Designed and Beaded by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
I've been working on this necklace for a couple of months now, and have been collecting the cabs for it for several years. The stones involved are a spotted lemon quartz druzy at the top, three different matches pairs of chrysocolla cabs, including the triangles below the druzy and the two pairs in the strap, a pair of yellow amber cabs flanking a stone completely oversewn with a peyote pattern, a pair of carnelian cabs flanking a UCO (unidentified cabochon object) and a little citrine cab at the bottom. I learned to cover a cabochon in peyote beadwork in a class taught by Paula Marie Walter and in fact, the cab in the necklace is the one I beaded in class. The strap is attached to the main body of the necklace by strands of size 15's alternating with strands of turquoise and citrine chips. Carnelian carved butterflies are the first stones in the strap, overlain with strands of beads snugging the beaded bezel in close around the weird shaped cab/beads. Above these I've used the second pair of chrysocolla cabs, attaching them and the others on the solid part of the strap by the edging beads, the technique illustrated in Jamie Cloud Eakin's book Beading With Cabochons (originally I credited this instruction to Tatiana Van Iten but she just wrote to tell me thanks, but her book isn't coming out until NEXT year. Sorry about the mistake but glad another great bead artist is going to do a book!) and often employed in her prize winning pieces. The next stones in the strap are a carnelian cat bead on one side and a carnelian buffalo bead on the other side. The cat bead is snugged into the bezel in the same way as the butterfly, except he's got a little gold collar. The final pair of cabs is then attached to a spiral stitched back strap looped around brick stitched bales on the main necklace and sewed back into itself so that it is very comfortable. In the fringe I used seed beads, turquoise rice beads, four colors of Swarovski bicones and 20 large amber colored Swarovski drops in the middle and 15 smaller drops of the same color on each side. The earrings I made first, using yellow fused glass cabs from the Indiana Glass Man, with three colors of Swarovskis in the fringe. I didn't do a lot of texture in this piece except for the raised peyote center and varying the sizes of the beaded rows between size fifteen and size eleven seed beads. I played a lot with different stripe patterns and varying the colors around each type of stone for visual interest.
All images and patterns © copyright 2007 Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. All rights reserved.