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.

Here is another one of my recent favorites, a red coral necklace that I made this summer.

As you might notice, the pattern is a variation of the RAW stitch, but I added some metal spacers between the red coral beads to increase the contrast. I think that the small coral heart pendant makes a very nice addition to the entire necklace, and I am also very happy with how the combination of the larger and smaller coral beads creates a pattern within the regular pattern.

Photography by Kristian.

This necklace was made as a part of the clothing that we prepared for going to “Medeltidsveckan” in Visby this summer. I already had these large red agate beads, and I thought that they would match my red over-dress if I could come up with a nice combination. Since black and red always go well together I dug through my stores and managed to come up with this combination of red and black agate beads together with some black pony beads, black clay beads, and black glass beads that I used to fill out the necklace to a suitable length.

The picture below is not very good since it is taken with a mobile phone, but it shows me in Visby wearing the necklace together with the clothing that I made for “Medeltidsveckan”.

Photography by Kristian.

The moment I saw these twisted metal links and the spiral pendant I was in love. I found them this spring when I went to “Syfestivalen” with my sister and of course I had to buy some links and a pendant to try and make something of. Of course, I also found the rectangular stone beads at “Syfestivalen” but from another company. If I remember correctly, the stone beads are charoite and I love the structure and shifting purple and white color.

As usual, I had no real plans for which beads to use together when I bought them, but once I got home and started to plan out a necklace with the metal links and pendant I realized that the charoite stone beads fit perfectly with the links and with this thick metal chain that I already had in my stores. I am very happy with the resulting necklace, and I have even thought about buying more of the metal links and pendants to make copies or variations of the theme.

Photography by Kristian.

I found these hexagonal jaspis and hematite beads once when I went to “Symässan” in Stockholm, and I think that they fit very well together in this combination with small round beads. I particularly like the structure of the net-like pattern of the jaspis and how it contrasts with the shiny gray hematite beads and clasp (the clasp is not visible in this picture but it is also made of hematite).

Photography by Kristian.

When I made this necklace, I was trying to make something to go with some medieval/viking style clothing that I am working on, and I selected these large glass beads and metal beads together with my sister who knows more about the style than I do. I know that these beads are probably not historically correct, but that is not very important to me since I only wanted to create something that emulates the medieval style rather than something that is completely correct.

The large metal rose pendant is very cute and I think that it is great in combination with the other beads in the necklace and even though I made this necklace with medieval style clothing in mind, I think that it also very easy to match with modern clothing and it has become one of my favorite necklaces.

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.

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.

I think that this double heart pendant of rose quartz is very cute, but I had to think for a bit before I came up with the idea for the necklace. The hole through the pendant was fairy large, which made it suitable for a suede string necklace but since I did not have that many beads with large holes it was a bit difficult to find a combination that worked. After going through my collection of beads a few times, I came up with this solution using some small donut-shaped sodalite beads that I threaded through the large center hole rather than through the much smaller holes across the diagonal of the donuts.

As you can see, I also had some metal spacer beads that I put in between some of the sodalite beads. The blue of the sodalite creates a nice contrast to the light pink of the rose quart and I think that the double heart makes a very nice focus for the necklace.

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.