Gail Nettles

In addition to all my gemstone cabochons plus all the shells I've collected, I also have some dichoric cabs.  I know, how many can a gal have?  Well, I have to say that there are never enough beads nor cabs nor findings nor (fill in the blank).  Oh well, now I guess I have to actually show some of my work!

Here we go, for my first dichroic cab bead embroidery piece.  The cab is mostly orange/copper and green on a black background.  There are a few flecks of blue in it as well.  OK, kind of "halloween" colors, but what the heck -- the cab is really pretty (much nicer than the photo).

One thing about dichroic cabochons is that they tend to have very thick sides, not a gentle slope that gemstone cabs traditionally have.  So it is a bit more difficult to get a nice bezel of seed beads around this thick-sided cabochon.

In addition to the thick sides, the cab wasn't exactly symmetrical.  It was close, but because of the asymmetry, the design was also more difficult.

I did have some fun with a double "can-can" skirt, one in green and the other in gold. I did discover that seed beads make much better "petticoats" than do hex Delicas (the gold ones).  The orange around the edges was really just where I sewed the stiff stuff to the imitation suede backing.

Right now I have this cab hanging from a simple gold chain, but that doesn't quite seem right to me.   I have a couple of ideas for the necklace portion, but I haven't decided how I'll do it yet. 

So this is just to show you that I do more than collect the cabs!  I actually do stuff with them, believe it or not.