5/29/2020

Tackle that stash - Bead embroidered mystery rock

I have a few tumbled rocks in my stash that I have been trying to use with different wire techniques forever, failing every time. I was never happy and always ripped them up again.
After a while this can almost turn into a obsession.
This rock was one of them. I don't know what kind of stone it is, but the orb like pattern and the soft colors were so appealing to me. A wire crochet or knit bezel didn't work, the feeble attempt at a prong setting failed not only because of the irregular shape of the rock but also because it was so smooth and slippery!

When I made my first steps into bead embroidery, I wondered if I could finally pin this rock down. The backside wasn't flat, but maybe I could glue down the ridge along the center and then secure the rock additionally with the beaded bezel.
After this worked out better than I had expected, I added the embellishments.
First I sewed down some spacer beads I had salvaged from a little crystal bracelet that I had found once. I chose beads to pick up colors from the rock which had brown, a soft pink and a hint of orange.
Somehow it reminds me of a coral reef. Maybe the spacer beads with their orange edgings make me think of sea anemones?


At first I wanted to turn it into a pendant and even tried out a few different bails, but none of them did it for me, so it's a brooch now instead.

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