First attempt at bead embroidery

Working with colour has never been in my comfort area. I find it hard to visualize the end product when I have to work in colour and that doesn't give me the confidence I need to start a piece of work. That was probably the whole reason behind why I chose to do my final collection in tones of silver/grey and black. I knew I could make it look good to me and at that point that was enough to give me confidence to see the whole project through and most importantly feel good about what I was doing and really believe in it.

So to get started in learning to bead embroider I ended up eliminating the challenge of dealing with colour and opted for variations of grey. I had a few different shades of silver beads and honestly I couldn't decide the order in which to use them. Also I was too excited and wanted to use them all at once. After gluing on my cabochon to my backing I arranged the different beads I had around the cabochon to give me an idea of how to start. After changing the position of the beads I ended up with this sequence that I was happy with:

I followed the instructions form the Beadaholique to get the first row going and I also did a bezel row on top of the first row using size 15 delica beads. After that I was really hooked, I kept adding one row after the other. As I said before nothing is more relaxing to me than hand sewing!

My aim when I started this piece was to turn it into a shoe brooch. My mom had seen some cute rhinestone shoe brooches in shops but when she went to buy them they were all missing a couple of rhinestones so I told here I would make her a pair. But in my over zealous attempt to get this bead embroidery journey underway I made the piece a little larger than in should have been if it were to function as a shoe brooch. This piece measures 6.5x6 cm and I was too proud of my first piece to start taking it apart! Here is the look at the finished bead embroidered piece:

Here is another view:

Now all I all need to do is figure out how to use this piece!!!

LIST OF MATERIALS USED:

• HEMATITE CABOCHON
• SILVER-LINED CRYSTAL SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• HEMATITE GREY METALLIC SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• SILVER SEED BEADS SIZE 11/0
• SILVER-LINED GREY DELICA BEADS SIZE 15/0
• GUNMETAL DELICA BEADS SIZE 11/0
• SILVER DELICA BEADS SIZE 11/0
• WILDFIRE THREAD
• LACY'S STIFF STUFF
• E-600 GLUE

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Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved

I can make that!

The weeks before moving to America, I watched a lot of youtube. And I mean a lot! And it was during these endless hours of jumping from one video to the next, trying to find something useful and interesting to watch, that I stumbled on a bead embroidery technique video by Beadaholique. Now I have beading and embellishing garments for as long as I can remember; partly due to my work as a fashion design studio assistant and partly due to my own philosophy that garments without embellishments are just plain boring! Also I don't think I know of anything else that can calm me down as much as hand sewing does!

I believe it was the combination of the instructor's soothing voice, crystal clear instruction and striking finished product, that actually involved more hand sewing than any other jewelry making technique, that led me to yell out " I can make that!!”. And wouldn't you know it, after watching that and a bunch of other videos my hands were itching to start beading things and I was off to their website to put in an order.

I gave myself a budget not knowing where to start. But that budget was soon out of the window as I started clicking through all the different categories of beads and stones and cabochons. I ordered a bunch of stuff that they were recommending as a starting point and some stones and extra beads that looked interesting to me. I couldn’t wait to get my package and start my bead embroidery adventures. After an agonizing week, the package was on my doorstep and that’s were this beading story began.

But that was a few months ago and since then many more packages have been ordered and quite a few things have been made. Sometimes when I am looking at my older pieces I wonder 'how did I do that?". And that made me wish I had documented the making of each piece. But it’s never too late so I am starting that process right now. I will probably go back and forth a little bit in this blog between pieces I am currently working on and pieces I have already done but it I will mainly be aiming to list the items that were used in each piece and how it was put together so that I won't forget how I made things and hopefully it might serve as an inspiration to whomever might stumble upon this blog.

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Posted by mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved