Learning Bead Embroidery and Kumihimo

I have been beading for a few years and I love to capture stones in a beaded bezel.  Making the chain is part of creating a necklace so learning some new construction techniques have been part of the challenge.  Viking knit has been my favorite for a while, but this year I added Kumihimo.  Loving it!  Simple tools and not hard to learn.  Beaded Kumihimo is relatively quick and makes a colorful and comfortable necklace from which to suspend your beaded pendant.  Bead embroidery has really been catching my eye lately.  The way the beads are sewn to a background makes it possible to add all types of elements, textures, and borders.  I started small with a quartz beach stone and learned many lessons on this first piece.
The chain is hand beaded, incorporating the same beads as the pendant.

The second piece was made with a half of a Thunder Egg or Septarian Stone.  The stone is asymetrical and it took me a while to work through this piece.  There is a row of freshwater pearls and a nice sort of scalloped border on this pendant.  The chain is beaded kumihimo worked with size 8 seed beads.

The third bead embroidery necklace was made with an ammonite fossil.  I found these stones at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, they have boxes and boxes of interesting rocks and fossils.  This necklace has a row of faceted carnelians which work so well with the color of the stone.  The pendant is hung from a strand of stone and glass beads that balance out the weight of the focal.

Here are a few pics of some of the beaded kumi necklaces that I made. Being unable to master bead crochet, Kumihimo feels like a gift!