Soutache Musings...

So lately I have seen a lot of examples of something called soutache in all the beading magazines and blogs. I must say I am very intrigued but am not totally sure if I will attempt it just yet. Let me give you some picture to explain what I mean by soutache.

This amazing bracelet was made by Anneta Valious.

 And these are by Amee McNamara. You can see her work here. She is also featured in the latest issue of bead and button magazine. And she also offers tutorials and kits for sale on her website.

As you can seen it is a combination of beads and some sort of silk trim. Luckily I found a pretty nice tutorial on how to do it. Unfortunately it's in French.... But that's okay, the photos are more than enough :D You can see the tutorial here.  Seems like this may be my next project venture.....

More progress

I have made some decent progress on this particular pendant.... It seems to be taking on a vintage type look with the olive and cream colors. Since I am going with the vintage look I think some nice cream colored pearls would be a good addition.... and maybe finish the necklace off with some olivine rivolis... not totally sure yet but I like where this is going

Progress Update

Okay, so here's everything I have been working on for the past couple of days. I have about 5 different projects going on at once :P 

I just started this piece of bead embroidery today. It's sort of an olivey selection of colors to go with this stone. I got the cabochon a while bad at a bead show in Richmond. It's called apatite and apparently comes from Russia. It's kind of hard to tell from the photo but the stone has a really amazing sparkle / luster to it. I think it should turn out pretty nice, a decent summer color that could easily transfer into fall........ Next up, CRYSTALS!

As you can see here I have done all the bezels for each stone. I am really loving the crystal one, am thinking it will be an ice queen inspired necklace.

This one here has a peacock colored stone to it. This picture really doesn't do the colors justice but Oh well. When it's finished the whole stone will be surrounded with 2 layers of these petals, creating a really cool flower type pendant. 

I have started to do the cubic right angle weave cord to go with this one, which is coming along nicely I think. Am still not totally sure which direction this necklace is going yet. Maybe a more modern look?

 

And here are a few other shots of these two individually......

Ocean Breeze

Lots of people claim to be "Self taught" artists, but in reality almost everybody learns things from somewhere.  Because of this I am not ashamed to say that I love to purchase good tutorials from other artists. I think it's one of the best ways to learn new techniques for beadwork. Some other artists act like it's a taboo to learn things from other people, but that's not me. I accept the fact that I can't know everything right off the bat so in order to evolve, I have to learn from others.
    Anyways, I recently bought a lovely tutorial  from Christina Neit at http://goodquillhunting.com, on how to do a fringed V-necklace (you can purchase the pattern here ). I love this lady's work and really wanted to learn how to do a nice fringe necklace for summer. This is what I came up with.

The lovely photographs were taken by my friend Katie Hart on the beach in Norfolk, Virginia.

New crystals to play with

I recently purchased some vintage Swarovski crystals to turn into necklaces. Receiving them in the mail was like Christmas :) I love to work with the larger swarovski elements like these. I was so happy when I found out they started making some of the larger fancy stones again. They add so much sparkle and glitz to any piece of beadwork. Check them out for yourself at www.firemountaingems.com. I have made a few pieces with these before and I was very pleased with the outcome.

 

I like to use a cubic right angle weave rope to go around the stones and I embellished this one with some extra swarovski crystal bicones. I learned how to do this from the October 2011 issue of Bead & Button magazine in a tutorial called "Putting on the Glitz" by Ludmila Raitzin. You can get the basics on Cubic right-angle weave here for free, but if you want to learn the whole composition and how to bezel the crystal, I recommend purchasing that issue. 

For these new crystals I am going to try some other variations on the necklace design, maybe add some different embellishments. I will post progress updates of each necklace as they come along :)