#bicones

4 inch beaded star inspired by April and Donnie.

I got frustrated trying to find an earring design that would use the last two blue rivolis I had in my stash- that’s the central stones in this design. I wound up looking at some of Isabella Lam’s necklaces instead and doing the first few steps for one of the repeating elements to bezel them, then diverting completely from the necklace elements and adding the briolettes, bicone embellishments, and seed beads at the top for the ear wires. 10mm rivolis, 3mm bicones, size 15, 11, and 8 seed beads; I’m not sure how big the briolettes are.

Swarovski has a lot of different variations on the theme of red. These are, from the top down, Siam (aurora borealis finish), scarlet, crystal red magma, fire opal, and crystal metallic sunshine- that’s the one without any red in it, but it matched pretty well anyway. Seed beads are Toho’s galvanized starlight. The earwires are niobium; it’s an implant-grade elemental metal that’s safe enough that I’ve never found a reference to any human being having a bad skin reaction to it, and since I’ve only just recently gotten my ears pierced again, I need to start somewhere safe.

First stab at twisted wire jewelry. The bicones are 4mm Preciosa and Swarovski, the wire is 28 gauge Artistic Wire in green, the stuff holding it in place is invisible beading cord, and this isn’t a sales photograph so I didn’t bother photoshopping blemishes out.

I wish I could capture the stones’ optical properties properly; those central stones are moonstones. Nothing fancy, but they do have a lovely moving sheen to them that just doesn’t come across as well as I’d like. Perhaps later.

Remember this collar from a few weeks ago? This is the original pattern, done in full instead of skipping straight to the last row the way I did upon realizing just how short I was on the necessary SuperDuos. That being said, I should note that the rice-like beads in this are actually Preciosa Twin Pressed beads rather than SuperDuos, and frankly, they fit together so much better when I was doing this that it wasn’t even funny. The gold-and-green collar would probably lie properly flat if I made enough rows to fan out the way this is arranged, but I really think switching to beads that fit more snugly together the way these do made a lot of difference, too.

This started off as Isabella Lam’s ‘Coveted Collar’ design, but I was severely short on a number of the varieties of bead called for and did not feel like waiting to get to the store for more and/or waiting for a mail delivery, so I started modifying the pattern down to something a lot smaller. Threw in some extra crystal embellishments on the bottom in the meantime. I plan on doing another one like this fairly soon, in blues; I may actually do the full collar pattern instead. We’ll see.

For one of my niblings. The pattern was in the most recent issue of Bead and Button Magazine. Preciosa and Miyuki seed beads, SuperDuos, Preciosa bicones, and a Swarovski crystal in the middle. The chains are some Chinese company’s that I got out of a catalog.