All the pieces were finished now, and I just had to decide how everything would be assembled.  First, the pieces needed to be edged with 11/0 seed beads and the tear drops.  Then I decided on using oval shaped gold vermeil jump rings and a gold vermeil chain to put them together.

Here are some more process photos, and finishing pictures are here.

The Lady of Shalott

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I’ve made a little progress with my new bead embroidered necklace.  The Tennyson poem that tells the story of the cursed Lady of Shalott says that she was doomed to look at the world only in the reflections of her looking glass, and then to weave what she saw into tapestries.

The Lady of Shalott

I’ve included some small mirrors (shisha) to represent her looking glass which have been embroidered into place.  I’m attempting to hint at her tapestries through the sinuous lines that are echoed over and over in related colors.  I’m planning for most of the piece to be done in deep teal.

More process photos

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I’ve started a new handmade beaded necklace, inspired by one of my favorite women, The Lady of Shalott.  She was immortalized in a poem by Tennyson (the 1842 version), loosely based upon the Arthurian legend of Elaine of Astolat.  I’ll be sharing more images of it with you as it progresses.

Image: Cyndi Lavin

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There are so many different ways to make beaded flowers.  Some of the most intricate and beautiful that I’ve seen have been done on thin wire in the French style.  I decided to figure out a way to do mine with needle and thread instead.

You might remember awhile ago I shared a piece that I made, inspired by my mother’s flower garden.  I thought it might be nice to show you one of the simple ways that I made some of the flowers for this piece.

Gather up your seed beads, thread, beading needle, and some 8mm crystals or druks to use as the centers.  Tomorrow for Technique Tuesday, I’ll share the step-by-steps with you!

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Glass artist: Wendy Talaro
Website: Fawkes Artglass

Wendy writes:

The 9 1/2″ x 9 1/2″ slumped pastel plate is a prototype from a series titled “Spring Celebration”. (There’s a companion plate with a similar pastel palette but in blue and green.) The detail shot shows the dichroic accents across the plate and in the corners. The dichroic accents in the center of the plate were prefused onto 1/8″ thick pastel Bullseye glass, which was then cut, into 3/4″ squares, and fused onto a piece of 1/16″ iridized Bullseye glass. The dichroic accents in the corners used prefused strips of alternating colors that were bandsaw cut crosswise, ground, assembled and fused into 1 1/4″ squares. The 1/4″ color strips along the edges had to be precision ground for fit. The slumping form for the black and iridized white 9 1/4″ x 9 1/4″ shallow checkerboard bowl (shown below) was a light fixture cover, believe it or not.

The surface tension of glass is such that it will naturally pull itself into rounded forms until viscosity overcomes surface tension. At that point, glass, like water, will fill up corners as it flows. My peak kiln temperatures never exceeds 1450 degrees F, so keeping lines crisp and clearly defined is challenging. I use the kiss fit edges of the pre-fired pieces in assemblage to constrain the flow of adjacent pieces. In other instances, I use weights on top of the glass to force adjacent pieces to flow into each other, thereby achieving the same effect with pieces of much smaller mass, i.e. 1/16″ adjacent to 1/16″ pieces.

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I’ve got another CopprClay project for you to try!  I’m going to break it down into two tutorials: first we’ll look at how to use CopprClay with a mold, and then the following week, we’ll go through step-by-step one possible way to use a pendant like this in a finished necklace.

If you haven’t had a chance to mess around with CopprClay yet, you can look through the general directions that I’ve posted about working with it.  If you don’t have any metal clay of any type, you could also do a similar project to this one using all polymer clay!

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Several months ago, we devoted ourselves to polymer clay artists.  Well, I didn’t quite get enough!  I started thinking about all the wonderful jewelry that we saw, but I realized that I just don’t want to personally work with clay, at least not enough to get really good at it!

So, turning our attention back to polymer clay for a brief moment, I want to share a necklace with you that I made using one of my friend Amy E Fraser’s polymer clay medallions for the centerpiece.   This piece commemorates one of my favorite summer pass-times…fishing!

Tomorrow, I’ll show you the steps, so in the meantime, you can think about what fun figural pendant you’d like to use for your necklace!

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I picked out and received some Swarovski Crystal Beads recently from ArtBeads.com. They generously provided the crystal components and beads so that I could create a project to share with you. It was hard to make a choice, but I fell instantly in love with a new-to-me color called Bermuda Blue. I think that the ring components have only become available in this color pretty recently. Bermuda Blue has a metallic coating on one side that gives each bead and component an extra flash.

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing the step by step with you.  In the meantime, gather up any crystal components and charms that you would like to use to make your own necklace!

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Tomorrow and next week, I’m going to give you the step-by-steps for making a necklace similar to this one.  We’ll be starting with making the focal discs themselves, and then looking at how to assemble the whole necklace.  In the meantime, you can brush up on the basic details of working with CopprClay:

General instructions for working with CopprClay

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MAGNIFICENT TWO-STRAND ROSE QUARTZ
COLLAR WITH PENDANT DROP:

Materials:
Beading wire
12 large faceted rose quartz nugget beads, graduated in size from ¾” to 1¼ inch
1 extra-large faceted rose quartz nugget bead, preferably in a different shape than the 12 other beads
1 2-inch x ½-inch x 5/8ths-inch handcrafted silver dichroic glass 2-hole spacer bar bead
52 4×5mm pale pink pressed glass flower cone beads with AB finish
24 3mm silver flat flower beads
2 6mm faceted Czech fire-polished beads with AB finish
2 6×4mm glass rondelle beads with silver centers
4 3mm round silver spacer beads
2 4mm silver rondelles
2 silver crimp beads
1 inch of sterling silver French wire
6 inches of 16-gauge sterling silver wire
12 inches of 20-gauge sterling silver wire
1 3-inch silver headpin
Jeweler’s glue
E6000 silicon craft cement

Tools:
1 pair of round-nose pliers
1 pair of chain-nose pliers
1 wire-cutter
1 large beading board or steady flat surface
Scotch tape

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