Soft Flex Tranquility Necklace

I finally got around to photographing a necklace I made about a week and a half ago:

This is the necklace I had made when I posted about the various numbers of strands of Soft Flex that could be strung through seed beads. I used the Tranquility trio pack (shades of blue) for this design along with various blues and purples of seed beads.


The design started with the pendant, which was a gift from my mom awhile back. I'd first wire wrapped it with coiled wire which I wasn't to happy with. Then after I had picked out the Soft Flex blue beading wire I figured that would work well with this pendant.


Here is a closeup of the strands of beading wire with the beads. The little blue beads are size 11 and fit over one strand. The purple lined blue beads are size 8 which fit over two strands. And finally, those large dark purple/blue beads are size 6 aka "E beads" and fit over all three strands.

Note on the images: I used my Flickr account for these, clicking the images will take you to the picture's own Flickr image page. If you want to see the image full size, click the "all sizes" icon above the picture. It should default to full size, but if not click on "large".

Materials:
Stringing wire - Soft Flex Tranquility .019 inches in diameter
Crimp tubes - Size 2 base metal variety pack
Size 11 beads - ToHo Silver lined dark aqua
Size 8 and 6 beads - Most likely ToHo's as well, I've had these in my supplies awhile.
Pendant - Glass doughnut, was a gift.

Bead strining wire and seed beads

Yes, no pretty picture for this post, and it's a short one to boot. Sorry about that.

Anyways, I recently was stringing three stranded necklace with a pendant and seed beads. I used different sizes of beads which gave the necklace a fun look. I figured it would be good to share how many strands could fit through the various bead sizes, which is handy to keep in mind while planning a design. Especially if you would need to buy supplies. (Having stuff on hand it is easy enough to quickly check what fits).

For the stringing material I was using Soft Flex, their Tranquility trio. The wire has 49 individual strands and is 0.019"(0.49mm) diameters thick.

For the seed beads I was using my current supplies, and I'm pretty sure all of them are Toho brand (the 8 might not have been).
Size 11 bead - fits 1 strand of stringing wire
Size 8 bead - fits 2 strands of stringing wire
Size 6 (aka "E") bead - fits 3 strands, with a bit of wiggle room.
(For seed beads the larger the number, the smaller the bead)

With the design I have all three strands holding the pendant, and aside from by the pendant and to finish the ends, I didn't use any crimps. The strands themselves I strung through various numbers of beads *points up*.

New look soon

Quick post of posting. Pretty much I've been thinking about giving this blog a makeover to move away from the Blogger template (the dots do make me think of beads though) and have something that fits me and this blog. Maybe next week I'll start working on something, which might make for some interesting colors/fonts while I'm in the process of updating. At least I have an old private blog I can test stuff on.

I started with my writing blog, seeing as how I already had some graphics to work with from my writing web site. Not that I'm going to go to graphic heavy, but I do want to have something fun.

Goodies!

Well, the order I placed Wednesday afternoon over at Rings and Things arrived in the mail today and I'm all excited. There's nothing quite like the rush of playing around with various bead and findings letting design ideas run through my head. I figured I'd post about some of the fun stuff I picked out, rather than tweeting about every last thing in my excitement. ("Cabs" and "Bezel" and such are probably unknown words to my non-bead followers on Twitter).

Of course I had to try out the Bezel Lace first. I bought the half circle one as it was a good fit for the size of the cabochons (cabs) I bought awhile ago. I cut a piece with my wire cutters, and pushed it around a cab to shape. Then I used my chain nose pliers to bend the lager circles for the back of the cab, and slightly bent the smaller ones to fit the front. I still have to wire wrap the top loops to close it, but it looks like it will be a perfect fit. It was fun to work with, and it looks really great with the cab.

I also bought some Soft Flex Trios bead stringing wire the Tranquility pack. Trios are packs of three different colors, which is nice to expand the colors I have on hand. Tranquility is various blues; tanzanite, lapis, and blue topaz. So far I've only opened the packaging on these, but it's enough to see how nice the colors are.

I also bought various beads, which I'm starting to get some design ideas. Part of me thinks it would be fun to blog about the design process as I'm working on it, then post some in progress pictures as I get to the assembly stage. But some of the beads I bought are for gifts, and contests, so I wouldn't want to ruin any surprises. Though maybe I could do something with the cab, or the glass memory-box style pendant would be cool to. I have a few ideas what to put inside it.