Monika Wiklund

This jewelry is also a result of the preparations for going to Medeltidsveckan in Visby this summer. As you might already have guessed, it is inspired by the strings of beads that was commonly worn together with viking style dresses and this jewelry is made of bronze colored metal details, mookaite and jaspis beads, and faceted glass beads.

I never used it myself since the color does not match either of the dresses I made, but I think that it looks pretty nice and I hope that I will manage to find a use for it some time int he future.

Photography by Kristian.

Well, this is an example of what happens when I don’t have anything to do on Christmas eve and I get the idea that I want to make a Christmas themed necklace…

When I started digging through my stores of beads I found this combination of red, green and crystal-colored faceted glass beads, and after a while I also found a pattern in my  bead jewelry book. The name of the book is Beading Beautiful Costume Jewelry – Patterns for Every Festive Occasion, and the name of the pattern is Victorian Choker, but of course I did not follow the pattern exactly but adapted it for my own purposes and the available materials.

The faceted glass beads was combined with red, silver-lined crystal and frosted crystal seed beads, and you can see the result in the pictures above. I think that the necklace turned out fairly well and that it is pretty cool even though I am not sure if I will ever be able to use it myself.

Photography by Kristian.

This necklace is mostly just a color variation of an earlier necklace that I have posted about. It is a tubular net made of black, gray and pink seed beads  combined with a small pink angel charm.

There are a few minor differences in this necklace compared to the previous version, for example the tubular netting part is slightly shorter than the previous version and the ends are made of thin chain rather than fitting the clasp directly to the ends, and the dark gray seed beads in the intersections between the pink and the black parts of the net are bigger than the other beads.

I am not quite satisfied with how the tubular net ended up a bit uneven and slightly irregular, but I suppose that it is mainly me that notices the irregularities and I kind of like the colors so I have used it a few times anyway.

Photography by Kristian.

Here is a very simple but at the same time cute and stylish necklace and bracelet that I made a couple of months ago. When  I made this, I had just made several seed bead necklaces with different types stitches and wanted to make something that was a bit simpler so I went for this single strand glass bead necklace.

I used a combination of black and purple faceted glass beads together with metal spacers and some smaller purple seed beads, and I think that the colors fit very well together with each other.  Perhaps the necklace should have been slightly longer, but I have used it a couple of times anyway and I think that it is a very nice necklace.

Photography by Kristian.

Even though this necklace and bracelet are similar to each other they are not part of a set but I decided to fit both in the same post anyway. Both the necklace and the bracelet are very simple with a mix of hematite beads and faceted glass beads but as you can see, the color of the glass beads are not the same.

For the necklace I used light yellow faceted glass beads, and I also varied the number of hematite beads between each glass bead to make it a bit more interesting. It does not show very well in this picture, but the toggle clasp is also hematite colored and in the shape of a small heart. Perhaps the necklace could have been slightly larger, but I it should fit very well for a smaller person or a child.

I suppose that the bracelet is the beta version of the necklace since I made it first to see what the combination of hematite beads and faceted glass beads would look like. I think that it turned out very well and even though I changed the pattern for the necklace, I think that both the necklace and the bracelet are simple yet elegant.

Photography by Kristian.

This necklace is at the same time a variation of an old idea and an experiment with a for me new stitch. The earlier versions of angel necklaces that I have made have consisted of a single threaded necklace with an angel pendant, but I wanted to create something with a bit more volume to it, so I decided to try making a necklace with the tubular net stitch this time.

I had a bit of a problem picking out the colors of the necklace since I realized a bit too late that the sees beads I had were not always matched in size or even enough to use for this purpose, but finally I decided to go for this combination of white, black and pink. At first I was a bit skeptical about the colors, but they grew on me and I think that the end result is pretty good. Of course, the pink highlights in the tubular netting necklace are not very clearly visible, but I think that they work very well in combination with the mostly black and white net and of course they are matched with the small angel charm as well.

Photography by Kristian.

This necklace was actually my first try for making a necklace to go with the dress I borrowed for my sisters wedding. I wanted something to match the green pattern along the edge of the dress and that would match the medieval fantasy theme of the wedding, and I think that I succeeded fairly well in my intention even though I also made a second try which was the necklace that I ended up wearing for the wedding.

When I tried the necklaces together with the dress I decided that I wanted the longer necklace with dark stone beads instead, even though this one also works very well  and is perhaps more thematically correct.

The necklace is based on a few large dark green glass beads that have been left over from earlier projects together with a glass bead mix of smaller green beads and some gold-colored metal beads and spacers between the larger beads. I tried to compose the necklace with the larger beads slightly spread out over the necklace and with a seemingly random mix of smaller glass beads and the metal beads and spacers in between them, and finally I selected one of the larger beads, a silver-foil heart, to use as a pendant.

Photography by Kristian.

 I made this collar necklace as a variation of this stone necklace that I posted about a little while back. The earlier necklace was made almost entirely of round stone beads, and I figured it would be a good idea to try out the same technique with beads of different shapes as well.

For this necklace, I used hematite cube beads, matte round onyx beads, faceted hematite-colored glass beads, and some round black and silver desert sand beads. I think that the combination of round, faceted and cubic beads works perfectly together, and I especially like the contrast between the matte onyx beads and the shiny hematite. 

As with the previous necklace, I used the RAW stitch for this neckalce and the different sizes of the beads also helped create the rounded shape that fits perfectly around the neck.

Photography by Kristian.

When I bought the metal parts for this necklace, I had not noticed the position of the holes and as a result they have been lying on my desk for quite some time before I finally came to think of this design. I used illusion cord and the RAW stitch to make this bracelet using the metal spacers, small purple faceted glass beads, three large purple faceted glass nuggets, and seven large faceted rock crystal nuggets.

Since I only had six of the metal spacers, I had to use more of the nuggets to make the bracelet fit around my hand without having to add a clasp, and this is why I decided to use the purple glass nuggets to avoid having to put two rock crystals next to each other. I like the way the light reflects and shines in this bracelet and since I am pretty fond of purple, I think that I will be using it fairly often.

Photography by Kristian.

Here is another version of this purple seed bead necklace that I posted about a while ago, but in blue instead of purple. Of course, the pattern is not quite the same in this necklace, I used slightly smaller seed beads in this version and I selected the colors to match the hues of the blue resin pendant. The darkest of the seed beads are selected to match the color of the faceted glass beads and to contrast to the lighter blue shades of the pendant. A cute detail is the small apple blossom clasp that I picked because I think that it matches the flower pendant.

This is a close-up of the very cute blue flower pendant with the apple blossom clasp in the background. It is also possible to see the small faceted glass beads with dark blue filling that I used as spacers between the different sections of the seed bead patterns.

Photography by Kristian.