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Once a month, I attend the Anglian Bead Group in Colchester. It's a seed bead group but I went because I think some of the techniques are useful for my lampwork beads, particularly if I make some lampies up into jewellery. Last meeting, we were discussing what project to do for the next session and someone suggested a cabochon beading tutorial as one of the members had brought in a malachite type pendant with green seed beads made from a kit bought from Pandorion. She manages the shop but thought that as it was a kit sold by the shop, it might not be appropriate to share the instructions with the group.
I knew that there were lots of seed beading tutorials on the web and did a Google search for cabochons. I came up with Vibrant Jewels Beaded Cabochon Instructions here and since these looked easy to follow, I printed them out.
Then being the stubborn person I am, I decided to make a cabochon rather than buy one, at the same time testing my little Paragon SC2 bead kiln with a fusing program. I used some pink glass left over from my stained glass making days and capped it with clear Spectrum fusible glass in the hopes that the two glasses would be compatible. I knew that I didn't have the three different sizes of beads recommended, but when has that ever stopped me from doing what i wanted. Instead I used sizes 9,11 and 15 because I knew I had seed beads in those sizes in colours which would go with the pink of the cabochon.
To cut a long story short, here's the finished article made yesterday.
Excluding the tab, it's 66mm wide and 78mm long, the pattern being made for the cabochon by drawing round a circle and then extending it top and bottom to form an oval shape. It's a bit large for a pendant because the glass flowed a little on account of I used three layers of glass instead of the usual two. If I make another, it will be smaller.Pink Cabochon
A few days earlier, I'd made a small cabochon by using a cabochon mandrel. This one is about 30mm x 30mm.Beading a Cabochon
After beading around it, I just kept going to make the oddly shaped pendant, really just playing with shape. To finish it off , I made the small dangly beads in cream and green because I'd seen some jewellery which included this shape in natural pearls.