Jewelry with Artem Decorare: House Stark Necklace

One of my very best friends has a podcast she does about the HBO Series “Game of Thrones”. I also watch the series (loved the books!) and between seasons thought it would be intriguing to create some jewelry inspired by the series. My first project – in my mind – of course had to be about the Starks. The sigil for the Starks is a dire wolf. I found some graphics around the web to start me in the right direction; the challenge was going to be creating a beading chart that would reflect the house sigil.

I decided to work in brick stitch and downloaded the free graph paper over at Fire Mountain Gems, my first attempt ended up looking a bit like a black alligator. Truly frightening!

My first attempt is pictured here in all his failure - the snout is too narrow - the teeth look silly, the eye looks like a mistake...

So, I went back to square one and worked on a new beading design. I simplified the teeth and made them larger; I made the patterning in the body of the wolf much more planned. The final result was fantastic!

Now I needed to find a necklace worth hanging my dire wolf from… So I turned to my beading binders.

These are filled with everything from sliced and diced books and copies to randomness from the web. I found an Ecuadorian medallion patter that I liked, and it seemed like the dire wolf would fit between two of the medallions, or I could stack them, I was not sure. I used many of the same beads I had used on the dire wolf head and got to work.

In the end the wolf head would not fit between the medallions, so I chose to work 5 of them – one for each of the stark children. Then I worked a simple bead-woven band so the necklace was about sixteen inches long. Finally I made sure the dire wolf was securely tied into the center medallion. This included taking the joining thread all through the central medallion. The joining point looks delicate but is very sturdy.

I was quite proud of the piece when it was completed.