Beads galore

On Saturday we threaded many, many beads through wire and wondered if we would make anything by the end of the workshop. As with much creating and making we were testing out the ability of waiting in order to achieve...delayed gratification...

Well most of us managed, and very enjoyable it was too. There was even time to make a wee bumble bee, well, maybe not so wee, it being almost the same size as the flower...

Everything matched, even nail varnish, I think this was down to the overall bias on the colour red today  






 
And here is a picture demo of how the whole threading the bead thing worked. The beads are sort of like knitting stitches, you have to make sure to count your rows so that you get the right shape. Much scolding by me if you add an extra bead where there wasn't supposed to be one! Ah, but sure that's what I'm there for...















So increase and decrease depending on the shape you are after.

You end up with a whole heap of petals ready to be all rolled into a flower formation.

And hey presto, there it is, all rolled up with green florist tape, you can't see the tape in this picture though. 

Beads, beads and more beads

We were making jewellery today in time for some Christmas gifts. We had tons of beads to choose from and that was the hardest thing, too much choice! I had beads from years back that I had saved, so did others in the group. We even had seed beads from Brazil and Ecuador, which added lots of color to the mix.

These are the beautiful seed beads, no two of them the same which makes the necklace even more unique.

We also used ribbon to make other necklaces, and we even got to make some earrings too. The toy animals were not used in the jewelry making but they had great fun amongst all the beads we were using.  

Wet felting - an introduction

We combined needle and wet felting today and started making felt beads or balls which ever way you want to call them! Lots of elbow greece needed to felt a piece of sheep fleece into a nice round shape. Soap and hot water too of course.

You can felt a piece of fleece into a ball without needle felting, but for a nice even shape with no lumpy bits we needle felted them first into rough ball shapes before plunging them into hot water.

We welcomed Varignia to the group of makers - she is a very talented crafter herself and uses recycled materials in her own creations. 

Ah...another member of the group, Simon, all tangled up...

And the transformation of all those felted balls into a stunning necklace. This is Clare's masterpiece.