Yin and Yang

Can you tell? I love black. Here's another one. This uses new and vintage beads (the same black faceted vintage beads as in Blackberry in the previous post).

When I began the design, I started with some new spiral beads. They had a lovely smooth but matt texture with the actual spiral picked out in a glossy line (see below for the close-up shot). This use of two different textures in one bead gave me the idea for the design. I wanted to use more different textured black beads, so I found: the faceted jet black beads, smooth, shiny black squares, charcoal rough textured Japanese seed beads, small black diamond Czech beads, slick hematite hearts and glistening black leaf shaped drops. I them realised that I had opposites in the shapes as well - round and square, soft and faceted, simple and elaborate, which gave the necklace its name: Yin and Yang.

Below is the whole necklace laid out so the "net" structure is clearly shown.


Below is a close-up shot which shows the different shapes and textures of the necklace.
I'd been waiting to use the beautiful heart shaped connectors for a while and this seemed the perfect opportunity: