I’m so excited to have been chosen by Beadwork Magazine to be one of three Designers of the Year for 2019! It is a great honor, and one that I did not expect to achieve. I share this with fellow honorees Wendy Ellsworth and Vezsuzsi. I hope you’ll enjoy what we create this year along with Beadwork’s many other talented contributors.
As a Designer of the Year, I will be sharing the instructions to make one of my designs in each of this year’s six issues. The first (Feb/Mar) has already hit the press, and is available for purchase in print form or digital form at publisher Interweave’s website. In it, I present my Thistle Necklace. The design was inspired by the beautiful two-holed Kite beads and three-holed Cali beads that were sent to me by Beadsmith last year. As I played around with the beads, I found that they form very easy to make bezels that can be used to encase Swarovski rivoli crystals of all sizes.
Here’s what the components looked like on my bead mat as I worked on the design. Notice that some of them are open – without a rivoli inside them. Those were the first ones I made. Once I saw how pretty they looked open, I knew they would only be improved by adding some bling. Luckily, I had just the right color rivolis to add!
After making these components, I saw that Beadsmith came out with some new kite beads that had a laser-etched design on them. I fell in love with them and had to design something special with these. I used the same basic bezeled rivoli idea and made this necklace, bracelet and pendant.
The tutorials for the necklace and bracelet are available here: Kite and Cali Necklace Kite and Cali Bracelet
The design also works well for Christmas as the design looks a lot like a Poinsettia when beaded with red kite beads. The tutorial for the bracelet includes the supplies needed to make it in either the laser-etched beads or the poinsettia beads.
As I just couldn’t get enough of these fun components, I played around with some variations of the open-holed components that I had originally created (I hate letting good beadwork go to waste). Here’s what I created with the open components.
I hope you enjoyed this bit of insight into my design process and I hope I’ve inspired you to create some lovely beadwork! Please share your thoughts and your beadwork in the comments.
