When I received my first Vintage seed bead order I was disappointed because the size of the beads was much larger than my Czech seed beads that I bead crochet with...but as they say... when life gives you lemons...
After another order to compliment the colors I had from the first order...I had no choice but to get creative... How would I combine these colors? What different patterns could I make with these Vintage French beads in shades of pinks and purples? Will the Vintage Venetian beads be too bulky for beaded crochet? I honestly felt a bit restricted at first.
My first idea was the "special" rope combining pearl white Czech seed beads and the opal violet Vintage French ones in my ridged rope technique
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| Czech and Vintage French Seed Bead Crochet Necklace |
Then I decided to do a blend of pink and purple in a random pattern, the beads tricked me a little bit...I didn't realize they were quite transparent until I started stringing them on the light pink thread...the result was a very "soft" looking color blend...and as I went along it started to look like a pink snakeskin to me, although I couldn't really capture it inn the photo all that well...
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| Vintage French Seed Bead Crochet Necklace |
Next I wanted to try the larger Vintage Venetian seed beads... I quickly figured out that I needed to reduce the number of beads around to 4 so that my rope wasn't too big, bulky or heavy. A bit different looking than my usual ropes but I really liked it :)
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| Blue Vintage Venetian Seed Bead Crochet Necklace |
Even though my largest quantity is in the green color, I of course want them to all be unique, so I started blending other colors I purchased that I thought would compliment each other
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| Green & Yellow Vintage Venetian Seed Bead Crochet Necklace |
No matter what type of jewelry, the color turquoise is always popular and in demand, and as I get older it has become one of my favorites, I really enjoy mixing it in with other tones as well
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| Turquoise & Green Vintage Venetian Seed Bead Crochet Necklace |
This is a new pattern for me, I saw this photo in one of my bead magazines that was a single strand necklace fading from green to yellow, from dark to light.
From it I immediately got the idea to try to "fade" my colors together in a beaded crochet rope, or as it turned out while I was pitching the idea to my husband... "What if I made a solid color section then had the next color slowly bleed into it until it was eventually the next solid color section?" And so I had to try it!
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| Color Bleed Vintage Venetian Seed Bead Crochet Necklace |
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| Color Bleed Vintage Venetian Seed Bead Crochet Necklace |
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| Color Bleed Vintage Venetian Seed Bead Crochet Necklace |
I really like it! Even though it doesn't seem like a pattern, I do have to count out the beads as I'm bleeding into the next one so that they don't end up too clumped together, I think with more practice I'll be happier with the bleeding portions...that would be my perfectionist side talking...!
So, there is a bit of difficulty to working with these Vintage beads, especially the larger Venetian ones...the holes of the beads are not all perfectly drilled as my Czech beads, so the stringing process takes longer since they drag quite a bit instead of sliding down the thread easily. They do however crochet a bit faster since they are larger. Also, they are not all uniform in size, which proves to be a challenge when doing beaded crochet. As a result the thread does show though more, but I like that aspect, it becomes part of the whole design :)
So that is my Vintage Style collection so far...I have many more ideas now and can't wait to make them into beautiful beaded crochet ropes soon!
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