BJP 2013 ~ October Ta-dah

It was a set of mugs given to me by friends for a birthday that inspired us to plant a Toad Lily in the garden. The flowers are small but so exquisite especially against the red leaves of Autumn.

They are so precise in the centre but goodness knows how I would create them in beads so I put it off and started with a red autumn leaf and a bud.

Next came the petals before finally trying to work out a way to bead the centre.
The flower in the middle has a tube which divides into three and around it six filaments and anthers so I made a tube of size 6 green beads with three clusters coming out of the top using size 15 beads and I used the same size beads to make striped filaments with a size 6 bead at the top. Not as pretty and exact as the flower but I quite like my quirky centres.

I wish I could have made the flowers more delicate or perhaps I should made the autumn leaf larger.

So this is my October leaf capturing a bit of autumn colour and the Toad Lily in beads.



BJP 2013 ~ September Ta-dah

Beading a Helenium for my September leaf caused me to inspect the flowers closer.

The way the centres develop is fascinating as they start with a brown dome across which waves of yellow pollen spread until a sphere is created. I love beading a bead and knew the same technique would work well as a centre. I just used a felt bead and covered it three quarters of the way.

I decided to needle felt some background flowers before adding bright red beads for the petals.

The final addition was a picot edging.

The branches are filling up and I've got some fabric for the background but apart from embroidering the stems I'm still not sure how to add the months and names of the flowers. Any ideas?

Perhaps a border or tags, printed or sown. Well I have a few months to play around :) Happy days.

BJP 2013 June ~ Ta-dah

June is when our iris flower next to the pond. They inspire me to draw, paint and to pick up my camera. They have a page in my garden scrapbook.

We have had a heat wave here in England in July but when I took my photo in June they were covered in raindrops.

When I started to work with felt I made a felt picture but it just sat in a box with other felt picture experiments until I had the idea of using it as the base for my June leaf.

I didn't want to cover too much of the felt so started by outlining the petals and then added a beaded edge.

Not so much beading this time but I like the blend of the felt and the different coloured beads.

On to July!

Thank you

Joining the Bead Journal Project for 2013 gave me the impetus to start a blog of my own at the end of 2012 so a big thank you to Robin and all the participants of the BJP 2012. Today I have started by own blogroll and there have been three other blogs apart from the beading blogs that I looked at regularly during 2012 and inspired me with my felting, crochet and beading so I wanted to say thank you and share a few of the makes they inspired.

Fiona at MarmaladeRose makes stunning wet felted pictures enhanced by lots of machine stitches and hand embroidery. I occasionally have added a few beads but have been unsure about adding stitches so most have remained simply as a felt picture as with the snowdrops below. Thank you Fiona and perhaps in 2013 I will be a bit more adventurous with the stitching.

Lucy at Attic24 crochets brilliantly coloured blankets, cushions and has great tutorials for all sorts of beautiful hooky creations. Over the last year I have been learning to spin with a drop spindle and made a knitted cushion and was inspired by Lucy's flower tutorial to crochet a flower to decorate the cushion and added a beaded rosette as the centre.

I am now following her bag tutorial to use the wool I spin on my new Lendrum spinning wheel. Lots of texture as I am just learning but I love being able to use what I spin no matter how many bumps and lumps there are.

I also loved following Lucy's hexagon pattern to make a circular cushion. I just need a few tiny squares to fill in gaps on the side. Thank you Lucy.

Jessica at Such Pretty Things  for providing a bit of sparkle and making me think about the palette of colours I use when being creative and the photographs I want to take. I love seeing the photo journals of her trips antiquing / vintiquing in Paris, London and America. It brings back happy memories of visiting thrift shops when we lived in Fairport, Rochester, NY for a couple of years.

Thank you to you all and best wishes to everyone for 2013.

The second felt bag

This is the first felt bag. No beads needed for this. Just a pattern from Lisa Lam's  first book 'The Bag Making Bible'. I used 'The Reversible Bucket Bag' pattern with a few modifications. It is a slightly different size because you never quite know with wet felting how big it will end up and it is not reversible but has a lovely shocking pink lining instead. It hangs on a dining room chair with the current knitting or crochet project ready for me to grap to take out.

Whilst I was finishing this bag I knew what I wanted to make next. A felt flap for Lisa's 'The Oversized Fashionista Bag' and I wanted to add beads to decorate the flower centre on the front. I just needed to decide how.

So various ideas were tried.

And here is the finished bag. I made the main flower centre by covering a button with felt and then sewed concentric circles of beads around and then added a picot edge of beads to finish off. The smaller flowers are a flat circular bead with one ring of beads.

And yes there is a third bag on the way. This time a beaded dragonfly.

The difference a year makes

A year ago I was using beads to  decorate a felt pouch I'd made and I was quite happy with a random arrangement of beads for the centre of a the flower . But after Christmas I found Beadlust the blogspot of Robin Atkins and that inspired me to try and do more with beads.  I loved the idea of 'The Bead Journal Project' and thought next year I'll join. Over the past year I have visited Beadlust and looked to see how participants projects have been going and out of the corner of my eye I would see Robin's mantra of -just do it. So today is the day I register for the 2013 BJP and I have started to set up my first blog to record how things go with the beading and any other things I might make as I'm fiddle faddling away with fleece, fibre and fabric. So what have I been doing with beads in 2012? Perhaps that will be for the next posts.