Lion Ombre Collar

One of the goals that I had when starting the Egyptian Gods series was to focus my designs, and cultivate a selection of pieces that had an Egyptian style. While it is difficult to mimic real Egyptian jewelry without using any metals, I’ve managed to find a sort of balance between the beadwork techniques that I like and the subjects I want to explore. Many of the Egyptian gods necklaces don’t look distinctly Egyptian, but they are starting to look very ‘me’.

Whenever I come across a deity that is difficult to dissect and reassemble as a necklace, I get to fall back on a design style that is rather Egyptian - the collar. This is the direction I took for the household god Bes. He’s a rather unusual character with lots of interesting attributes, most of which don’t translate well into beadwork. I finally decided to try and mimic his beard and lion features in a collar.

I chose an ombre palette of warm browns, then gathered up a selection of complementary accents. I was hoping to get an eclectic look, to represent the spirit that dances around the room to scare away demons and entertain babies. After I started stitching, I realized that the wooden beads were just to clunky for this design, so I stuck to the orange white-hearts and freshwater pearls.

Many of my recent collars have been very wide, and for this piece I wanted to shrink the netting a bit, so I reduced my usual pattern by one row. The ombre effect of the beiges and browns came out perfectly, although I was a little worried at first that the opaques would clash with the transparents. I’m also relieved that I decided against the wood beads, but I’m hoping a project idea will appear for them soon.

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