My second attempt at 'pearl knotting'. Well it's probably my hundredth, but who's counting? There's only little piles of snipped silk everywhere to give away what I've been spending hours doing..I think I've got it this time, but that's what I thought the first time, so we'll see. I am learning that just when you think you understand something, there is usually a whole furthur dimension to conquer.
I started off with the finishing: threading a tiny coil of gimp/bullion/french wire on the silk with the clasp. The thread gets looped and knotted back through the first few beads and the knotting continues until the last few beads when another peice of gimp is inserted with the other side of the clasp and the thread looped back through again. Tying the knots against each bead is helped by the thread being doubled. I used Gudebrod silk, I only figured out after buying several packets of Griffin silk which won't work at all with this method. There are some excellent discussions and videos on the internet covering these techniques, and they helped immensely, but I still seem to need to learn alot by trial and error.
I quickly made some ear-rings to go with it. They are the first pair I've ever made. I can see I'll need to learn alot about ear-ring making next!
After all that seriousness, here is a goofy smile I discovered in a boulder opal focal bead:
not for sale
