This was my major project for 2009. It was made to enter into the 2009 Bead Society of Victoria's Bead Challenge Competition. The Bead Challenge is run every year. All entrants are given an identical set of beads to work with. You can make anything you want with them, and add as many other beads and other materials as you like, but you must use all of the beads in the Challenge set and they must be visible in the finished work. 
It's a real challenge! This was actually the first time I managed to complete the challenge - two years in a row I bought the beads but never found any inspiration to make something with them.
I was really happy with the way this turned out, although I have to say it was a major learning experience and the next one will be very different. What did I learn in particular?
- Don't squish your beads too tightly when you're doing bead embroidery. I found that in some places the work was distorted because I was trying too hard to avoid gaps. It would have been better to go back and fill in spaces with smaller beads.
- Don't glue anything down until you are 100% certain it's staying. In future I will use double-sided tape for cabochons. On the flip side, I did learn that you can remove a glued cab from stiffened felt with a razor blade if you are very, very careful!
- If you are beading a symmetrical piece, don't do most of one side before starting the other, do them together. I found that a couple of my cabs had ended up slightly off-measurement, which makes a difference when you're trying to do identical numbers of rows of beading. If I had realised earlier I would have been able to adjust the number of rows of beading more easily to compensate.
- Take the advice in the books and make a pattern before you start. This collar doesn't sit quite right because I assumed that a perfect circle would be okay around the neck, but it isn't. I should have left a few centimeters gap at the back, which would have enabled the collar to sit flatter on the neck.
- The fringe on this collar works really well with the double-layered effect, but I didn't allow enough time to finish it before it had to be handed in for the competition. One of these days I'd like to add more to the fringe - my original plan was to extend it around at least as far as the first crystals.
My next challenges coming out of this are to experiment more with the way I placed the crystals, using cut-outs and supports to make them sit out from the main beadwork, and to plan and execute another bead-embroidered collar. Whether I'll manage a collar this year is anybody's guess, there's so many other projects waiting to happen, but another crystal one is definitely on the way.
BTW I didn't win or even place in the competition.
The central cabochon in this piece is one I bought from Gary Wilson at the Bead and Button Show in Milwaukee in 2008. It's a really lovely piece of crazy lace agate. The Swarovski rivolis are all 'Purple Haze' colour. Apart from the Challenge beads the rest of the materials are:
- Various seed beads, including cylinder beads, size 6, 8, 11 and 15o seed beads, triangle beads and so on.
- The fringe is edged with Czech glass daggers and leaves and includes some Czech glass crystals.
- The rivolis are edged with crystal briolette beads which are used to make the rivolis stand out from the surrounding beadwork.
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