Some Pictures of Beaded Items

I love doing off loom bead weaving and bead embroidery. Thank goodness that my close up vision is still good because I definitely like the really small beads!.

This bracelet is my "Garden Club" bracelet. I always joke that this is as close as I'll ever get to the real garden club. This bracelet has always been one of my favorite to make and one of my best sellers.

This bracelet won first place at the Hildene Needlework Show. It has a peyote base with lots of embellishment on top. The bracelet closes with hidden snaps.

I do have quite a bit of my bead embroidery on other blog posts. I especially like some of the barrettes that I've done. All of these are definitely labors of love. They all take many hours of work but I really enjoy doing it.

Beaded Quilt Blocks

I've also been making up some beaded quilt blocks in the past month or so. The beaded portion is a 3" square. My current plan is to make a wall hanging with all the squares, but I also think they might be cute individually framed with a wide white mat and a square thin black frame (maybe 9" x 9" total?) . So far, I have absolutely no plan for coordinating either the center fabrics or bead colors.
--but I don't think that will be a problem...

The first one is my favorite so far. But, it's also my favorite fabric!

Bead Embroidered Barrette

Last August I posted a picture of this barrette while I was still working on it. I've had it done now for several months and wear it all the time. It fits a 4" long barrette. I also made another one (even more elaborate) that I will try to post soon.

I'm Back - Winter bead embroidery projects

It's been five months since my last post. So much for keeping a current journal of projects, classes, kid activities and life... It's been quiet on the Bogate front during this time. I only did one craft fair at Christmas time, I haven't taught any classes and I haven't really been making that much. That's not really true, but I consider the things that I've made to be more "playing" rather than working. But then again, I am very lucky to consider most of the work I do as playtime.

For a non-TV watcher, I've been watching a lot of TV this fall and winter. We made the big mistake of renting the DVD of the series called "24" It is so good (and addictive) that we have watched all five of the previous seasons now. Season 6 just began and I know what I'll be doing now on Monday nights.

One thing that I do alot of when watching TV is beading. I just embroidered these three hearts that I'll make into pins for Valentines Day. My favorite is the first. I usually just wing it when I do bead embroidery. I look at it kind of like trying to put a puzzle together. With this heart, I actually first drew a rough sketch. While I didn't really follow it exactly, it is pretty close to my plan. Since I like this first one the best, maybe there is something said for planning ahead.

I like the stripe effect on this one. Interesting when one row is with 8s and the other row is with 11s. It creates a nice texture in addition to the color change.
In this heart, I used a mix of all size 11 beads. The beads are laid out in various circles. The smallest circle is on the top left and is the most obvious. The other areas just show parts of circles and aren't as effective. I think next time I'll have the center of the circle in the middle of the heart and just have one circle radiate out.
(You can see the pencil outline of the arc I drew for the lowest circle segment).

These hearts have been fun. I hope to come up with a variety of samples and techniques. It would make a nice class project.

Bead embroidery

I can't find the bead embroidery that I did in Mattapoisett. It was a 3" heart in all different reds. I really liked it even though I had no idea what to do with it. If I find it, I'll post a picture.

Here are several other things I'm working on. I really like how the one on the bottom is coming out. I might make a barrette with it. As far as the one on the top, I have no idea- maybe some fringe around the edges.