For the Bride

Please forgive this bad photo. White/crystal AB/pearl jewelry is hard to photograph, especially when you're in a hurry and have poor lighting. I'll be borrowing this necklace back from the bride sometime after the wedding to take high-quality images to show off.

When I showed my friend Helen the O. Bersten necklace in Rachel Nelson-Smith's Seed Bead Fusion, we both agreed that it was the perfect design to go with her wedding dress. Besides the white wedding color scheme, I made a few small changes to the design. Rachel used 5mmish freshwater pearls, and a single pearl dangle from the bottom of the pendant. I used 4mm Swarovski pearls, and decided to do 3 dangles, since the pearls were so small. Her original design had the necklace attached to the pendant at two points, but I decided to do a wire-wrapped bail on mine so I could hide the crimps in the back. Her design used two colors of drops to embellish the bezel, and I just used one, because it was all I had that matched the color scheme ;)

The O. Bersten component is fun to make. It's really dimensional and I can see a lot of opportunity for color variety... but I don't recommend doing it in various shade of pinks, otherwise the floral base will look like a little ring of boobies. Just saying...

Brunette-locks and the three bezels

I'm trying to finish my friend Helen's wedding necklace before I go see her on Friday afternoon (her wedding is on the 26th). The pendant involves a bezeled rivoli. The bezel has to be exactly 36 beads, to attach neatly to the base I've already made. The first 36 bead bezel I made, out of the white opal gilt-lined seed beads was too small. The second bezel, made from the silver-lined matte crystal ab is so large that I think I might be able to fit an 18mm crystal in, instead of the prescribed 16mm crystal. So what bezel will be "just right"? Should I go with crystal AB, which I've already made most of the pendant out of? Should I try alternating the little white opal beads with the big matte beads? Should I swear off bezels since they almost never fit on the first, second or even third try?

She Lives!

How's that for an appropriately dramatic blog post title?

It would appear that I took two weeks off from blogging. There was no particular reason for this, just a combination of being busy, the office being the hottest room in the house, and not feeling like I had anything exceptionally compelling to say. And what happened while I was gone? Spammy blog comments! What did they hope to accomplish by commenting on posts that were two weeks old? Who knows?

I haven't been beading much lately, but that's about to change. My dear friend Helen is getting married to a great guy later this month, and I'm very excited to be making a necklace to go with her gorgeous dress. I'll be starting that in a couple of days, I'm just waiting for the rest of the beads to arrive in the mail. On top of that, the BFAC deadline is just two months away and I haven't even started on my necklace. Plus I've got these ideas swirling in my head for various lampwork beads that are sitting on my desk.

I'd love to chat more about my dance life, and FAE Team, and all that good stuff, but I have about 8 hours worth of stuff and 3 hours to do it in, so I'd better wrap this up. I'll be back tomorrow!