On My Table: More Bead Embroidery!

Back on January 19th, I blogged about the bead embroidery piece I was working on for the bead cruise Alice in Wonderland-themed party.  Here's where I left off...

After playing around (adding and ripping out with massive frustration) with some fringe design and bail designs I finally finished the pendant...

This piece challenged me because I had not made this type of bail before.  I wanted to do a ladder-stitch bail but let's just say it wasn't being cooperative.  

After I finished the Mad Hatter, I was feeling full of Wonderland love so I decided to start an Alice pendant...

I don't wear pink often but this cabochon was perfect for all the pink seed beads I had in my stash.

I wanted to break out from just doing rows of backstitch over and over again.  I spoke (lots of texting, actually) with Jenny several times and she encouraged me and gave me lots of suggestions to help me step out of my comfort zone.

I made several mistakes along the way but they were all good lessons to learn.

Now I'm at the point where I need to decide on fringe and a bail design. Since I'm snowed/iced in, I'll be working on that today.

Because I can't seem to work on just one thing at a time, I also started on this piece, using my own porcelain seashell cabochon.  

I've been waiting forever to use these green and sea foam seed beads!

Here's the top portion all finished.  I made a few little errors on the side but practice makes perfect!

I knew this pendant needed more to it so I dug up this tiny fossil sand dollar that Jenny had gifted me and stitched it up with coordinating beads.

After connecting the two pieces, this is how the pendant currently looks.  I had tried adding a tiny bit of fringe to the bottom but was unhappy with all the results.  I'm going to go ahead and decide on a bail design and wrap this pendant up to wear on the cruise.  

If you have tried the basics and want to take the next step, call Jenny....OR pick up a copy of Dimensional Bead Embroidery by Jamie Cloud Eakin.  This is the perfect book to help expand your bead embroidery skills.  

Happy Beading!

On My Table: Bead Embroidery

In just a few more weeks I'll be embarking on the bead cruise.  This will be my second time attending this fun event!  Each year there is a themed party and Queen of Hearts/Alice in Wonderland is the 2015 theme.  I wanted to make a necklace for my party outfit and I selected bead embroidery as the medium.

After digging through my stash of beads and mixed-media stuff, I found a Mad Hatter cabochon I had purchased years ago.  You know those things you buy at the moment but have no idea what you'll do with them?  Yeah, that was one of those purchases.  

There was a slight issue I had to fix though before I got started.  The back of the cabochon was hollow because it was made as a pin without the pinback. I needed a nice flat back so that I could glue a solid base to the beading foundation. I found some leftover epoxy clay and mixed a bit of it up to solve this problem.

After I put the epoxy clay in, I scored a few lines with a piece of wire.  This was just to give the glue some extra grip once the piece was attached to the beading foundation.

After the epoxy clay cured and the piece was glued to the foundation, I sewed on my base row using silver-lined red seed beads.

To make this small piece pop, I selected "galvanized starlight" seed beads for the bezel row.  

The opaque black seed beads I chose for the next row, hid some of the base rows red beads...

My original plan was to use size 8/0 galvanized starlight beads for the basic edge, but then I found these 8/0 flame red beads instead.  They helped bring more red back to the piece after the base row became somewhat hidden.  

And this is where I currently am with the pendant.  I still need to add fringe and a bail.  I already have some czech daggers selected for the fringe.   I've been working on this little by little each night after completing a days work in the studio.

If you'd like to give bead embroidery a try, I highly recommend the following:

Beading with Cabochons by Jaime Cloud Eakin-excellent book with all the info you need to get started.  Detailed instructions and VERY easy to follow

Beadaholique-great retail site that features free video tutorials. They have an entire section of videos dedicated to bead embroidery

Happy Beading!