Monika Wiklund

What makes this necklace different from other chain necklaces I have made is the beaded ball pendant that I made from 30 cube beads. I wanted to make a chain necklace from the green silver-foil beads that I had lying around, but I had nothing that I could use as a pendant and since I had some small cube beads in the same color I decided to try out the beaded ball description I had found a bit earlier.

I think that the beaded ball turned out very well, and that it fits in nicely with the rest of the necklace but it was a bit tricky to get the shape as close to round as was possible.

As you can see in the first picture, this is a fairly short chain necklace which is why I also added a small toggle clasp in the shape of a padlock.

Photography by Kristian.

This is a rather nice and simple bracelet I made by sewing bugle beads together using the RAW stitch and then sewing round semi-precious stones across the diagonals. I used three different kinds of stone  for the diagonal beads, snowflake obsidian, mahogany obsidian, and brecciated jasper and when I added them to the diagonals, the squares of the RAW stitch was squeezed together across the diagonals to create a cute zig-zag pattern along the edges of the bracelet. The beads are sewn together with illusion cord since the edges of the bugle beads are a bit sharp and are likely to cut through a thread pretty quickly.

This picture shows the inside of the bracelet where it is easier to see how the bugle bead squares have been pressed together by the adding of the stone beads. I am very happy with the result  of this bracelet, and I have already made another version with three rows of stone beads where the middle beads are larger than the outer beads but I have no picture of it yet.

Photography by Kristian.

This is another one of my experiments with seed beads, using the RAW stitch to make a torque-like necklace.

I started with creating a “ladder” with twisted black bugle beads and metallic pink seed beads, and then I figured it would look pretty nice if the torque was wider in the front so I added a couple of rows of the small black glass cube beads to create the rounded shape of the necklace and widen it and then I added the final row of bugle beads, but I had to add a few extra seed beads between each bugle bead to keep the rounded  torque shape.

Unfortunately it seems that the metallic pink color of the seed beads rubbed off a bit as I worked so many of the seed beads turned out more silver-colored than pink before I was done. I suppose I have to make sure that I use better seed beads the next time I try something like this…

The result did not quite turn out as even as I would have wanted, but I believe that it is a nice concept. Of course, it took a bit of time to stitch the beads together, and it also required a slightly larger amount of beads than is needed for a “normal” necklace but I am fairly certain that I will try something like this again.

Photography by Kristian.

This necklace was inspired by a design contest at Sirlig Pärlor and is made to resemble the colors of autumn with soft reds, orange, and yellows mixed in with a little bit of green and darker red.

The base of the necklace are rectangular nuggets of carnelian and yellow-white alabaster with small round beads of unakite between the nuggets. Each nugget is surrounded by chips of unakite and red agate, and the necklace is made from illusion cord and has a copper toggle clasp.

In the front, the red agate coin bead is framed by a couple of carnelian and alabaster nuggets and some unakite and red agate chips and beads.

Picture by Kristian.