Spider In My Stash

[omorka]

I have no idea whether I need to bring my crimping pliers to RoL tomorrow. I hope they e-mail tomorrow morning to let me know. It won't do any harm to bring them along even if we don't use them, I suppose.

Speaking of which, when I was out bead-shopping with starcat_jewel, one of the pieces I picked up was a silver pendant in the shape of a spider, a little more than an inch long from front legs to back legs and a little more than half an inch wide across the legspan, with black enamel on its abdomen. Now, such a large pendant requires a proper setting. So here's what I've been thinking:

A collar of black seed beads with an iridescent finish done in diamond netting, with a triangular base and about three rows deep, with the rows fairly large (maybe ten beads on each side of each rhombus), with some sort of gemstone focal beads at the vertices, and a different set of gemstone focal beads in a contrasting shape and color (maybe chips instead of round beads?) at the points at the edge of the collar. The pendant is set, not at the front focal point, but slightly off-center so that its front limbs are actually on the netting.

For those of you who are more experienced at sewn beadwork (rather than strung), does that sound like it will work? How strong a thread am I going to need for that? Will the gemstone beads make it too heavy, and what types of stones would you recommend? (I'm sort of thinking of 4mm garnet rounds, but those might be too big, and the contrast with the black seed beads might not be strong enough.)

Comments

[greeneyedpagan.livejournal.com]

It sounds like it would work. You might think about 2mm garnets, instead of 4 - or some of both. Black beads are hard to find, if not impossible to find, with an iridescent finish. Well, not really true - you can find matte black seed beads with that finish, but then the beads don't look black at all, but are multi-colored. Nice, but probably not what you are going for. Gunmetal, shiny finished, might look very nice.

As for thread - I'd go with Nymo D, and plenty of Thread Heaven, or wax. You can get an amazing amount through Japanese beads, and it is very strong, but do be careful with the gemstones - ream them using a diamond awl to smooth out any rough bits, or it will slice your thread right in half.

It does sound lovely. Good luck finding what you need. (Oh, if you want some garnets, I've got some...hematite too, I think.)