A little bit of seaside

Dreamy Dagger beads

Bead love alert!
dreamy dagger beads!
When these arrived in the post, I decided that deadlines could
go hang, time to follow my bliss for a few evenings and bead me a necklace!

The hanks of beads were silky and tactile and I soooo wanted to have them with me as fringy pendants to swish my fingers through.

The colours reminded me of a piece of Abalone shell, picked up during a last long walk on a beach at the end of a holiday. I kept it to remind me of the pure luxury of sand between the toes, salt in my hair and the warmth of the sun.

The necklace grew simply, from the colours and with no particular plan in mind. More importantly, no stopping. No stopping to get caught up with re-works, rip outs, or planning, no stopping to think too hard about bead choices... Instead I kind of worked with the same frame of mind as that walk on the beach. Oh, and no stopping to tidy up the bead board, random messy, definitely a new approach and the random juxtaposition of beads gave me ideas and choices I might not usually have made.

Random act of beadiness!

The cord is a length of crochet, worked in fine cotton around a length of narrow jewellery tube, which gave a simple base to add a bail and beaded beads around.

The finished necklace

The pendant is simple bead embroidery, it's been an age since I did any, but it seemed the easiest way to bezel the irregular shell piece, and add the swishy fringing. Accent beads include semi precious stone beads, of South African Jade and pink Phosphosiderite.
I'm really happy with the outcome, it's not ground breaking, all the techniques are old favourites, but it's a fun piece to wear, and while I might not have time to go dig my toes into warm sand just now, instead I can run my fingers through those swishy fringes and take a moment to dream.

Lots of swishy fringes

Random embellishments