FOG Tuesday - Bead-azzled

Our December FOG session was a wonderfully calm warm day for December, which turned out to be a great help as we had a lot of people making beads with the heat guns and we were able to do that outside.

We started as usual with our embroidery stitch warm up. Our stitch for the day was the Danish Knot Stitch. This is an easy knot and thoughts were percolating around which project to use it on by using it to create some texture, particularly when it stitched in groups.

Next we started making beads. There was a plethora of materials provided for those who got kits and no one was able to use everything!  

The basic process is to wrap your material around a knitting needle or bamboo skewer. Depending on the material, you can glue it, or use a heat gun to bind the materials together. Possibilities abound, limited only by one’s imagination. As you can see from the photos, many different types of beads were created.

Once completed, the bead was coated with Triple Thick by Americana to add a glossy finish to the bead. This product is a thick varnish which can also be used like glue. After the first coat the bead can be rolled in seed beads, or micro beads, while the coating is still wet. Once the first coat is dry, another top coat can be added to really seal in the beads. Another finishing touch was to wrap around the bead, by itself or with seed beads threaded onto the wire.

Some of the materials used to make our beads included: Tyvek, plastic film, plastic sheet protectors, shrink film (in clear and matte), security envelopes, origami paper, newsprint, abaca mesh and paper, angelina (or Textiva) film, Angelina fibres, polyester fabric, wire, dryer sheets, needle felted organza, sequin waste, organza fabric, painted Lutradur, painted fusible web, tissue paper, felt sewn with a decorative stitch, and corrugated paper.

These will be great to use on mixed media or fibre art pieces or in jewellery.

 

The possibilities are endless and we really only scratched the surface, in spite of the quantities of beads created.

We finished off the day with a present to everyone of an organza ribbon necklace for that special bead!

Arts Club at the Library

With Spring in the not-too-distant future, we worked with wire and beads at the March Arts Club to create a small bird’s nest pendant complete with soon-to-hatch eggs. 

Techniques for this pendant abound on the internet and the nests can be made from nearly any gauge of wire, though we chose a slightly larger gauge of 18 or 20. Spools of 20 gauge wire may be found quite inexpensively at most hardware stores. The copper wire is particularly nice for this project. 

We found the small bird charm at Beads and Plenty More here in Calgary. They were the perfect addition to the pendant.

Once all the nest pendants had been finished, each person received an organza and cord necklace to string their pendant for wearing.

If you want to make matching earrings with 1 egg, or 3 small seed bead eggs, then you would likely want to use a finer gauge of wire, perhaps 24 or 26. This finer gauge wire will need to be purchased at a craft or bead shop.

Lastly each person picked a tumbled stone and with an 8” length of 20 gauge copper wire tried their hand at wire wrapping. These too could be worn as a pendant.

Until April Arts Club…