Getting back into beading

I’ve been working on a beading project this weekend, among other things. I haven’t done any in quite a while but I have my craft space well on the way to being sorted, so I can actually find things like tools and beads and have a gorgeous new beading tray made for me by Zoe, my son’s girlfriend. I put it to good use yesterday evening to make a necklace with some lovely blue lace agate beads that I must have bought two years ago now.

I got them from a local bead fair at Harrogate and I loved the size, their beautiful blue and grey tones and the translucent qualities. They are also faceted so they bounce the light around and are so tactile.

Being agate, they are quite heavy though so I needed to balance the necklace with some other beads and to make it quite sort. Not quite a choker, but not much longer.

I set the bead colours out on my bead board and chose dark blue and gold freshwater pearls, and some 6mm faceted round blue lace agate beads to compliment the larger stones perfectly. Although I had gold pearls in there a silver clasp, crimp covers and wire guardian wires seemed to work best with the icy blue tones and I chose a textured silver clasp. I like the toggle clasps I bought from ebay a while ago as they are much easier to do than lobster claw clasps. These are silver tone and were very cheap but look great.

The necklace was made using three strands of 49-strand Beadalon beading wire, which is strong but still nice and flexible. This fitted OK through all the stones (I’ve learned to check before starting projects – the hard way!). I started by putting one of the large blue lace agate beads and made that the centre of the necklace then added a random mixture of pearls and smaller agate beads to separate strands, which gives a lovely fluid effect and balances out the size of the larger stones while keeping the weight down. The ends were finished by putting the three strands through single beads and then the crimps, crimp covers, wire guardians and clasp were added.