Beads and Wires

Sleepy… even if I’ve just finished a mug of coffee. Perhaps I have to wait a while before the caffeine starts to kick in.

I have to stay awake for the rest of the day, not because I want to spend time on my beading projects, but because I have writing assignments to work on! Yeah, busy weeks for me again.

I have recevied my order for a new batch of colorful Swarovski 4 mm bicone crystals and pearls. I purposely ordered some colors in larger quantities because I have a couple of bracelet projects in mind. One of them is actually a necklace project showcased in a beading magazine, but I decide to use its design to make a bracelet instead - save on materials, haha! The bracelet will be made of round and bicone crystals plus seed beads.

The bracelet project requires 2 or 3 8 mm round crsytals (depending on my mood, haha!) and more than  10 6 mm round crystals. I found that round crystals are expensive compared to 4 mm bicone crystals. So again, I decide to do things my way - instead of using 6 mm Swarovski round crystals, I will be using 6 mm round glass beads.

Well, if the bracelet turns out to be nice, then I will consider making one using all Swarovski round crsytals.

For the time being, I have to get back to my writing assignments. Bracelet project has to wait. Hmmmm….

I’m not bogged down with ‘real’ work this week, so I am able to spend more time on beading projects. Made two pendants yesterday using Swarovski crystal and seed beads.

The one on the left is made with 4 mm Swarovski bicone crystal in smoked topaz and light smoked topaz, the right one with 5 mm Swarovski bicone crystal in pink (I think the color is called Rose or something like that….). The pendants are not only different in size, I used different stringing materials as well.

Pink Swarovski crystal pendant, 5 mm bicone crystal

I used Nymo D thread as the beading thread. This resulted in a soft, flimsy pendant, haha! It does not appear as a perfect round shape, mainly due to the soft thread being used. Thanks to the earth’s gravity, the pendant is not longer a round pendant but an oval-shaped one, haha!

Smoked topaz Swarovski crystal pendant, 4 mm bicone crystal

For this, I used fishing nylon line 0.25 mm, giving a stiff, but more rounded pendant. Somehow I think the pink crystal pendant looks better when wore on the neck, may be because it’s larger.

This pendant design is actually a design for a pair of crystal corona earrings, a free tutorial I downloaded from Beadwork website. But I figured to make only one side of the earrings and use it as a pendant.

Actually I would also like to experiment this bracelet project with round beads or pearls, so that I can have a collection of pendants to choose from when I need one, hehe. Again, I can’t do it at the moment as I’m short of those materials.