stringing

Sylvia came back from Tucson with a gift for me of these amazing beads. The core colors are varying shades of orange, with a milky-colored-glass covering, and while I believe these are pressed, not cut — they appear cut. Look at the glow!

I tried combining them with a matching Italian milky-white seed, it looked boring. I tried various oranges, but that didn’t work either. So thinking of the color wheel, I ventured generally to its opposite side and came up with this light blue. Now the oranges are more noticeable and vibrant.

The hazard of putting supplies away is that you find things with which to play!  I purchased this silver-plated bead from Rings & Things that looks like a coral branch perhaps two months ago, because it appealed to me — no intended purpose.  It was in a pile to put away (yes, it can take me months), as were some vintage seed beads.  I keep my vintage separate from the rest of my seeds, and when I opened that drawer, I spotted these lovely watery-looking vintage Italian seeds.  They were a gift from a relative several years ago, and a very thoughtful gift, especially as she’s not a beader; she just had fun shopping for me.  The writing on the bag says they are circa 1930, from Italy.

I added the rice pearls for a continuation of the watery theme.  I tried several different coral-colored beads, but they were too strong of a contrast to these blue beads.  The clasp could definitely be better, but I don’t keep many clasps in stock, and this is what I had on hand.  A vaguely anchor-looking bar to the toggle makes it okay.  I would prefer sterling to this pewter, but it’ll be just fine.

This necklace is quite short — the shortest inner strand is 13 1/2″, the coral strand is 16″.  The shortest two strands fit around the base of my neck, and the coral rests below.  I used multiple strands to try to balance the visual weight of the piece of coral with the seed beads.

I was scanning the book Bead Journey, a Kalmbach stringing publication, and saw a project stringing large tagua nuts shaped as buttons. It was a belt, connected with long loops of beading wire covered by rubber tubing. The tagua beads reminded me of these bone large-hole buttons that I bought more than 20 years ago at an antique sale/flea market. Combined with some 3-cuts and some large seed beads, and I like how it turned out.

I’ve been thinking about the figure since I put it down yesterday, and I suspect that I am going to have to redo the torso. Nuts.

This was a nice little project. I’ve only knotted a couple of times, it’s kind of a nice project to do. I have a friend who strings the beads, then will sit in front of the television with a needle and knots while “watching.” I used a needle too, to pull the knots down next to the beads. A better way would be making one of Celia Martin’s knotting boards. Look at her tutorial here; I used her instructions to help me.

So here’s the finished necklace. It’s satisfyingly heavy because of the weight of the cubic zirconia. It’s long enough to put over my head without unfastening, but I couldn’t figure out a way to make it a claspless necklace. I can get two passes of the cord through the cz’s and the gold 11 charlottes, so on a sample, I tried crossing the ends through the gold bead-cz bead-gold bead, and knotting a couple of times (instead of one), gluing the knots, and trimming. I didn’t like how it looked, and I just didn’t feel it was secure enough. So, I have a purely decorative clasp!