My Mom's bezeled earrings (finally)

Whew!  What a busy weekend I had!  The comedy show at Karma Bar and Grill was fun - the food was good, and the comedians were pretty funny.  The chairs, however, were extremely uncomfortable.  If you go, bring a pillow.  :)

The Jewelry at the Domes show was good, but the weather was horrible.  Sunday there were tornado sirens, but we only had rain and high winds.  Not fun for packing up and loading the car, and the weather affected how many people turned out.  Some brave souls did show up, and we were all glad for that.

Now that my Triptych saga is over, I can finally show you the earrings I made for my mother's birthday that I told you about.

A number of years ago my friend Cindy showed me how to stitch around things without holes in them (typically called cabochons), which is called bezeling.  You use beads of two different sizes, and the smaller ones cinch up the ring so the focal piece doesn't fall out.  There's no glue involved, and it always amazes people that the center doesn't fall out.

Here's the first one I made:

The focal here is a polymer clay bicone that Cindy made.  It's so cute!  The necklace is tubular peyote and took forever.

I wanted to show you another bezeled piece I made, but it seems to have gone missing.  That's a little distressing, as it's my favorite necklace.  It has to be around here somewhere.  It's probably on my desk, which means I'll never find it.

Hmm.  Anyway.  I really like this technique because you can have fun with it.  You can add fringe around the outside edges, but my favorite thing to do is to just add nubs.

This necklace uses peanut beads and 15/0 seed beads as the nubs:

The necklace on that one is also tubular peyote, but with peanut beads it took a fraction of the time.  I loved this necklace, and I sold it last December.  I almost didn't want to give it up, but it has a good home.

Here's the necklace I made for my mother ages ago that precipitated making the earrings you will eventually see:

The center is a snowflake obsidian cabochon.  The nubs around the edge are the same 15/0 seed beads as are used to cinch up the bezel in the front and back.  The necklace is a spiral rope.

When I went shopping for appropriate snowflake obsidian cabochons for the earrings, I decided on 8mm rounds from Fire Mountain Gems.  They currently have some 10mm rounds and some ovals that would have worked, too, but I don't remember seeing them when I was shopping before.

Here is what they look like, unstitched:

I actually got one to stand up on its side!  Woo hoo!  As you can see, the front is domed, and the back is flat.  That would be fine for bead embroidery where you want the cabochon to lie flat on the material, but for a fully beaded bezel, that flat back can be a little tricky (more on that later).

I also found it hard to hold on to the little buggers while I was stitching them into the bezel.  8mm doesn't seem that small until it keeps flying out of your fingers.

Here (at long last) are the earrings I made for Mom:

I bezeled two cabochons for each earring and linked them by having one nub in common.  I could see the same technique used to link three of them for an interesting "pendant".

Here are earrings I made to sell with just one cabochon a piece:

I think they look like gears.

The basic construction of beaded bezels is a ring of tubular peyote with 11/0 Delicas to fit around the focal and one or more rings of 15/0 seed beads on each side.  Usually one round is enough, but if it's loose, then I use two rounds to make sure it's not going anywhere.  For these cabochons, though, I felt the flat back needed three rounds, but the piece was too small, and the beads were buckling.  I decided that looked like crap and took it out.  I tried again, skipping every other bead, and something interesting happened:

I got a little star on the back!  It's not perfect, because of the number of beads back there, but it's pretty darned close.  One of my friends told me she kinda preferred the back to the front.

Here are the most recent pieces I've bezeled:

The thing I like about these pieces is that I used a different color for the nubs, and I started adding them a row closer to the front than I usually do.  That gave the pieces a ridge which frames the stones nicely.

Do you have any bezeled cabochons you'd like to show off?  Send me an e-mail at traci@creative-pursuits.biz with the picture, and I'll post about it!

The long awaited challenge piece

For the last few weeks I've been mentioning the "challenge piece" and how I've been frantically trying to finish it.  Now that it's done and turned in I will explain more about it and show you my entry.

The Loose Bead Society has a challenge every year.  Last year participants were given a paint chip, and the challenge was to make something using that color and name as inspiration.  This year our challenge was butterflies and moths and everything leading up to them - caterpillars, cocoons, etc...

We knew about the challenge a number of months ago, and I had tons of thoughts swirling around in my head.  The last time we went to the Milwaukee Public Museum I found the butterfly I wanted to use as my inspiration - the Peleides Blue Morpho.  A few had recently hatched and were still in the hatchery:

There was a poster showing that this butterfly has different colorings on either side of the wing:

Oh, how the ideas churned!  I was excited to use a butterfly from our Museum's butterfly habitat, and with the differences in the colors on its wings, I could... no... dare I even think it?  Make a reversible necklace!!

I'd like to say I set to work immediately.  This visit to the Museum was in May.  However, even though I had posted the due date on our website, I thought it was due in August.  I was reminded at the July Board meeting and was spurred into motion.

On July 4th I spent a few hours at Cindy's house - she's way more knowledgeable with polymer clay than I am, and she does much more than just stamp on it.  Besides, all my clay is old and crappy, and she has tons of clay she said I could use.  Due to a family party Steve and I were going to later in the day, we had to hurry, but we were able to get the main pieces done: circles that match the circles on the butterfly wing and blue marbled ones for the other side.  Cindy has this amazing set of color mixing "tablets" that show the main color, the color when mixed with white, and the formula for how to get the color.  I was able to choose the exact colors I needed.

After I finished up and baked the pieces, I glued the blue ones to the circled ones.  Then came the bezeling.  It took a while to figure out exactly what I wanted to do, but I peyoted as much as I could stand for over a week.

I'll spare you all of the drama of making the piece - how many bezels I had to redo for various reasons, how many times I poked myself with the needle, how Cindy and I made a frantic trip to the bead store because what I wanted to do to join the circles wouldn't work.  I'll just show you the piece:

As I hope you can see, it gives the shape of the butterfly without being too exact.  I really should have taken a picture of it on a black background so you could see the beads joining the circles and the edging better.  That will have to wait until I get it back.

Here are a few pictures of me wearing it:

I got a lot of compliments on it, and Cindy (who I could not have done this without) said she loves it.  Let's hope the judges love it, too!

Whew! Finally finished!

You know that green tubular peyote necklace I've been talking about?  Well, some of you are new readers, so you probably don't know.  I've been working on a necklace to go with my first beaded bezel (referenced in this blog post here).

Well, I finally finished the necklace!  It could have been a bit longer, but I gotta tell you... I was so sick of doing it!  If I lose weight, the necklace will end up longer.  I get chided all the time for saying I have a fat neck, but when you're beading a necklace every fat cell seems to count!  :)

Here's a close up of part of the necklace and the bail:

If you're staring at the bail trying to figure out what I did... it's "odd count" peyote with two beads for the middle instead of one.  Since the darker beads are so much smaller than the green beads, there was too much flopping about (that's the technical term, you know) of the middle bead, so I added another.  I think it turned out quite well, especially since I had no idea what I was doing and didn't feel like getting up to find a book or magazine to look odd count peyote up.  Yeah, I know, if I had gotten up and looked for a book, that would have burned off a few fat cells, and the necklace would hang lower.  Don't remind me!

Here's a picture of me with the necklace so you can get a sense of how short it is:

The shelf above my desk is the perfect height for self portraits!  Who knew?  Just turn on the timer and go!  Of course, I didn't realize I had something in my teeth for the first go-round, and Simoon was wandering around my desk for the second set.  Scoot back a bit to reduce flash glare on the glasses, shoo the cat off of the desk, and voila!  Beauteous picture.

I'd like to thank Cindy Collins not only for teaching me how to bezel but also for giving me this gorgeous polymer clay piece to work with!

What I've been doing this week

Since I last posted, I've been feverishly working on my tubular peyote necklace to go with the bezel I just showed you.  It's a slow process, but I think I'm getting quicker at it.  I have 9 inches of the necklace done - I think that's about halfway.

One unfortunate thing... my black and white herringbone necklace that I'm wearing in my picture under "about me" seems to be coming apart.  It was my first stitching attempt, and the thread I used isn't very good.  I now have better thread (the Fireline I posted about this week), so I think I'm going to have to remake the necklace.  I thought about strengthening the part that is coming loose, but I have a feeling I'm going to have to keep doing it.  On the plus side, I know exactly how many beads I'll need!

The other thing I've been working on is the website for my web design company.  I have a name registered, my Employer Identification Number, a bank account, business cards, and as soon as I get my site up my shingle will be hung, and I'll be open for business.  I'll let you know when that happens!

Have a good weekend and Memorial Day!

Starting Stitched Bezels

Recently I learned how to make bezels using the Peyote stitch.  I had seen a number of pictures in magazines but thought they were too ornate for me, but my friend Cindy from the Loose Bead Society showed me how easy it was to make bezels that better fit my personality.  The center doesn't have to be flashy or gaudy - you can bezel  basically anything flat-ish and round-ish.

While our husbands were playing Risk, we were in her craft room with polymer clay bicones that Cindy had made herself.  Okay, the husbands were playing Risk for only part of the time - we did have to start over because our first attempt was WAY too large for the shapes.


Here are a few pictures of the bezel so far - one of each side of the bicone - they're both so pretty!

For this bezel I'm going to keep it simple - I'm not going to embellish it at all.  I have started making a tubular peyote necklace with the green beads that I'll dangle this from.  While the bezel is started with tubular peyote, it's a much larger circle and is easier to figure out than doing a small-diameter necklace.  It's going well - I've done 2.5 inches of the necklace so far.  I'll post the completed project when it's done!

This has sparked interest in me to do other bezels.  Stay tuned!

Before I sign off I'd like to tell you about something I found online.  I got introduced to Fireline by my Loose Bead Society friends as great for stitching.  I found it for a really good price on Amazon a few months ago - $29.95 for a 300 yard spool of 6 lb line of the Smoke color.  Shipping was free!  I'm looking to get a spool of the Crystal color and noticed they have mail-in rebate offer if you get any 2 or more Berkley TEC tool, Classics tool, line, or bait.  If you've purchased any Fireline this year (and you still have your receipts) or if you plan on purchasing any, check out my link over there ---> for ordering from Amazon, and send in the rebate offer form.  You can get up to $15 back from Berkley!