No Pain In The Neck

Well, this is, I warn ya, going to be a picture-heavy post.

Beading is big for me. I've grown to be as addicted to surfing beadshops as cross stitch sites. I know Joyce is going to crack the whip because I was supposed to pick up my needle but I had sooooooooooooo many obligation projects to complete and deliver that I had to get some of it out of the way. I'll stitch on Monday night, J, don't beat meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!



Back to beads... Today's projects are largely about/for my mother. You see, mom's one of those who seldom buy jewellery (a lot of it, I used to give to her... you know, one every birthday, mom's day, etc, since I was a kid) but she tends to hang on to her pieces because they're quite special.

When I was about 7 years old, she took me to Chinatown to look around some of the ethnic stuff. She bought a heavy beaded necklace made out of brass or bronze, encrusted with coloured stones. I dont know what they are but each bead can be pretty heavy ... it's more ethnic than fine jewellery... i've inherited her taste for trinkets, too. From what we gathered, it either came from a Tibetan or Nepalese tribe. Well, mom wore it for years with a white dress, until the thread finally came apart about 4-5 years ago. The long and short of it, she hung on to the beads and today, I sort of gave it a new lease of life.

Here are 3 shots, one with and without a flash each.

I redesigned the 'layout' of the original necklace by quite a bit, but kept to the red colour scheme, and added the large plastic and seed beads, black bicones and Miyukis for extra contrast. Well, she really likes it and is looking forward to wearing this colourful piece again. Since we still can't figure out if it's from Tibet or Nepal,(we have a good eye for spotting cultural styles), it's been given a generalised name -- Himalayan Summer.





Next up, (this is a crappy picture), I also gave mom her version of her floating pearl necklace. We had to visit a gemstone store to find the black and white freshwater pearls (my first original version was done with pink and grey glass read-- fake -- beads), and despite them having striations, I thought that the lustre was really quite good and the rice pearls quite uniform in size.

Ooops. Also made her matching earrings -- now she can take this to her vacation in Hanoi next month. Buy me some Vietnamese beads, mom!!!!

Here's the last piece I made today. Yepper, it's a 100% CraftyPretender original. (the others are more like... face-lifts hahaa). I had bought a strand of glass beads in smoky lavendar a month ago and wondering what the hell I was going to do with them, and of course, if you're a jewellery slut like me, you just need to look at other things and add. And add. And add. And add.

Here's the necklace

And the earrings to go with it (arty shot, hehehe)


I do plan to make more of these and keep a copy for myself :) That being said, the owner of the first set is a friend -- and I thought of what she's like, and her personality really gave me the inspiration to put the design together.

I think of it as more of a "confident woman's" jewellery -- it's not too "in your face" but it is a bit distinctive *cough cough cough*, a little elegant and just a little bit mysterious.

Yeah, Kerry, if you're reading this blog, it's about you! Apropos towards the true owner of this piece, I am christening it Hot Mama!

Here it is against some kind of shiny black fabric...(turns out, I had grabbed my black work trousers that someone accidentally burnt a big hole in the butt in, with the steam iron grrrrrrr)

Sorry, Bandits, it's not the secret stuff you're all waiting for...yet. I'll get to that one this week, I promise.