middle bead as shown.


Here are some other favorite fringe choices. The first is two chicklet or nibblet beads with a 2mm crystal between them. I skip the chicklets and come back down through the 15/0s, snugging up the chicklets to place them side by side. I've used a disk bead on some of the fringe with a spacer and a 2mm crystal on top. Another favorite is stringing three magatamas (large drops) on the end of the line of beads before coming back down.

One other technique of mine as stated in the first paragraph is to repeat the beads I use in each segment (the portion between the flowers created from beads). While I don't put these in the same order, I do place them on opposite sides of the middle bead. You'll see a keishi pearl on the top of one segment and on the bottom of the ones on either side. This is especially true of any beads that I've used as an accent, such as the fuschia keishi pearl in the finished bracelet. It's a subtle way of directing the eye across the entire bracelet.

After I've finished all the fringe, I have one final area to complete. I turn the bracelet over and finish the two ends of the peyote by placing some type of picot along the edge, usually the one I've used here. This is an 11/0, a 4mm fire polish, another 11/0. I bring the needle up through the first edge beads, place the three beads on the needle and go down through the next bead. Up through the next bead, add the three beads and go down through the next. This final row hides the threads along the edge where I've made my knots and adds more support to the fringe.



And finally, the finished bracelet:

Flower Power Bracelet - Day One

I wasn't really pleased with the flower made with the vitrail beads, so, I made three more of them to use up most of the petals. Beauty in numbers. What I discovered was that it wasn't the flower I didn't like, it was the photograph. While the strings (fifty beads) usually divide evenly with half of the cupped side being vitrail and half not, this one was one bead off. I knew I wanted to make a bracelet as the next logical project, and I like my bracelets to have five elements. So...I needed another flower. What better than the flower made from leaf beads.

I chose leaf beads with a marea coating and chose five that read pretty much as silver instead of ones that would more closely match the vitrail coating on the petal beads. I had already decided that I wanted blue as the main color in the finished bracelet, and that I would use silver as one of the supporting colors. I also knew that I wanted the center flower to be larger, but not completely different than the others. Since I had six cupped beads with the blue glass showing rather than the vitrail, I used this side for the second layer of petals. To accomplish this, I had to add a round of the 8/0 beads without stepping up, just as I did on the flower power ones.

I next made a bracelet base with the blue 8/0 seed beads I used in the center flower. It's highly likely that none of it will actually show once I add the embellishments, but it still supports my color choice. I'm using the 8/0 seed beads because I've found that if I use 6/0s or 5/0 triangles, I put on so much embellishment my flowers are hard to find, like the "Secret Garden" bracelet shown below.



After I finished the base, I marked the position of the flowers with a Sharpie marker.



Then I placed the flowers over the marks to be sure I liked how it was developing. When I make these flowers for a bracelet, I don't end the thread so I can use it to attach them and to add the embellishment. I use the makeup sponges to house the needle and store the thread. I wish I could remember who suggested this to me. I was using foam hair rollers which also work well, and I know that Jelcy Romberg was the one who passed that trick along to me.



I sew the flowers to the base by going through the bottom row of petal beads one petal at a time and working through the 8/0s, thus I sew through a petal, through an 8/0, through the next petal, through an 8/0...until all five petals are attached. Then I wind the thread up again until I'm ready to add the embellishment and attach the next flower. Oh, yes, I used blue C-Lon doubled for the flowers because I wanted to match the clear blue glass, and I used 6lb crystal fireline doubled for the bracelet base because it was handy and I couldn't find the spool of C-Lon.

So, I attached the flowers starting from the left and working to the right, placing each carefully on the dot before I started sewing. And, as usual, they got closer together as I moved across the bracelet, but when I wear it, no one will notice, especially with the embellishment. That's the working rationalization for this bracelet.



Tomorrow I'll add the embellishments and finish the bracelet. (I think I'll start saying "In the next post" instead of tomorrow.)

Bracelet Base Continued

I work with a double thread on quite a few of my projects, and I often have to add a new thread. Here's how I do it: Work with the old thread until there is about 4" left. Stop, thread a new needle, and start this new thread about 4 or 5 rows back from where the old thread waits. Make a few overhand knots along one of the sides, not through the middle beads, and exit the bead where the old thread is. Tie a square knot and continue beading with the new thread.

When the beading has progressed for about an inch or so, pick up the old thread and work it up along the side making several overhand knots. Cut off the needle and tie the ends in a square knot before clipping or burning the thread close to the beads.


The bead that I'm using in this base has 9 beads to the inch along the side. If you want to know how many beads you'll need for the base, multiply this number times three. In this case, twenty-seven beads to the inch or 182 for a 6-3/4" base.


I use the new 8mm heavy magnetic clasps on a lot of these bracelets. (If you can't find them at your local bead store, Cindy Tipton, the Beadlady, has them available on line.) Stop when you have a "Straight" row coming up, and the magnet will fit right in the gap. Take the thread through the first bead, string on the magnet, take it through the last bead. Now come through the bead right below and start working overhand knots along the thread between the bead and the magnet. Go through the magnet and work overhand knots on the thread between this side of the magnet and the end bead. (It's like sewing on a hook with buttonhole stitches.) Work the thread along the side and finish it by clipping the thread leaving enough to tie a square knot, before clipping it close. I add the other half of the magnet the same way on the other side by threading the needle with the beginning thread, adding one bead to the side to get to the "Straight" row.

Once you've made a few of these you'll be amazed at how quickly you can create a base. Next week I'll be building a bracelet on this base. It's going to be "Miss Beddie's Pond" with a new flower made from petal beads.


Here's another bracelet with the flowers made from leaves. I titled this one "The Secret Garden," because you have to look really hard to find the flowers.


I'm off tomorrow for a weekend at the Shreveport Louisiana Bead Retreat. I'm teaching a new piece, the Rose Vine Bracelet. I'll also be teaching this bracelet at Beadoholique Too in Houston during April.