Butterfly bracelet is finished!

I finally finished my butterfly bracelet. The bracelet is made up from 5 individual peyote stitched butterflies. I worked out the pattern for each of the butterflies using pictures of real butterflies and made them individually.

I then joined the butterflies together using a single gold bead at each of the wing tips. After doing this I found the bracelet was pretty flimsy so I added more gold beads inbetween the butterflies to stablise them and provide more structure to the piece.

I'm very happy with the finished bracelet. I've already decided to give it away as a mothers day gift.

Final Fantasy delica bead bracelet

I just finished my first bracelet made entirely from beads (excluding the clasp).

As a massive Final Fantasy fan I chose and graphed out a pattern incorporating my favourite Final Fantasy things. Here are some pictures...

Starting from the top there is a moogle, then a bomb monster, carbuncle (I loved the summoner job in FFXI!), a mandragora, a baby chocobo and last but not least a cactuar.

I loomed the whole design, and in the process discovered a way to finish those pesky warp threads without having to chop the whole thing off the loom and use sticky tape on the back. I then put a border around the loom work in silver lined delicas and peyoted some more silver delicas on the ends. The clasp is magnetic which I love. Its dead easy to fasten and unfasten the bracelet with just one hand.

All in all I'm really happy with the end result.

3d bird cage

I had an idea in my head to make a bird cage from delica beads.

The whole process involved a LOT of trial and error. This is what I came up with...



I made the base by peyoting a hexagon shape then just experimented adding the rest of the beads.

The structure of the bird cage didn't hold its form so I ended up inserting copper wire into the beaded cage bars. It helped quite a lot.

Once the cage was finished it looked pretty empty, so I peyoted stitched a heart to put inside.

I'm still undecided on this "bead cage" its far from being perfect, too squishy for a keychain and to big to look good on a necklace.

Playing with butterflies

This is my most recent bead work. I'm working off the loom this time making some butterflies with peyote stitch.




I dont know how I am going to use them yet but I'm having a lot of fun, especially when it comes to looking at butterfly pictures and charting out the designs on graph paper.

More bracelet experiments

Since making the space invaders cuff for Kieron. I've loomed up a couple more things. A pixelated geisha and some fish to be precise.

I used the tape and cut method to get them both off the loom.

Both of these pieces I have incorporated a stamped metal coin which has chinese characters on it. I got these from our local art shop for a few pence.

The method used to attach the coins is to make a ring of peyote beading around the outside edge to hold the coin in place. I then attached the coin onto the bead work.

I tried using ribbon to back the geisha but it was very fiddly and to me the beading looks slightly wonky on the ribbon.

A friend of mine who has an ebay shop where she makes and sells her own jewellery recommended using "ribbon clamps" to finish off the ribbon. I found some on ebay and got them shipped over from china. The price was exceptionally reasonable. The ribbon clamps do a remarkable job of tidying up the end of the ribbon quickly and easily.

I put a lobster claw clasp on it however I found this very difficult to fasten and unfasten (especially with just one hand when you are trying to wear it). I really need to find a better way of doing this. I'm thinking about ordering some magnetic clasps, again most likely from a chinese seller ebay - I love their prices!

The fish are going to remain unfinished for now at least until I can find a better way of turning the beads into a bracelet.

My first creation

The first thing I made on my loom was space invaders. I already owned a t-shirt which had space invaders on it. I used the t-shirt as a starting point. I printed out some online graph paper and mapped out my design.

The looming part went very quickly and was really enjoyable. I fell in love with Miyuki Delica beads and how they fit together so perfectly.

Once I had finished stringing all the beads on to the loom I was faced with the dilema of how to get the bead weaving off the loom. I searched you tube for some videos on how to do this and found that there are only a couple of options.

I went for the use some tape to hold the warp strings together then cut off with scissors method. Although this is the fastest way to get the beads off the loom it leaves another problem, how to hide the tape on the back of the weaving. I did this by hand sewing a piece of ribbon to the back, then finished the ribbon with some velcro to make a kind of cuff.





Here is the finished piece.

I gave it to Kieron and he was really pleased with it.

All in all space invaders turned out to be good subject matter as their pixelated blocks are easily reproduced in beads. I'm still not sure about taping and cutting the warp threads this way because it means you have to cover the back. I really want to see if I can work out a different way to finish my loom work.

How I got started beading.

I created this blog to keep a record of my beading activities. I've made things with beads throughout my life and dabbled in various hobbies and crafts everything from painstakingly time consuming cross stitch to making felt, machine sewing and a whole load of other things (far too numerous to list here). But this is how I "got into" beading.

I was basically looking for something new to do. I have a large amount of beads in my craft stash which were acquired mainly from car boot sales. The best way to describe the beads in my stash is bead soup (a mix of thousands of different types shapes sizes) so I was searching online for something to do with them. Then I found pictures of loom work using seed beads. I knew straight away this was something I wanted to try.

My first attempt was pretty shocking, I didnt even own a bead loom at that time. I made a very basic loom from a cardboard box by sticking tooth picks in rows on each side. I used some seedbeads I had and some standard cotton thread I had lying around.

The result was AWFUL. So bad infact I actually threw it in the bin. The weaving was lumpy and ugly, the thread snapped in one place and started to unravel, some beads dropped off and it was a general mess.

But I was not put off the idea of looming beads. I just knew I needed to get some better equipment and better beads. But I needed money to do this.

The first thing I did was sell my rubbish beads on ebay. I didnt want to mess around with lots of little sales so I bagged up a load and listed them as a bulk lot. By selling the rubbish unusable beads I was able to buy a proper bead loom.

This is my bead loom



I bought it online from Fred Aldous (a craft shop in Manchester).

I also invested in some size 11 Miyuki Delica seed beads. From what I had read online these beads were the mutts nuts for loom weaving. The reason for this is that they are all identical in size and shape.

I also got some strong thread, the type you can't snap with your bare hands.

Everything was in place now and this was how I got started beading.