Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Karen's Topaz

Just finished this piece for a client of mine. She provided the topaz and asked me to bead around it and maybe do some spiral rope too. I'm really proud of this one, it's one of my best yet. I used czech 11/0 rootbeer colored and czech 15/0 silver-lined gold colored seed beads and two cathedral beads .

As beautiful as it it, it was a pain to make. Those 15/0 czech sead beads have holes too small for any beading needle I could find. So I used fireline as stringing material since it's a bit stiffer than the rest and still small enough to go through those beads several times each. I simply pushed the end of the fireline through each bead. Ok, not so simply - some of those beads around the cab took up to 40 minutes of "pushing" to get the fireline to go through. Several times I decided it wasn't worth it, but that stone just demanded to be done this way and my muse agreed. Good thing too 'cause this one is my new favorite! Here's a larger than life closeup (click on it):

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that is absolutely gorgeous! You are so talented.

Anonymous said...

Anne, Snowrose is right when she said this necklace is phenomenal! I keep going back to look at it over and over. What a wonderful design you came up with for the topaz. I like your blog too. Hope you get time to post more for me to read.