Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Beaded Bracelet - Begun

It's been a while since I've done any beading, so thought I'd do a little of that today. This will be a bracelet for my daughter (if it turns out okay).
 I'm stitching on leather. Not thick, hard leather...but very soft, thin, and suble leather. It came from an old leather skirt I got at the Thrift Store.
As you can see, I've used this skirt before for other projects.
 Beginning requires a pattern. So, I'll start with a bracelet metal frame. That shape was rotated on paper and traced to get a pattern for cutting the leather.
Three cabochons are glued down with E-6000 and ready to start my surface beading.
 The first part of the beading is to enclose all three of the cabochones with beads. You can see that here on the right side of the stone (click on the photo to enlarge). Sorry it's so hard to see, but using dark beads on black leather is just that way.
 The first ring of beads is sewn to the leather. (This is the second row of my first idea...which was use double beads. However, they were too "full" so later I removed that row, and just added one bead at a time...which is "standard peyote".)
The remaining rings are sewn into the previous rows, using a circular peyote stitch....common in beading. For the last two rows, I changed from seed beads (sz 11) to Rocailles beads (sz 15). This decreases the wall of beads and curves them on top of the cabochon to hold it is place.
What to do next? How to cover the remaining leather? 
Good question...and my muse is thinking that over.
So, just stay tuned...got to back to the TO-DO List before this project can be finished.
Hugs!
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