Wednesday 18 January 2012

It worked - by accident more than by (conscious) design!

This bracelet is a fairly early creation that actually worked (by which I mean: it turned out to be something I liked for myself and ended up wearing a lot). The oval beads are Indian, lampworked (handmade) beads, in that lovely deep colour that's not quite purple and not quite blue, alternating with silver spacers and clear crystal bicones. The bracelet was made to go with the necklace I posted a picture of in my first post, so the oval blue beads are the same in both projects. The crystal bicones are an antiques-fair find, which is why the bicones get a bit smaller nearer the clasp - I didn't have enough of the same size, so I thought I'd use graduated sizes instead. The oval and bicone beads contrast in shape and colour but both reflect the light well (as you can see in this picture), so they went well together.

The thing that made the design work so well in practice was pure serendipity - I had a few of these lobster clasps, which are very secure once they're done up but can be a bit of a bother to open and close: I'd previously tried a jump-ring for the other side of the clasp (the part the lobster-claw holds on to), but this method proved a bit fiddly for bracelets, so this time I decided to use an oval-shaped silver link instead. Actually this was mainly because these links were on sale at reduced price in my local bead shop, and I'd bought them for something else entirely which didn't quite work out, but it turned out that the oval shape of the link nicely reflects the oval shape of the blue beads.

Then I attached one more blue bead to the oval link, using a wrapped loop on a silver headpin, and that makes the clasp-side just heavy enough that the biggest bicone always ends up sitting at the top! Also, the bead on the wrapped loop swings nicely around on its oval link, and clicks onto the adjacent blue beads in a very pleasing way, and the movement makes the beads sparkle and shine even more.


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