A Whole New World

Welcome to the world of seed bead jewelry!  A place I never thought I would visit but my inspiration came when my sister and I were at the Bead Show in Fishkill, NY a few weeks ago.  My sister has been making seed bead jewelry for a long time and she is really good at it and very creative.  She has pictures of her work on her own blog sunnrraysfancycrafts, you should check it out.  I have to be honest that while I have always appreciated the artistry and craft of seed bead jewelry, I never felt that it was completely my style. But at the Bead Show, I was looking with my sis at the seed bead booths while she was shopping and I saw these two rings made with seed beads at the beadmylove booth and thought they were so cool.  They were very colorful and big!  At first I was thinking perhaps my sister could make a ring for me and that I would pick out the beads.  As the design in my head progressed, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at seed bead jewelry making and learn how its done.  Always good to learn a new craft or skill.

I saw these foil backed rhinestones and decided upon a large oval. Truth be told, I saw an even bigger one at another table but decided it was too big - me, choosing the smaller one!  That's like someone putting two diamonds in front of me and me choosing the smaller one (that would never happen).  But for the ring I had in mind, it was going to be large enough with the smaller rhinestone.  For the color of the seed bead around the rhinestone, I chose an "ice" theme.  I wanted sparkly and frosted.  Not understanding the construction process yet, I needed to sketch out what I had in my mind in order to better communicate about what I was envisioning. Then we went from there to pick out all the supplies. I got an adjustable ring with a flat saucer on top to use as the platform.  I also purchased some bicone clear crystals to use as accents along with the very tiny clear sparkly seed beads I got.  My sister had stabilizer which is the perfect surface for sewing the beads on.  She glued the ring to one side of the stabilizer and then the rhinestone to the other side of the stabilizer.  And then it was sew, sew, sew.  My sister started me off and guided me on what to do and where to put the needle and more.  I did most of the sewing and had a clear idea of what I wanted to happen with the ring.  My sister is a great teacher!  I finished the ring last night - here is the fruit of our labor!

The sketch and the ring mostly done.

 

Tadah!

 

We did a bunch of secret things to make this ring work.  My sister came up with a fantastic idea when we were almost stunted by the space around the rhinestone and the stabilizer - the rhinestone not being flat backed but having a pointed back, stood up in the middle of the ring with no surface to sew the seed beads to. I can't tell you what her brilliant idea was- though I would like to, sorry.

The underside.

Profile and closeup.

With Flash

Without

Not sure I'll be doing seed bead jewelry too much.  It takes a lot of patience and time to sew the tiny beads.  We'll see!

Thanks for stopping by and Stay tuned for more creativity!