Monika Wiklund

Some time ago, I bought a string of bian spike beads and made a necklace with bian and lave stone beads, but I only used about half of the bian spikes for that necklace. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make another version of the necklace with the remaining bian stone beads, and this is how it turned out. It is pretty similar to the first necklace, but it gives a slightly different impression with the round sodalite beads instead of the lava stone cubes, and they also adds a bit of color to the necklace.

When I had  it on one day, I discovered that it was slightly longer than I wanted it to be, so one of these days I will remove a few beads from each end to make it  fit better. I guess that is one of those things you only notice when you wear the necklace with the right clothes…

Photography by Kristian.

This bracelet represents one of my first tries at sewing with beads, using the RAW (right angle weave) stitch for the bracelet and the mandala stitch for the flower.  I am not entirely happy with how it turned out, but I think I learned a few thing by making it, among other things I realised that it is easier to make the parts separately and sew them together when all parts are done rather than try to sew everything together at once.

Overall, I think that the flower turned out ok, but the bracelet could have been better and more even around the flower. The clasp side of the bracelet is not visible in the picture, but I used a cylinder shaped magnetic clasp that was intended for a three-stringed necklace or bracelet, that I sewed into the bracelet after completing the pattern.

Photography by Kristian.

This is a rather delicate chain necklace made from a thin metal chain with small flower links and some pale blue silver-foil beads. It is not very long, and because of this and the lightness of the chain, I believe that it might be suited for a young girl.

I buy most of my materials online, even though I love being able to touch and feel and look at the beads I buy if I get a chance, and so also with this chain. Sometimes what you get when you buy materials online is not quite what you expected, and if I recall correctly I thought this chain would be slightly larger, but I think this necklace turned out fairly well anyway. It is  challenging and exiting when you get some materials that are not quite what you expected, and I love to expand my horizons and try new things with them.

Of course, most of the time I don’t really have a plan when I buy different materials anyway, or only a very vague idea of what I would like to do with them. It is when you have everything in front of you and you start combining things and look at what you already have that the ideas come.

Photography by Kristian.

Lately, I have been trying some new things and this is one of the results of my experiments. I found a web page (in swedish) describing how to sew beads together in different ways, and this necklace is the result of my first tries at the Nepal chain stitch and Mandala stitch.

The nepal chain is made from silver-lined darker and lighter purple seed beads, with the lighter purple seed beads as the stems and the darker purple seed beads as the flowers or leafs of the chain. I think that it turned out fairly well, and the color combination makes me think about heather in bloom.

For the Mandala flower, I used the same light and dark purple seed beads for the base, and then I added some garnet and amethyst beads to fill it out and make the flower more three-dimensional. The garnet and amethyst beads are not exactly the same colors as the seed beads, but I think this is adding to the three-dimensional effect.

Photography by Kristian.