Another Lesson Learned

First a progress report on the Turquoise Slab Necklace. 

The third strand is going to be, in part, beaded beads.   I am leaning toward wire wrapped loops to connect them rather than stringing them. 

I don’t think I want it all beaded beads, or at least not all silver beaded beads.  I may create a green turquoise beaded bead and a red coral beaded bead and see how those turn out.

For the moment I have placed a coral and turquoise bead between each silver beaded bead.  The next design choice is whether or not to leave the coral clover strand on the bottom.  Here are some pictures.

Now for the lessons learned.  I thought I would create step by step photos for a 8 mm beaded bead as that is what I am using on this necklace.  I started with the Japanese seed beads I am actually using, but the contrast was not enough for instructions.  I added some size 15 delica beads for step two and was shocked at the difference in size.

Because I wanted to create the step by step pictorial I changed to all delica beads.  However, when using a 8 mm base, even the size 15 delica beads do not lie smoothly, they do not flow and they do not nestle next to each other.  The uniform size and the hard edges do not work, or at least they did not work for me.  Here is the finished beaded bead, what do you think?

For comparison, here is the 8 mm bead with 15/0 Japanese seed beads.  (Ignore the magenta wire, which is a place holder.)