Beaded Beads and I'm Beading Again

I didn't bead much this winter because I got hooked on machine embroidery and was also back to my porcelain doll reproductions, but I seem to have the beading bug this summer  and will  do some posts again. There are so many wonderful bead blogs that mine seems pretty ordinary, but I was astounded the last time I checked my stats, so I guess I have a few readers.

I love doing beaded beads and recently offered to teach one for my beading group.  I have made many beaded beads but often just end up throwing them in a jar, because although I enjoy making them I just don't always get around to making something with them.  My challenge to myself was to create at least one usable item from some of by beaded beads as one of the things I showed the group.

I have taught beading informally to friends over the years, but until I started in this beading group my beading social networks were mostly the internet and beading books and magazines.  It has been great to meet with others who like to bead. For the workshop, I developed what I thought was a reasonable set of  instructions for a beaded bead with a wooden internal centre done in circular peyote.  Well...... je me trompe!!

Although these little structural wonders are fairly easy once you get the hang of them, for the type we made knowledge of circular peyote, and of how peyote works in general is really important.  After a few minutes into the workshop I realized that this foundational knowledge was needed (and in my instructions I had assumed people had circular peyote experience), so unfortunately I think some people left a little frustrated.  So, I stewed over what to do, feeling I had let them down (and remember that my professional expertise was as a teacher, so maybe I had really lost it!!)

So after getting over my ruminations of what had gone wrong,  I redid my instructions into what I hope is a "teaching" set, where more detail is given and things like step ups and reductions are explained.  I also am making a larger set of teaching beads (I might even use straws and yarn!!), so I hope to have more happy campers when we meet next week.

The brown beads above were made from a pattern on  Flymouche's blog called "La Boulette" and her French instructions are terrific if you understand circular peyote.  Here is a link to her site FLYBLOG.  The pattern is in the archives for August 2009, but please have fun looking at her wonderful blog.  The necklace is what I made for my challenge.  The central bead is from Beadwork beaded bead #2 in the "Cluster Beaded Bead" by Gwen Fisher, April May 2012 issue.  It is really nice.  A little complicated, I think I have way more thread because I got mixed up and had to get back to the right node a few times, but this is the second one I have made and I really like it.

In my next post I will add some links for my bead group about circular peyote and step ups.