Finally beading again

After a whole year of not beading at all, I received a commission from a friend, asking me to make a jewellery set for his mum for Christmas. He asked me to use red because it's his mum's favourite colour. I spent ages searching for patterns because I needed to find something which was within my skill set (not too complicated) but it could not look too simple. Here's what I ended up with:

I fell in love with Stephanie's design from Bronzepony Beaded Jewelry. This is the Victorian Chic Redux Icicles Necklace on YouTube. It looked so elegant and stunning, and seemed fairly straightforward to do. The only thing was, I didn't want to use Swarovski bicones all the way around because they are expensive, so I looked around for an alternative.

I had seen someone else use what I privately call a "picot chain" (I have no idea what the actual name is) but I couldn't find a tutorial or pattern for it anywhere. Using this Youtube tutorial by Sonysree Creations, I made the first motif and then managed to figure out how to repeat it in order to get a neat, pretty chain:

In her video, Stephanie had used drops of the same colour and size for both the lower and higher hanging dangles, but in her earlier video of the Crazy for Pearls Necklace, which uses the same pattern, she had alternated pearl drops and crystal drops, which I thought looked more visually interesting and would prevent the necklace from looking overwhelmingly red. My next problem was getting hold of light siam 4mm bicones and drops. I decided to make the red an accent colour instead of the main colour, and to use 6mm bicones instead of drops. I found the 6mms in Glister in PJ New Town, but they did not have the corresponding 4mm ones, and in fact told me that they are discontinuing Swarovski and will no longer be bringing in new stock. The colour was sold out on Monsterkraft.com too. Fortunately, the lady at Glister was very kind and helpful, pointing me to I-Decor in Petaling Street (Jalan Sultan, to be exact) but their Swarovski section is only open on weekdays! They have loads of colours, it's like Swarovski heaven.

I bought the hematite 4mm unfaceted rounds from Beading DIY also in Petaling Street, the Miyuki 11/0 (metallic RR 451) from Glister, and -- again -- could not find corresponding Miyuki 15/0s so had to settle for 15/0 Chinese seed beads in gunmetal, from Monsterkraft. They actually look more silverish than gunmetalish to me, but they didn't look too out of place in my design colour scheme, thank goodness.

Because I decided to use opaque solid black 3mm bicones and drops alongside the light siam Swarovski, I decided it was okay not to use Swarovski for the black since being opaque, it was not likely to be all that sparkly anyway. I used Chinese glass crystal 12 x 8mm drops which I already had on hand, and Preciosa Czech 3mm bicones in jet which I got from Monsterkraft (still cheaper than Swarovski!!).

After making the necklace, I hunted high and low for a bracelet and earring design which could go with it, because to my knowledge Stephanie hasn't made any complementing pieces to fit with the necklace as a set. I saw a post by Linda Genaw on her blog Linda's Crafty Inspirations and decided that I could make that pattern work.

The bracelet and earrings pattern is called "Craving Crystal" by Deborah Roberti, and I followed the link in Linda's blog post to purchase the pattern from Deborah's website. But, to make the bracelet match the necklace more obviously and tie them together somehow, I added the necklace chain's picot motif in between each of Deborah's components, so that at least there was some motif which was common to each piece. I did the same with the earrings, adding the picot motif on top, instead of using a 6mm bead as Deborah's original pattern calls for; and instead of using the 6mm bead at the bottom, I used the same black drop I had put in the necklace, so that both the earrings would match the necklace.

In the earrings and bracelet, each motif has a 4mm round bead in the centre. At first I used the same 4mm round hematite beads which I had used in the necklace, too, but then there was no strong contrast between the 11/0 Miyukis and the hematite because both looked metallic grey, and in the earrings, the black drop sort of seemed to come from nowhere (since the main pattern had no black to echo it). So I switched out the 4mm hematite beads for round faceted Chinese glass crystals which I already had on hand, and it worked much better to tie everything together and make all the pieces look like a real set.

I'm really pleased with how the set turned out, and my friend said his mother loves it, which makes me doubly happy!