Confessions of a Crystal Hoarder Blog

What do tax season and NCAA men’s basketball have in common? They’re both about getting to the net.

So in honor of a sport I don’t watch, and a paperwork process I don’t mind…I whipped up some netting.

My warm-up was a netted bracelet from pale galvanized peach Czech seed beads from our March boxes. Netting is the embellishment rather than the structure in this piece. The base is ladder stitch, but I wanted the rungs to feel like loops, rather than a tightly woven structure. I have to admit that some of those seed beads are filled to capacity (a couple were past capacity, and died in the process) with heavy Fireline to keep the cuff from twisting on the diagonal. I’ve moved up to 12lb for bracelets since they are more likely to snag on things.

I used two rows of netting on the edges, then went back over the ladder-stitched portion with additional peaks to fill it in.

Next up was bezeling a vintage cabochon from the boxes. Often when I look at published projects, I’m saddened by bezels that cover most of a focal stone or cab, after all, that’s what you want to show off, right?

For this bezel, I started by making a loop just slightly smaller than the circumference of the stone. I left a long tail of thread to use later. Then I started to build my picots/nets to drape over the edge and around to the back side. After my basic basket was completed I added dagger beads to form petals. The glass daggers wanted to droop. The way to solve it? I added a retaining ring of beads.

Check out the enlargement to see the back. You can really get a good look at the construction by flipping the pendent over. 

My next challenge started as a March box piece…the pink rounds in my Russian Spiral netted necklace front were from the March club box. The whole piece was inspired by an antique carved shell cameo (item #21313) I picked up during the last AGOS show. I’ve jokingly referred to it as “Blush and Bashful”, said, of course, with the thickest Steel Magnolia accent I can muster.

The cameos have vertical sides and a tiny lip at the top, so it was perfectly suited to a netted bezel. I wanted this bezel to be more airy and delicate than the green pendent, but I also wanted to protect the cameo. The solution was to build a netted cup to buffer the cameo from bumps. The bail was netted from size 15s.

My final project is closer to what I’d consider traditional netting. I used vintage silver-lined chocolate bugles from last June’s box combined with seed beads and my stockpile of topaz-ish crystals. My birthday is in November, and one of my very first beading bequeaths went a little like “My Aunt had a pile of these…can you make something for me out of the aqua ones, and you can keep the gold ones since topaz is your birthstone?” Originally I used all the crystals in a spiral rope that languished in my “I hate this” drawer, but as the idea of netting with my vintage bugles solidified in my mind I chopped up the spiral rope and harvested the goodies.

I’m much happier this time around, I guess it was kis--net?