Crocodile Tail Pendant

Following your creative instincts and creating new designs on the fly is a great way to stay productive and surprise yourself with new ideas. But planning out new projects in advance can pay off, too. I recently made a list of stitches that I had yet to share in the tutorials segment on Inspirational Beading, and as soon as I added Dutch spiral to the list, an idea started to form.

The combination of three bead types, and plenty of room for accents, seemed like the perfect place to start design inspired by the Egyptian crocodile god, Sobek. Although I’ve been sticking pretty close the the alphabet for the Egypt challenge so far, I couldn’t resist skipping ahead to get started on this necklace.

I decided to use some of my mother of pearl chips to represent crocodile teeth, with greens and some black lined topaz for a background. After a few inches of spiral, I decided I didn’t like the green iris and topaz together, so I switched out the brown for a soft cream instead. As I worked with the new palette, I also realized that it wasn’t going to be enough. A few sharp and curved shells would have the fearsome look I wanted, but it needed something more.

I took a look through some photos of real crocodiles, and a picture started to form - shells as scales. I got to work right away on a triangle pendant with embroidered shell chips, and everything fell into place. Sobek’s necklace turned out exactly as I had hoped. The shell fringe in the Dutch spiral has the toothy look that I wanted, the mix of greens and fish-belly white looks reptilian and scaly, and the pendant provides an anchor that helps it all to stand out.

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