Beadtime Stories home page of Elizabeth Ann Scarborough misctek

Here are two views of the necklace I made for Anne McCaffrey in honor of her Grand Master of Science Fiction Award. The center bead is one by Port Townsend bead artist Andrea Guarino. She calls this style Galaxy Beads but I thought the swirl in the middle looked like the Nebula inside the plexiglass rectangle on the awards. Originally, I bought two blue ones for myself to make a "wearable award" but when I learned about Anne's award, I traded in the larger blue one for one in her favorite color, green. Then I plowed through all of my bead books and magazines looking for a spiral technique that resembled DNA to carry out the scientific theme. I found two--a spiral herringbone from Carole Wilcox Wells' book (the second one, Art and Elegance of Beadweaving, I think) and then one in a magazine for a Dutch spiral double sided helix made with bugles.


Here are two views of the necklace I made for Anne McCaffrey in honor of her Grand Master of Science Fiction Award. The center bead is one by Port Townsend bead artist Andrea Guarino. She calls this style Galaxy Beads but I thought the swirl in the middle looked like the Nebula inside the plexiglass rectangle on the awards. Originally, I bought two blue ones for myself to make a "wearable award" but when I learned about Anne's award, I traded in the larger blue one for one in her favorite color, green. Then I plowed through all of my bead books and magazines looking for a spiral technique that resembled DNA to carry out the scientific theme. I found two--a spiral herringbone from Carole Wilcox Wells' book (the second one, Art and Elegance of Beadweaving, I think) and then one in a magazine for a Dutch spiral double sided helix made with bugles.		The first technique is kind of tedious, maybe because I insisted on using a complicated color pattern, but I only found the second technique after doing 13" of the first one. So I made two nine inch strips of the Dutch spiral, sewed them to the ends of the herringbone, and to cover the clumsy join made shiny black AB herringtone beads with tiny Swarovski crystals in the centers. I made another similar bead to serve as a bale for the galaxy bead and added a comet tail of lime green Swarovski 4mm bicones, 3mm black AB Swarovski bicones, 4mm fiber optic catseye chartreuse stars, and some other little stars of different colors. She wore the necklace every night until the ceremony, when she wore the little dragon necklace the late Grand Master Andre Norton made her for Christmas.