Playing with Beads

I had the opportunity to attend Bead Fest in Philadelphia in August with my friends Susan and Joyce. I haven’t made jewelry in years, but decided to tag along. What an exciting few days of learning new techniques as well as my complete overwhelm at the vendor expo!  My main reason to go was to take two classes with Susan Lenart Kazmer.  I love her work!  The classes were fantastic and it was so much fun to play with ice resin. I will write more about that experience in another post.

My great surprise was a class I added because we decided to go a day earlier than I anticipated. I chose a bead weaving class with Beth Kraft – the Magic Carpet.  In class we wove a beaded bracelet with different sized beads.  What a great learning project, which I was able to finish in the day long class.  The Magic Carpet bracelet is on the left in the photo below.  In an instant, I became hooked on bead weaving and ended up buying supplies for more bracelets at the Expo.

After I came home I experimented with making my own patterns.  The bracelet on the right is a simple pattern I made using three colors of round seed beads.  There are several beading software programs that will take photos and make bead patterns, or you may draw your own pattern using the program.  I used BeadTool 4, which works quite well.  It has various styles of seed beads with most of the available colors in the program.  I simply took the Delica seed beads that I had already bought at Bead Fest and made a pattern with them using the program.  That bracelet is in the center.  See the closeup below.

I have designed two more patterns for bracelets, this time from images – one from a photograph and one from my own artwork.  Stay tuned……