Just peachy...

A couple weeks ago I went to a local Beadfest to wander around the vendors, and ended up feuling my pearl obsession a little more. I picked up a couple of strings of lovely peach colored freshwater pearls with the idea that I wanted to do a wider cuff bracelet in right angle weave, similar to the amethyst bracelet I made previously.

I wanted to do something monochromatic, so I added size 11 Miyuki seed beads to the mix to keep it simple.

I spent much of Friday watching the royal wedding festivities and playing with beads - not a bad way to spend the day!

Here's the bracelet I came up with:

I used a slide style clasp so the cuff would sit flat when wearing it.

And a close up:

I keep seeing 6 lb Fireline being the recommended thread to use, but I tried 8 lb for this project to see if that would give it a little more body, which it seems to do. The knots when ending threads aren't as tight though since the fiber is a little heavier, so I made sure I went through quite a few beads with it.

Right angle weave seems to be a very popular beadweaving stitch, and I can see why. It's not hard to master and is quite versatile. I'm sure I'll be experimenting with it again with other projects.

Because the pearls are slightly irregular, you can actually see some of the threads here and there in the bracelet, but I'm still very pleased overall with the effect. I have another pearl cuff bracelet that I wear all the time, so I think I'll end up with a lot of use out of this piece.

And of course, I wanted some sort of coordinating necklace. I chose to do a variation of the Gothic Chevron necklace from B&B's Your Seed Bead Style book. The pearls I was using were larger than the recommended size for the pattern, so I also opened up the bottom a little by adding a few seed beads in there as well.

Very grand, eh?

This was quite fun to make and easy once I got the pattern down. I did start it and undo about five times until I had the variation down pat that I was doing. It doesn't sit perfectly flat on my neck which bothers me a bit and I might redo it in the future as I get better with beadweaving skills. Since I did spend a bit of time reinforcing the necklace, it's going to be a project to take it apart though LOL To be fair though - our necks aren't one continuous curve so if you make a collar with an even curve, there ARE going to be areas where it's not perfectly smooth.

I did one repeat of the patter to put together some earrings:

Meh. They're ok. I'm not sure what bothers me about them.

I had about two dozen leftover peach pearls which I suppose I could have just tossed in my stash along with another tube of the seed beads. Although I like the collar, it's not a very "casual throw on" kind of necklace so I started paging through some of the various bead magazines I have, looking for inspiration for something a little lighter. I've really been drawn to St. Petersburg chain because I like the feathery lightness of it, and found a project that I borrowed some elements of.

This is what I came up with:

Since I didn't have many peach pearls left, I dug in and added some small white potato pearls in, and some rocalle (15/0) seed beads with a white pearl finish. I like how delicate the chain came out and it was a lot of fun to stitch.