Green bead embroidered pendant was one of the first bead embroidery designs I experimented with.
Components
This project had several components ready before it appeared in my imagination.
- Viking knit necklace
- A green stone I purchased years ago from a lapidary company
- Rula beads I wanted to incorporate into bead embroidery
- Olive green freshwater pearls on my table (don’t ask, I just couldn’t put them away)
The Creative Process
The pendant had to compliment the copper Viking knit necklace, therefore I felt that it had to have copper tones in it. This is why I basically designed the pendant around the copper theme even though the stone doesn’t really have any copper tones in it.
For bezeling I chose #8 green seed beads with a warm tone lining to make that color transfer between the rather cool green of the stone to the warm copper of the pattern around it. To emphasize the copper tones I chose copper color Delica for the last couple of rounds of beads towards the center of the stone.
Rulla Beads in Bead Embroidery
The pattern around the bezeled part was much harder to implement. Laying Rulla beads and keeping them in the same spot when sewn was a little difficult. Several times I had to redo inches of finished parts of the pattern. Rulla beads are slightly round on all the edges which makes the mission to fixate them in a particular place almost impossible. Hex cut beads were not very cooperative either.
However, Rulla and hex cut beads were originally in the scheme of the pattern I had imagined. I couldn’t replace them with anything else so I had to find a solution to secure them.
The olive green freshwater pearl was not part of the plan initially, but its warm color of it just asked to be included in the design. Because the pearl was round, I had to build a base for it using #11 seed beads. After the base looked steady I added a netted top to hold the pearl in place.
After struggling to find a solution to my troubles in fixating the Rulla beads I decided to use two outer rounds of matte copper beads #8 and green #15 beads which helped me keep the hex cut beads in place and complete the pattern.
This pendant creation reminded me for the second time that the design process can sometimes drive the creator instead of letting the creator rule. The pendant “grew” rather big around the stone, but I could not exclude a single bead from this pattern. After all the Viking knit rope is strong enough to support it.
