Beads

I haven't done anything with beads in years. I've been wanting to do some beading lately and I found some beads via freecycle yesterday. This stuff is engrossing and I stayed up way too late weaving a bracelet. Of course, this morning when I added a clasp to my bracelet, a couple of girls wanted to play with beads, too.

I attached a clasp to one end of a piece of plastic coated beading wire for Esther and let her dig around in a bowl of mixed beads. She made a thoroughly Esther-fied necklace.

She particularly wanted me to get a picture of the silver cross with red rhinestones. 

Ruth has a beading kit with a book on right-angle weave (RAW) and she used instructions from that book to make this sweet little bracelet.

She got a little help getting started and putting on the clasp, but she did most of it herself.

Here's my bracelet that started the whole thing.

I used the instructions here: http://whimbeads.com/cart.asp?pg=classroom-peyotechannelbracelet I had to make a few modifications. From here on out I'll be talking technical beading talk, so if you're not interested, now is the time to tune out.

As written and designed the instructions are incorrect. You should not start by stringing an even number of beads, but a number divisible by 4, plus 1. My crystals are oval rather than round - about 4mm x 6 mm. I needed to space them every 6 columns of Peyote stitch rather than every 4, so I needed to string on a multiple of 6, plus 1. I began weaving based on spacing of every 4, and once I realized I needed wider spacing, had to add two columns to the end of the weaving to make the crystals come out even.

I also made a mistake in adding rows of stitching and to fix it I chose to add a row to each side rather than rip out a bunch of work. This was to make sure the crystals were attached to the longer columns of weaving instead of the shorter columns. My bracelet ended up stiff and difficult to bend gracefully around the wrist, and I suspect the extra rows may be partly to blame for this.

Also, if you have it available (I was working from stash), the recommended magnetic clasp will make this MUCH easier to put on. I was not able to put this on myself without help from another person.

Mistakes and all, I love making pretty things.