On my beading tray -- Jan 9th Edition

Welcome to the first edition of On my beading tray, a new blog feature where I will show you what I've got in the works!

Today there are three projects on my tray:

1. I'm embroidering away on the cabochon pendant that I'm making with the bead mix from Allegory Gallery. The onyx cab has been bezeled with bronze Delicas and matte crystal AB size 15 Japanese seed beads. Now I'm adding a row of embroidery using the bead mix. I was frustrated to find that I don't have size 11s to match any of the red beads in the mix, which shows me that I should really buy more red 11s at gem show this year.

2. The marbled green leaves were my first attempt at making beaded leaves using this particular technique, and I will be turning them into dangly earrings. If I like how the earrings wear, I'll make them in different colors for the shop.

3. The three silver-y green leaves will be part of a necklace. There's also a partial matte green leaf. It didn't turn out well and the matte green doesn't go at all with the other green (inside the tubes, they were lovely together).

Allegory Gallery Seed Bead Fun

 In order to make things more interesting around here, I'm going to be posting more in-progress pictures of projects. I plan to do a lot of seed beading in 2013, so there should be a lot of fun projects for me to document.

My first project involves the Black Beach Bonfire seed bead mix from Allegory Gallery. I shamelessly stole the above photo from their website because it shows the full range of this beautiful mix, whereas my pic below has it in a tube where it looks a little blah.

Because there are so many colors in the mix I decided to go with a simple black onyx cabochon for the focal piece. I'm not sure yet what else I'll be using, but I think there will be some golden key charms to pull out the gold in the mix, and to make it appropriate for Wild Wild West Con in March. I really need to beef up my steampunk stock, and this will have cross appeal for Goths, too. Plus I just really like keys!

Disclaimer: Some items in this blog post were provided for promotional consideration. I am receiving no other compensation for my blogging.