“Teal Embrace” a Bead Embroidery Necklace

I wanted to share my biggest bead embroidery project I have ever done so far. It took me about two hours a day for two weeks or so to complete a wonderful bead embroidery necklace!  I also wanted to show how I drafted my design and made it come to life. Luckily, I took multiple pictures of my project since I was emailing my hubby my progress when he was away on a work trip. He loves to see all my wonderful projects.

The left picture above shows my sketch I drew up for the necklace. I also sketched out matching earrings too but I ended up not having enough material at the end to make them. 😢 The right picture I cheated…I photo copied my sketch and used the copy to draw the color design. I thought it was smart. I  didn’t have to ruin my original sketch with colors that could have not worked out and be resorted to re-sketching it. Good thing is my colorful drawing turned out exactly how I imagined it and all the colors worked out!

Sorry, my pictures aren’t the best since my shadow is showing in some of them. Like I said, I was just taking quick pictures to show my progress to hubby.

In this picture above, you can see I stenciled my outline on a grey bead backing, called Nicole’s BeadBacking. This bead backing is wonderful because you can get it in a variety of colors and it is easy to sew through and embroider on. Also pictured are cabochons I glued on the day before with E6000 glue (takes about 24 hours to dry), which you can buy online on Amazon or at your local craft store or department store, and me starting to bead bezel the cabochons with teal and white seed beads.

Here on these pictures I finished my bead bezel on all the cabochons with seed beads and white bicone crystals. Then I started my outline with dark teal bugle beads.

These pictures display my tedious beading I had to stitch little bit by little bit. Beading the small seed beads took the longest to complete! I also tried to make sure both sides of the necklace look somewhat symmetrical, but in bead embroidery it can be a little challenging since some seed beads aren’t the same size. There are seed beads out there that are very very close to her same size, like Miyuki seed beads, but they can get a little bit pricey when you need a bunch of them to complete big projects.

Left picture shows my completion of the seed bead embroidering of the necklace. So pretty! Right picture shows the tan suede home decor fabric I glued on the backing of the necklace and me half complete with stitching the front and back layers together with white seed beads on the edge to give it a nice finish look.

This picture shows my completion! YAY!!

I named this beauty: Teal Embrace

Fitting, right?

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Thanks for stopping by!