Inspired by Native American art

Many years ago, as a youth, I was lucky to travel to Arizona and spend some time there. I was travelling with my family and they of course were more interested in seeing the sites than seeing the jewerly and artwork.

Me, on the other hand, was fascinated by the designs and I am still fascinated. I am in no way on the same level as these artists, but several of the designs I have made these last weeks have been inspired by this diverse culture. I have for the first time included feathers in some of my work and I am working on a design for a dreamcatcher, or rather, several.

So hopefully I will have more to share in the near future. Hope you all have a great summer. Here are a couple of pictures that show what I have been working on these past weeks.

Making a bead chocker

In the winter I really like to wear large pieces of jewerly as they fit better against wool sweaters and so forth. I tend to wear turtlenecks and scarfs as I do tend to freeze a lot.
When I was younger, my mother had a chocker necklace in black. I really liked it, and now I decided to try my hand at making this type of a chocker, with black beads.

Then, for a bit of color, I added a glass pendant with a lot of color against a black backdrop. The beads are braided, but I do not know what the technique is called. It makes for very firm and at the same time elegant knots.

Getting there in the end

I struggled a bit with this design. I had a very firm image of it in my head regarding the design, but I struggled with getting it into something I could work with. First I started with:

Here I had used string around each bead. However, I was uncertain as to how to get a good placement.

So I tried:

I liked the concept, but when I had finished it, I didn't like it. 

So I used Kuminhio braids and braided with blue and metallic tread with the beads in regular intervals. The result: 

These are three strands of Kumihimo braided strands that are then braided. 

Finally, I got the look I was looking for! 

Takes a bit of time, but it looks nice!

Here are pictures of my latest project. The chain is a Kumihimo braid, with beads and then a larger pendant attached.
It took some time, but I love it!

This is the whole necklace.
Here is a picture of the details: