Beaded Halloween Jewelry: Skeletons, Bats and Black Cats, Built Bone by Bone

Field note № 8 from the studio journal.

Every October the same question arrives in the inbox: do you make anything for Halloween? For years the honest answer was no — the studio beads poppies and wheat, not pumpkins. This year the answer is a small drawer of bones.

How a skeleton is beaded

The skeleton earrings are built in brick stitch, the same stitch as a beaded flower: one glass seed bead at a time, each row locking into the thread of the row before, so the piece is a single flexible sheet with no backing and no glue. The difference is the joints. Skull, ribcage, arms and legs are beaded as separate pieces and joined with beaded links, loosely, the way bones are joined — which is why the whole skeleton stirs when you turn your head. A printed charm could never do that.

The bats hang the way bats prefer: from the wing edge, upside-down to everyone else’s way of thinking, with two gold beads for eyes in a body of black. The black cats are one unbroken sheet of beads each; the skulls are small enough to wear to the office on the 31st and still mean it.

Why black beads are not a costume

Black glass has worked hard for two hundred years. The Victorians cut it as “French jet” for mourning jewellery; Ukrainian villages loomed it as the dark ground of a gerdan so the reds would burn brighter. Our Halloween pieces borrow both habits — the same beads, the same hands — so they do not need to be put away on 1 November. A skull is older than Halloween; it was worn in the sixteenth century as memento mori, a reminder in miniature that you are alive right now. That is the version we make.

How to wear them past October

Against cream, linen or grey the black pieces read as graphic, almost architectural; against black they disappear into glint. The skeleton wants a plain neckline. The bats and cats want to be the only joke in the outfit. The Victorian lace choker is not a Halloween piece at all — it is the piece that makes the others look like they belong to a wardrobe rather than a party.

Everything is handmade in Ukraine from Czech glass seed beads, one pair at a time; most exist in small numbers and will not be remade identically. Open the Dark Arts · read Field note № 7 on black beads · the gift guide.