Flower Necklace Finished

I stumbled across a beading book in the library not long ago called Diane Fitzgerald's Favorite Beading Projects.  My nine year old daughter has gotten into jewelry making and I sometimes look at these books to see if she would be interested.  So far, she has not been interested in any of the books that I have shown her.  She goes her own way, which is probably best anyway.  However, I fell in love with many of the projects in the book.  I thought I would never get into beading, and probably still really will never do more than a couple of projects, but I fell in love with one of the necklaces and decided I had to have it.  It is called the Sea Urchin necklace, although I find the results look more like flowers than sea urchins.  It uses Czech dagger beads, which are not easy to come by, as I soon found out.  I went to the local bead store and they said they rarely carried them.  I then turned to the internet and finally found them at York Novelty Imports in New York City.  They mainly import Czech glass beads, and what lovely beads they are.

Anyway, I made the flowers and tried to make the necklace as outlined in the book, but found the weight of the flowers too heavy for the cord that was suggested.  The cord suggested was black braid,which I didn't like with the beautiful green beads.  Instead, I went to the fabric store and bought some velvet ribbon and thick cording.  I covered the cord in the ribbon, and mounted the flowers onto the ribbon.

To fasten the necklace, I made a loop and used a button that I had in my stash.

I bought some blue dagger beads also.  I am trying to decide whether or not to make a blue version of this necklace or try something different.  But, I am pleased with this result of my first foray into beading.  It is not something I will do much of, but it is nice to be able to make something so unique for yourself, and out of beads that come from my husband's father's country.