Playing with my beads...Silky bead experiments

As I mentioned in an earlier post HERE, I spent some time trying to come up with ideas for bracelets to make with my Silky beads. I have them in three colors at the moment and I should have enough to make several bracelets if I choose designs that don't use too many Silkies. I love the diamond shape but I'm not keen on designs that are chock full of Silky beads. My goal was to come up with ways to use them that treated the Silkies as accent beads. I'm pleased with all of my samples and it will be tough choosing which ones to make.

I started out by looking through my stash of bracelet patterns and photos from Pinterest for ones that I might be able to adapt to work with Silkies. I had to keep in mind that the thread path might be different than stated in the directions. Unlike SuperDuos, Tilas and CzechMates, you can only go directly through the holes of Silky beads to connect them to your beadwork. There are no edges on them where you can cross your thread over from one hole to the other to change direction. I did find though that it's possible to outline them with seed beads and the seed beads seem to stay put and don't flop over the edge.

I based most of my samples on a bracelet that I saw in The Beadnurse Shop on Etsy. She doesn't sell patterns, just ready-to-wear beaded jewelry. You can see an example of the bracelet that I mean HERE. Her design was easy to figure out and it works well with Silkies without too many changes. However, I did end up embellishing many of my samples so they're hardly recognizable as the same design. The four samples below were all based on the Beadnurse bracelet design:

• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• 8/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• Silky beads "Alabaster Lazure Blue"
• SuperDuo beads "Opaque Green Senegal Matte"

• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• 8/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• Silky Beads "Alabaster Blue Luster"
• SuperDuo beads "Crystal Gold Luster"
• 8/0 seed beads Toho "Silver Lined Milky Montana Blue" (2102PF)

• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• 8/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• Silky beads "Alabaster Lazure Blue"
• SuperDuo beads "Opaque Green Senegal Matte"
• 3mm druks "Jet Copper Picasso"

• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• 8/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• Silky beads "Alabaster Lazure Blue"
• 3mm druks "Jet Copper Picasso"

The sample below is based on the "Lattice Gates" bracelet pattern that I saw in an Etsy shop, HERE. That bracelet also has CzechMates in it and it works quite well with Silkies. Since I don't have that pattern either, I had to work out from the photo the best path for connecting the SuperDuo motifs with the Silkies in between them. It turned out to be rather complicated. I don't even have written notes because it would be difficult to put the procedure into words. I like the design so I will try write down the steps so that I can make myself a bracelet sometime. Besides using Silky beads instead of CzechMates, I changed one other detail. Norma Jean puts three seed beads along the side of each SuperDuo bead and I found that I liked the look of it better with only two beads. If you look closely at my sample, you can see one motif where I used three seed beads and it looks a little wonky because they're too crowded.

• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• 8/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• Silky beads "Alabaster Lazure Blue"
• CzechMates Bricks "Light Beige Copper Picasso"
• SuperDuo beads "Opaque Green Senegal Matte"

The inspiration for my last string of samples came from Sidonia's "Losange Bracelet" YouTube video, which you can watch HERE. I replaced each inside "diamond" of beads with a Silky bead. As you can see in my samples below, there are a lot of possible variations for this design. Just omitting the druks/pearls gave it a whole new look. I also played around with the number of seed beads in each motif. I think my favorites are the motif made according to Sidonia's tutorial (far left) and the fifth one from the left. Because it's so wide, the original motif would be very economical for making my Silky beads go long way. I think it would only take four or five Silkies for a bracelet in my size.

• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• 8/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457D)
• Silky Beads "Alabaster Blue Luster"
• 3mm druks "Bronze"
• 4mm druks "Bronze"