Miscellaneous

The project that has taken me the longest to complete is this 'Gazing globe' beaded bag. I spent more than a year start to finish, it is not one that I spent many hours on at any given time. It's the project I worked on in between projects. It is peyote stitched and that can get monotonous, especially when counting spaces to get every color in the right spot. The pattern can be found in "Fantasy Beaded Bags" by Deb Bergs. The bag part of it is approximately 3 1/2 by 4 1/2 and oh, the sparkle on this is amazing. I was so happy when it was finally done. Ultimately I did enjoy beading this, but am not sure I'd tackle project such as this again. I find improvisational beading so much more satisfying than trying to follow a pattern.


I have been a cross stitcher for years and my first introduction to any substantial beading was through this sunflower kit. It is called bead point - the beads are sewn to a #14 interlocking canvas with a half stitch similar to what would be used in cross stitch. The completed size is about 5"x7". I purchased the kit from Ann Benson about 3 years ago, she now has an updated website with wide variety of bead kits and some awesome free tutorials, some animated and printable. If there was ever a stitch you wanted to learn, that website is a great place to start.


I made a little amulet bag early on - before I discovered bead embroidery as I know it today. This little bag came as a kit from Unique Beaded Jewelery. This was a good way for me to start with sewing beads to cloth.


Last are a couple of the first cabs I tried my hand at beading around. The brown cab is a small vintage German glass, about 1 inch - after it was beaded.

The other is a glass faceted opal cab about 1 1/2 inches. I hope to explore beading around cabs a bit more in the future... so many different things to try!