September 26, 2006

Broad Collar

I've long admired Broad collars and often thought I'd like one of my own to wear. However, none of the colors caught my eye and I haven't had the patience to sit down and make a complicated one of my own. During the Tucson Gem shows this year I found one that I liked; a very crude African piece, but it was in my color - yellow-green. The thing that appealed to me was that it was done in size 6/0 and 8/0 beads. Bev, from No Easy Beads, was with me and we bought as good a selection of 6/0 beads colors as we could find. We actually got carried away and bought partial kilos of way too many 6/0 beads. We had big plans as we looked at the purchased collar, discussed design possibilities and refined what we would do with a similar design in larger beads. I had visions of walking around in a Broad collars made in own color scheme. Time passed, we both got busy doing other things. The spark of an idea to design and make my own broad collar floated to the back of my mind

Six months later, last Friday, I got the beads back out and decided I needed something different to wear out to dinner on Monday night. At that point I started diagramming thread paths, refining, making changes, picking out color combinations and getting antsy to start the actual necklace. Big beads... easy, quick project. From start to finish it really only took parts of two days to finish.

while I was making the collar, it occurred to me that if I wanted a big bold necklace that was that quick to make, perhaps other beaders would also. So, part of the construction time was taken up with photographs and writing out an instruction set for Bead Patterns. I have been a designer with Bead Patterns almost from the beginning of Rita's site. If you want a beading pattern right now, even if it's the middle of the night, P-B is the place to get it.


Dressed and ready to go out the door.

I felt elegant, dinner out was chaotic but, a good time.

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