Art Beads Beautiful Spring

Oh, my goodness. Where have the last three weeks gone? I didn't realize it had been so long since I sat down to blog.

Well, I finally got some decent pictures of the items I made from the beads I got from Artbeads.com for the Beautiful Spring theme. We were allowed to choose from any and all categories to make something that depicted Spring to us.

I chose keishi pearls, top drilled potato pearls, 4mm pink ab bicones, 4mm crystal ab rounds and green 1.8mm delica squares.

I have a weakness for pearls, but I have a hard time coming up with designs for them, but these were different. The designs practically made themselves.

I wanted the keishi pearls to make flowers. I made this bracelet in waffle weave with some pink size 8's that I had on hand and some of the delica squares. Then I made the flower using keishi pearls, a round pearl that I had on hand, and pink ab bicones. Then I sewed the flower onto the bracelet. I added a top drilled potato pearl to each side of the flower for accent.

I love these keish pearls. Their nacre looks like it is peeling in some places, but when I looked closer it's just a beautifully mottled finished of white, off white, a hint of pink and a hint of gray. They pick up the light beautifully and their unique shape offers many design possibilities.

With the Swarovski pink ab bicones I again used some of the pink size 8's and made this focal point for a necklace and embellished it with top drilled potato pearl dangles. Swarovski crystals are so beautifully sparkly it's hard to get a good picture of them, but you can get a little bit of an idea from this picture.

I was really impressed with these pearls.  They are extremely uniform for natural pearls and I had to do very little sorting to find five that were enough alike to suite me.

I thought about adding a chain through the loops in the focal point but I may make a beaded strap for it instead.

These dew filled leaves are just a classic Russian Leaf pattern made with the delica squares. They don't have quite as much of a cup at the top as they do when made with the classic delicas, but they turned out beautifully.  The squares give a decidedly different texture to any classic stitch.  The dew drop is a Swarovski 4mm round crystal ab strung on size 15 silver lined clear seed beads.


From time to time I receive beads free of charge from Artbeads.com.  This is my honest review of these beads and I am not paid to blog about them.