Process pics. Midnight Flowers

Once a friend of mine who is hooked on making dichroic glass gave me a few cabochon-like articles. The idea of my future creation came to me immediately when I took those beautiful pieces of glass sparkling with different colors. Far more precious than a handful of loose diamonds, I decided that it should have been something night, mysterious and enigmatic...


I added to dichroic glass cabochons seed beads, bugle beads, accent beads, Swarovski crystals, Czech crystals, faceted black onyx rounds, and almost black dyed freshwater pearls.


The most painful work was to bead around cabochons because their shape differed from the shape of regular cabochons with sharp edges. I applied on the necklace my lovely Russian leaves and three-dimensional flowers of different colors with crystals and pearls in the middle. I filled the space between flowers with coral-like branches, and the necklace seemed to be finished. My friends told me, "Great work!", but I felt not satisfied, and put my creature aside for a while.


Only in about a month I realized what else needed to be done! I added the third layers to the middle bottom flowers and covered a little bit cabochons with the coral branches, it was the last touch!


Midnight Flowers was submitted to the Fire Mountain Gems and Beads 2008 Beading Contest held by FMG (Seed Beads Category) and won Judge's Favorite Award. Here is the full slide show of creating my necklace:

Midnight Flowers

Process Pics. Autumn Splendor

I made the necklace Autumn Splendor last late fall, when Joan Jensen from TazWood Creations suggested me to try her wood cabochons in my designs. A burl is a rounded outgrowth on a tree trunk or branch. Burls yield a very peculiar and highly figured wood. Because the number of trees that produce burl wood is quite low, the wood is scarce. These hand turned by Joan Jensen cherry burl wood cabochons have subtle inlays of turquoise in the burl's natural void.


I was so amazed by these beautiful cabochons, that immediately started designing my "autumny" necklace.


Then I beaded around the cabochons...


...and after that blended two sizes of wooden round beads, six colors of seed beads in three different sizes, as well as bugle beads and dyed cultured pearls. A brass toggle clasp was the perfect closure to this beadwork.


Beautiful TazWood cabochons and Autumn Splendor are shown together in the current issue of Beadwork magazine. The necklace was a finalist in the Wearable Expressions 2008 international contest and was being exhibited by Wearable Expressions in California. Here is the slide show of creating my necklace, and closeups:

Autumn Splendor