Monika Wiklund

Pink and purple usually go well together, and this necklace is made of rose quartz, amethyst, and garnet beads combined with a mix of other pink and purple beads that have been left over from earlier projects. The necklace is based on the RAW stitch, but in the final row I added one extra bead to each group of four to create the flower patten that you can see in this picture.

I like the flower pattern effect, but there are a bit to many extra beads in the final row, which causes the necklace to curl up a bit instead of lying flat around the neck. As usual when I use the RAW stitch with semi-precious stone beads, I choose to use illusion cord rather than thread since the thread tends to break more easily if the edges of the holes in the beads are a bit sharp.

Photography by Kristian.

This is yet another variation of a chain necklace using a rough silver-colored chain, purple silver-foil beads, and faceted amethyst beads. The colors are very similar to this earlier necklace, but the composition and materials is more similar to another pair of earlier necklaces.

Photography by Kristian.

These blue and gold dice beads have been lying around waiting to be used for some time now. I bought them because I thought they were kind of cute, but then I didn’t get around to actually using them until recently when I was trying to figure out what to do with some other left-over beads.

This is the result, a combination of round and dice-shaped blue and gold glass beads, small tube-shaped gold colored spacer beads, round dark blue glass beads and gold-sand beads, round blue cloisonne beads, and some rectangular lapiz lazuli beads. The beads I had were just enough to make this necklace and a matching bracelet, but I only have pictures of the necklace.

The round and dice-shaped beads are not quite as transparent when you look at them in normal light, but I like the way the flash lights them up in these pictures.

Photography by Kristian.

This necklace represents my first try at using the african helix stitch, but I do not think that it turned out very well. It is possible to get an idea of what it is supposed to look like, but the seed beads I used were too uneven to make a very good result with this technique. I think that it would look really cool if I used a better quality of seed beads, so I am pretty sure I will try it again but it takes a while to make a necklace like this, so I am not sure when I will get around to it.

Photography by Kristian.

As I have mentioned earlier, chain necklaces are ever popular and I have made several variations of these kind of necklaces. This is my latest version, for which I have created the chain by using links from three different chains, one with large round links, one with large oval links, and one with smaller slightly twisted links.

For this necklace I used champagne-colored round silver-foil beads, faceted rock crystal nuggets, and a champagne-colored silver-foil heart pendant. It is a bit different from other chain necklaces that I have made because of the lighter color scheme, but I think that it should look pretty good together with dark clothes. I haven’t tried it yet, but I hope that I will get the chance soon.

Photography by Kristian.

I think that lava stone beads work very well in combination with different semi-precious stones and I have made several necklaces using this theme. The earlier necklaces have been in more discrete colors, but I really like this combination of bright red coral and matte black  lava stone together with the heart shaped cinnabar pendant.

For this necklace, I used three different sizes of coral beads and two sizes of lava stone beads together with some cute metal spacers and a simple round toggle clasp. I really like the colors and the beautiful flower pattern of the pendant, but for some reason I haven’t used this necklace very much so far.

Photography by Kristian.

A very nice and slightly different stone necklace made from three different kinds of stone using the RAW technique. I started working on this necklace after I made a bracelet using similar beads, and I thought that it might make a cool pattern with the black/gray snowflake obsidian and brown/black mahogany obsidian beads in lines radiating out from the middle while the shiny hematite beads are mostly used as spacers between the rows.

What creates the rounded shape of the necklace is the increasingly larger beads. The inner rows have 4 mm beads, the middle rows are made from 6 mm beads, and the outer rows are made from 8 mm beads and large snowflake obsidian chips.

Unfortunately, I made the necklace a bit too large to fit around my neck without tying a knot before locking the ends with the toggle clasp, but since my hair is long enough to cover the clasp I guess it doesn’t really matter. It took quite some time to make the necklace so I do not wish to rebuild it unless I have to. I also made a simple RAW bracelet from the leftover 4 and 6 mm beads, but I do not have any picture of it.

Here is also a picture of me when I am wearing the necklace with a brown and gray summer dress, which I think makes a pretty nice combination.

Photography by Kristian.

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 very simple variation of a peyote stitch necklace using beads of different sizes to create the spiral pattern along the necklace. Earlier, I have made a peyote stitch bracelet with equal sized beads, but the spiral pattern is more striking when using larger beads to edge the spiral like in this necklace.

I used small light purple seed beads for the parts between the spiral, slightly larger white seed beads on either side of the spiral, and for the spiral itself I used dark seed beads with a rainbow shine close to the clasp, then a small section of 3 mm magnetite beads, and in the center I used flat circular magnetite beads with rainbow finish to make the spiral pattern stand out even more.

This necklace is definitely my favorite among the seed bead torc necklaces that I have made so far, and I think that it it very cool in its simplicity.

I found this picture of me wearing the spiral torc necklace and thought it might give a better illustration of what it looks like. It fits very well  together with this black dress with a pattern of pink and purple flowers.

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.