Feeding the Beast

Contrary to popular belief, one does not acquire a bead stash so they can sit atop it like Smaug, who, as Tolkien tells us may not have known a good [bead] from a bad, but “had a good notion of the current market value.” The goal in building a bead stash is to possess every kind of bead ever created is to have the right beads on hand for the project you want to, no, have to make right now.

All right, I admit it, Smaug dwells in the heart of every serious beader. While buggles (non-beading folk) may not understand the pull of the stash, I maintain that everybody collects something and thus can sympathize with a beader’s need to feed the monster.

So here are my words of wisdom on tending your bead stash as it takes over your life.

Don’t Buy Cheap.  Truer advice was never given and never taken.  I heard this from experienced beaders when I was starting out but did I listen? No!  The lure of inexpensive beads was too great and I wanted more bang for my buck. I didn’t stop to consider that there’s a reason some beads are cheap – they aren’t uniformly shaped, their colors fade, their finishes rub off as soon as you have finished the piece (if not while you’re actually working on it – gah!), and they just sit there, like some black hole sucking up space and giving nothing back. Eventually you move them to a remote part of the bead room and they are never heard from again.

Wait For It.  Sign up for the various newsletters put out by bead sellers and wait for the sales. Many have free shipping.  Never buy at the regular price. This means you may not always have the beads on hand that you crave, but ideally, by practicing a method of patient acquisition you will achieve bead nirvana, that state where you actually have on hand the beads you need.

Buy Narrowly. Stick to a specific colorway, for a time at least, building up stocks of different kinds of beads that complement each other. I like to buy in the metallics because copper, gold, bronze and silver go with almost anything.  And if they are too expensive, go for the luster version, poor woman’s gold-plating I call it.  I know you should push yourself to work outside your color preferences but early on, make those preferences work for you.

Indulge Yourself. Make room in an order for that special type of bead or color that may be more than you want to pay. Order just one.  And stop there.  You can do it.

And one day, one golden day, you will come to a bead project you want to make and all the beads will be there, ready to hand. At that point you will realize that your bead stash sucks up more money than your mortgage/rent/school loans/taxes and you are totally fine with that.

Bead On!!

Beta Beaders

One of the things I have been working on is developing instructions and kits for my designs to sell. I taught in a local bead shop for several years and am a teacher in my other life, so I know the first step is to craft good instructions. Looking at the creative process from this angle - how to teach your design to someone else - is an interesting exercise. What can I assume people will know when they come to my design? How detailed should my instructions be? One wants to hit a happy medium between a half-page list and a 1gig file.

So I decided to recruit some Beta Beaders – my friend Connie was my guinea pig and she roped in two other willing innocents, Alicia and Jesse. Actually they were not novices – one of the things that led me to talk to Connie is that we are both stitchers and both Alicia and Jesse were too. So that would be the first assumption – don’t tackle a bead embroidery design if you have no stitching background – otherwise those tiny needles and misbehaving beads will be even more of an aggravation.

We got together one afternoon out on Connie’s lovely enclosed porch and had a grand time. The idea was for them to work their way through my instructions – I supplied them with a kit – and give me a critique. I tried not to guide them as the idea was for them to pretend they were doing this at home on their own.  Their advice and comments were right on target and I’m grateful. Doing the project as a group was also more fun – lots of opportunities for comparing and commenting and just plain beady horsing around.

And, no surprise, some things I never gave a thought to stumped them, other things I thought would stump them didn’t. For example, they had no difficulty stitching the crescent beads, I’m hoping because the advice I gave in my instructions was helpful. On the other hand, I neglected to make clear that when you pick up an O bead plus a seed bead, you are supposed to stitch back through the center of the O bead, not to one side of it – leaving the thread showing. I confess, that is so standard with me I never thought about it – but that’s the view from inside the beading universe, not elsewhere.

                             Beading on the Porch in the Summertime

The project was a piece of bead embroidery using a brass filigree that I painted with Vintaj Patinas. I call it my Filigree Art Nouveau Pin (it can also be made into a pendant) due to its shape. I came up with three colorways and here they are:

                                                    “Dry Martini” 

                                                      “Hollyhock”

                                                       “Harvest”

My thanks to you all, it was a fun afternoon and I love my Beta Beaders!

Overdoing It

One of the hardest things for any artist to learn is knowing when to stop. It’s especially hard for beaders because we like to lay embellishment on with a trowel.  On the other hand, you learn something when you overdo it that is useful for when you try again, which you will inevitably do. After all, for many beaders, if you can bead one of something, why not bead more? Why not bead seven, yes, isn’t seven the most powerfully magical number, wouldn’t seven-- oops, sorry, wandered off into a Harry Potter flashback there. Of course Voldemort didn’t know when to stop either.

Where was I? Oh yes, here’s a design that started out well. Some bead embroidery around a piece of brass filigree I had painted and added a glittery cabochon in its center.

I started with the O beads, spacing them out fairly evenly and had in mind a kind of spreading peacock’s tail, but wound up with this delightful asymmetrical design. I could see this as a necklace with one strap extending from the filigree and another from the adjacent point.

But for some reason I didn’t leave it here, I decided to add beads to create a more even edging which would make it easier to cut out and finish. Here’s the result:

Not quite as interesting as the first draft. The edging smoothed it down a little too much and the filigree looks a bit lost among the seed beads. Though I will note that such might be a desirable effect, depending. Next time around, I’m still going to bead a border that smooths everything out, but I’m going to use black beads. That will give it more shape and drama while still allowing me to cut it out easily.  OK, back to the horcrux drawing board….