I noted not long ago in my Twitter feed that when I get into beading, the blogging stops. When I get into my blog again, beading grinds to a halt. I’m trying to find a bit of moderation with both…so let’s blog about beading!

I think there are few things worse than to be hooked on something that you’re not very good at. Yes, I produce finished stuff. But it takes me a LONG time, plus I screw every piece up at least once. Somehow. You may not see it, but I do.

This post is picture heavy, so I’m going to make it jump to its own page.

I made this one from bead I got from bead binge…pink fire-polished glass and brown crystals. It was easy, because all I had to do was follow a pattern.

The next two I made for Coworker Sharon, who recently moved and has all of her pretties still packed away. This one is made with clear beads, rose quartz beads, 2 crystals and a dichroic glass pendant.

This one is made with purple beads…I used crimps to space the clusters of beads around the wire for an “illusion” type look. The dangly is made by putting beads on a head pin and making a wrapped loop at the top.

And finally, a quickie purple bracelet. This one took 2 tries - the first time I thought I was hotshot enough not to measure it out. It fell right off of my hand without the clasp opened. So I redid it in a smaller size. Unfortunately, this one broke because one of the jump rings wasn’t smushed tight enough. I’ll fix it tonight during Dancing with the Stars*, since that’s my dedicated beading time.

Yesterday, I tried to make a double-strand amethyst chip bracelet (do you know you can get semi-precious beads on eBay much cheaper than in beading stores? This is dangerous..) but I didn’t pull one strand tight enough before the crimp so one strand was tight and the other was saggy. I took great delight in using my wire cutters to chop the wire into dozens of bitty pieces.

But even if I fail, the more I do, the better I’ll get.

*By the way, there is nobody on that show who makes me smile anymore. Short of an injury, I think Kristi will take it all. She has spent 30 years balancing and moving her body crisply and concisely to predetermined choreography…she has the skill necessary to jump in the air and land on either the inside or outside edge of a skate blade that’s less than 1/4″ wide.

So when the judges ooh and ahh over how she can land a one-footed jump during a paso doble, I want to tear my hair out. Fine…figure skating is not the same as ballroom. But it’s much closer to ballroom dancing than acting, singing, standup comedy, or magic is.

Posted at: 6:19 pm in Beadiness, General, Play Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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