Frozen Necklace & Earrings

Hello, long time no see! *waves*

I've decided I'm going back to what I originally intended my jewellery making to be all about - a distraction from my depression and to increase my self-confidence.  For the past couple of years I've been too focused on sales and it just made me miserable.  Although I like interacting with people to talk about my creations (everyone likes to have their ego stroked!) I'm not a sales person and pretending to be one lowered my self confidence even more and I lost all inspiration/passion to create anything new, as all my focus became fixed on thinking about how I was going to sell it.  Eventually I'll be looking into getting someone else to do the selling for me - because honestly all this business crap is sucking the life out of my creativity.
So I'm just going back to creating jewellery for the heck of it and for my love of being creative.  My Etsy shop will remain open, so if there is anything you want to buy feel free!  I've extended the Sweet September Sale - so you can pick up a bargain gift for Christmas!


So what have I been up to?

On Monday my Mom took me to London to see Frozen (the sing-along version) at the Royal Albert Hall - she won the tickets, so it was a nice surprise.  I hadn't seen it before, so it was an interesting atmosphere to be a part of.  The movie inspired me to create this set.

The necklace was the start of it. I've got into beadwork lately and was inspired by this Spiral Bracelet on Ruby's Beadwork - which is where I've learned many new stitches, thanks to her really easy to follow tutorials.

So using silver-lined turquoise seeds (approx: Size 8) as my core and some transparent frosted white seeds (also approx Size 8) as my outer - I followed the tutorial and watched the necklace begin to take form.

While browsing Ruby's other tutorials, I came across a variation in the stitch to enable you to hang pendants from.  Well, as I wanted to create a snowflake, I thought I would try it.  As the frame for the pendant was quite large, I didn't want it too close to the "chain," so I extended downwards with a clear and rather odd-shaped Swarovski crystal and made a loop with the turquoise seeds from which to hang the pendant.

 The snowflake pendant was harder to make.  I did look at various tutorials for beaded snowflakes, but I didn't really like any of them, so I decided to design my own.  First I sketched out the design of the snowflake that I had in mind (which I forgot to take a photo of!) and worked out how I would translate that into beadwork.  I started out beading the whole thing with Nymo thread, but it wouldn't stand up properly so I moved onto to wire, however it still didn't look sturdy enough.  While I was perusing Beads Direct for some inspiration for the earrings, I found these snowflake wire forms from The Beadsmith for making ornaments with.

The problem was how I was going to add the bits in between the spokes that I had designed.  I managed to overcome this by using some wire wrapping techniques. :)

The finished pendant is a combination of 3mm and 4mm Swarovski xilion bicones, ceylon snowflake bugles (Size 1), Toho silver-lined bugles (Size 3), Miyuki twisted pearl bugles (11mm), Miyuki Delicas in "Off White AB" (Size 11) and silver seeds (Size 11).


And this is how the finished necklace looks...

I'm not usually one of those people who drool over Swarovski or who use them because they're Swarovski (I prefer Preciosa), but I saw these star shaped crystals on Beads Direct and I fell in love with them instantly and thought how pretty they'd look next with the snowflake necklace I'd made.  Also they were having a sale on Swarovski and I know there are many Swarovski-ites out there.

I created a snowflake spoke effect above it, in the same fashion as the pendant...

 ...and voila!  Snowflake effect earrings to go with my Frozen Inspired Necklace.

 

So I'm hoping this is the way the blog will continue as it's a lot easier to talk about individual projects than an entire collection.  I've started making my own Christmas decorations for our tree, so I'll share those with you next time.  I've also been going through my bead collection and remembering why I fell in love with each of them enough to buy them, which has in turn sparked some creativity.  Just hope I can keep it going. :)

As always, please feel free to email me at: kymberligee@gmail.com with any questions or comments you may have regarding my work, or leave a comment below.

=:x