Portal to Dreams

Ohmygosh...I made this piece, Portal to Dreams, such a long time ago, but somehow I think I neglected to ever write about it!  This was back when I wasn't as careful to get good process pictures, so I only have a few to show you.  But the basics of making a piece like this are actually fairly simple.  You can get pretty much all the details you need by going through my step-by-step instructions found in the free first chapter of Every Bead Has a Story.  There you'll learn stack stitch, edging brick stitch, how to back and finish a piece with a clean edge, and how to make and attach the beaded straps.

The sodalite slab that I used for a centerpiece had a hole cut into it, so I took advantage of that by doing some gold wire wrapping.  At the bottom of the stone, I fashioned a wrapped loop to later allow dangles to hang freely.  The beadwork surrounding the stone was done entirely in stack stitch, mostly with larger beads at the top of smaller sized bead "stalks".

When the pendant was completely beaded to my satisfaction, I cut it out and backed it with another piece of non-woven heavy fabric.  I stitched around the edges, adding beads and accents with an edging brick stitch.  I stitched a couple of wire connectors to the top corners, sandwiching them in between the fabric layers.  All these instructions can be found in the free e-book chapter linked above.

A couple of beaded straps and some beaded dangles completed the piece.

Copyright 2015 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.