I've not blogged for ages... sorry. I've not had a great deal to say for myself as I've had to put a lot of effort into my day job over the last few months. But recently, I've put a lot of time into my beading again. What I have to share with you tonight is a little experiment. I recently bought some spike beads, in two different sizes, and I decided to sit down and play with the baby spikes this evening.
These baby spikes are 5mm x 7mm, and they are coloured 'Magic Lilac'. The spikes I actually used in my beading were Magic Orchid, and had slightly more green to them, but they're just a beautiful.
I had a pack of six of them, so making a six-sided shape was the obvious choice.
Initially, I started out small, but realised that that wasn't going to work, and that the spikes needed to have a fair number of beads around them if I was going to join them in a way that gave a strong structure; so the bezelling began! I started off with a ring of size 15s, then increased to 11s around each of the six spikes, then joined them using size 8s. I must admit, I didn't manage to do it quite in the way I had planned, but that was mostly to do with the bead-count. It turned out that I prefer the way I 'botched'!
The corners needed reinforcing to strengthen up the structure, and then I had 12 threads to weave in (yawn!).
I'm very happy with the finished result. A good beading friend of mine made my day by describing it as 'very Laura McCabe'. I couldn't have been happier as I'm going on Laura's beaded sculpture master-class in a months time... I'm still nervous about it, but I'm sure it'll be great fun!
So, this is my little spiky ball of beads.... no idea what I'll do with it; it'll probably be added to my pile of 'beady somethings' on my desk.
My last post was about a little robin I had embroidered... this is only a short one, but after the really positive feedback I got on the Robin, I thought I'd try something a little different, and bead a blue tit instead. For those of you who aren't native to the UK, blue tits are tiny little birds, which are rather partial to peanuts, and can be found in British gardens.
In a fit of craziness, I decided to bead it in size 15 beads, they're about 1.2mm across, so they're REALLY small.
I was very pleased with the shape of my blue tit... I am totally rubbish at drawing, so the fact that the shape I drew actually looks like a bird, and was actually recognisable as a blue tit was a real triumph!
So, without further ado, here is my little beaded blue tit! I hope you like him as much as I do. I will be wearing him to work tomorrow - I turned him into a broach.
