Art Beads Modular Swarovski Design by Genea Beads

Hello friends!

I am very excited to announce that I will be working in part with www.artbeads.com as one of their designer/bloggers!

September was Art Beads Swarovski crystal design month so this design was made with their Swarovski crystal modular crystals 5150 11x6mm in: golden shadow, light topaz, and crystal copper.

I was SOOOO excited to design this piece because the original design was going to be 2 Swarovski modular crystals with knotted crystals on them. While I was making the bead I had this fabulous idea for a whole necklace design! This pretty much NEVER happens to me so I was SOOOO excited to have the finished project already in my head while working. If you do the design this way you can be sure to make all of the necessary components for your piece during your first lampworking session!Yes, sadly that IS my actual handwriting. You would think for such an artistic person I would have really pretty handwriting, but NOPE, sure don't! I guess my creative energy took all of the juice instead of my actual handwriting. I guess you can't have it all right?! lol Pretty amazing that that sad excuse for scrawling turned in to this fabulous piece! >:D

**All pictures can be enlarged to their full size of 800x800 by clicking on the picture.**

Here is a picture of some of the supplies I used to make my necklace and earrings. Unfortunately I didn't get to shoot a picture of all of the components because I was took excited about making the piece. My mind was so wild with ideas I had to sit down and start working!
Here you can see some of the design in progress. To my surprise the modular crystal holes are actually large enough to fit 1mm leather! Holy Crap! So to my excitement I worked them into the design by sliding them onto the leather and knotting after each pair. To the trained eye you might have noticed the leather in the picture was too short for the finished design.

Here is a close-up of the knotted leather. I usually prefer to make my spacer beads on a 1/16 mandrel because they are smaller and more round, but in this case I had to use a bead hole that would fit 1mm leather doubled. I used a 3/32 mandrel to make the spacers pictured above. They fit the doubled leather perfectly!

I loved the modular shape of the crystals and wanted to mimic that shape for my focal bead. Here you can see a close up of the bead before the embellishments were made.I used all three crystal colors in glass to produce this modular shaped bead along with silvered ivory.
So my original design was to have macramed knotty bails on either side of the focal bead, but how unexpected to macrame around the focal instead! WOW!


I decided to do an asymmetrical design for interest. You can see all of the components that were used for this exciting design! Copper was a perfect metal to use with the earthy brown color palette for fall.
Here is a shot from the left side of the necklace. I LOVE the colored reflection of the crystal on the white shiny surface.


Here is a shot of the right side of the necklace.

As you may know every beautiful necklace is NOT complete without an incredible pair of matching earrings!If you don't know me will I will let you know that I LOVE long earrings! This pair was definitely a "shoulder duster"!
Here is a shot of the necklace and earrings together! I hope you enjoyed reading about the design process as much as I enjoyed making the piece. So if this design doesn't inspire you to run over to Art Beads and nab up some of those modular crystals I don't know what will! ;)

Much love,

Genea