Beaded Collar: Scarab

This is a bead embroidery project based on the scarab beetle amulet found in King Tut's tomb. It uses a scarab focal, seed beeds and bugle beads on a Pellon backing with wool felt facing.
This is a unique, one of a kind piece of beadwork. It uses a combination of techniques: bead embroidery, bezel-set beaded stones and focal, and fringing. It was not made from a commercial pattern. This type of beadwork can be done by anyone with patience and imagination to produce a myriad of different works of wearable art. The pattern for the shape was cut from a piece of posterboard and drawn onto the beading fabric with a sharpie. The larger focal elements were placed and glued then bezeled with peyote stitch. Then filling in the other empty spaces was based on photographs of a gold and precious/semi-precious stone inlaid piece of ancient Egyptian grave goods. Bead colors were chosen to attempt to re-create the original inlay of lapis, malachite etc. A purchased closure was used to finish.