Are you sitting comfortably? Then let me begin… My beaded snowflake story starts in a bead shop in Cornwall in the summer of 2012. I was teaching at GJ Beads and somehow I found myself taking a look at the wall of beads that were new to me (can’t think how this happened…). Anyway, I noticed a pack of Spike Beads. Technically these were not new to me as I had seen them advertised and I had seen them used to create edgy, punk-style bracelet designs. Crucially, though, I had not played with them myself. Looking through the colours, I saw the silver that make such great punk styling. Then my eye settled on the crystal and my brain said: icicles! That was it – a nagging idea that would not leave me alone.
Now, my motto is, why buy just a small packet of beads when you can get a large one? So I found myself leaving the shop with not just one large pack of Spike beads, but three…I was so certain that my idea would work that I thought I would need a lot of Spikes to be sure I could make all that I wanted.
A Twist in the Tale
Chapter 2: back at the beading table. I sat 
down happily with my Spike beads and my ideas and began beading. It didn’t take me long to discover that Spike beads are not as easy to deal with as I had imagined. (They really do look like icicles don’t they?…oh, and discovery number two, the crystal colour is really hard to photograph!). You will have to imagine from the photo, but the hole through the Spike bead is a little way above its flat base, although a long way down from the top. The circumference of the bead is fairly wide – those are size 11 seed beads sitting around mine – so all this leads to some interesting engineering problems.
You see, I felt my little Spike bead icicles should form the arms of a beaded snowflake. The only problem was that they had to be encased in beadwork in order to stop them from wobbling around. This meant that the resulting structure would lead to a rather large snowflake. So what? I can live with large beaded snowflakes.
I was also envisaging Cubic Right Angle Weave since that would give me different sides onto which I could join my icicle arms. Given the large structure I have just mentioned, my first ideas involved using pearls for th
e CRAW. They bead up quickly and immediately give a large structure. However, the results were not pretty. Seeing as I apparently enjoy hitting my head against a proverbial brick wall, rather than frog stitching the growing disaster, I persevered until I had a beaded snowflake of sorts. The observant amongst you will note that the Spike beads somehow got abandoned along the way as I couldn’t fit them into the structure.
Now, I knew in my heart of hearts that this was not a winning design. Nevertheless, I thought I would test my own views, so I posted some photos online. Nobody was rude enough to say ‘this is rubbish’ (thank you, you are all lovely), but I did end up having a private conversation with a beading friend who very politely agreed with me that the verdict should be ‘could do better.’ So I never wrote up the pattern, although the embarrassing photo remains as you can see!
Chapter 3: Never let an idea go to waste
So, here we are. My one idea has somehow turned into two. At this point Spike bead icicles and beaded snowflakes seemed to be two separate projects. I still couldn’t get the vision of Spike beads forming snowflake arms out of my head. So what do I do?…play with the Spike beads some more, so that I could get used to encasing them and get the feel for how they really work.
I did end up with two projects as a result of these efforts. The little Ice Crystal earrings and a modification of this idea that turned into an ice crystal decoration. So, by this time, we’re up to 2013 and I’m planning workshops for GJ Beads in 2014. My Christmas decorations workshop of 2013 (featuring projects from my Beaded Christmas books) had gone down so well, that they asked me for some more decorations for 2014. There’s nothing like beading to order under pressure and by this point I had added some ice blue twisted bugle beads to my collection. So the Shooting Star Ornament was born, but still no beaded snowflake.
Chapter 4: The Eureka Moment
By this point I’m working my way nicely through my first box of Spike beads and I’m continually cursing myself for choosing clear glass and mixing it with sparkly silver whenever I come to photograph the projects! Then, it came to me…the Eureka moment that resulted in my beaded snowflake complete with ice crystal arms: snowflake forms!
For those of you who enjoy a timeline, we have fast-forwarded to the end of 2015 by now. The Eureka moment came some time after I had been working with some snowflake forms to create a Christmas mobile. I had realised that the scale required to make the Spike beads work as arms was simply too large to be self-supporting. I had been playing around with different ideas for joining the arms at lower points to try and add stability, but still the image in my head would not emerge in bead form. Then I realised, that the snowflake forms would give me the base I needed…or so I hoped!
It took a few more months before I managed to start putting my ideas into practise. Other more pressing projects and deadlines took precedence, but feeling fairly certain that I might just have cracked it, I decided this would be my project for the 2016 Winter Sparkle special of Bead and Jewellery Magazine.
Once again, in a ‘now or never’ kind of pressure, but this time with the added problem of the CFS severely limiting the amount of beading I could actually do, I embarked upon my latest experiment. Hallelujah! It worked!
My Spike Bead experiments had taught me enough to know how to incorporate them into the 
design and my focus was now mostly upon getting maximum sparkle into the project. So, with shiny Superduos, sparkling crystal Rivolis, Ceylon and Silver Lined beads, I managed to create…you guessed it, a photographic nightmare! I have promised the photographer at the magazine that I will avoid all white, silver, clear and shiny beads in future, but if you do get to see a copy of issue 74 of Bead and Jewellery Magazine, you will see that he has done me proud! Here, I’ll just show you the not-so-brilliant shot that I took before sending the project into the office.
Chapter 5: A beaded snowflake at last!
Is that the end of my beaded snowflake story? Of course not. It took me a long time to bead that Crystal Spike snowflake and it was mostly worked in Right Angle Weave, so I know a lot of people out there are not going to like me very much for that. So, all that time spent beading and meditating upon beading tends to lead to new ideas. In this case, two new ideas…what if I used Peyote stitch instead of Right Angle Weave and what if I used my beautiful pale turquoise pearls instead of the Spikes?
Well, I couldn’t resist seeing where this would lead me. Inspired by the popularity of ‘Frozen’ and by the gorgeous silver-turquoise-blue of Elsa’s character, the Elsa Beaded Snowflake evolved and that is the new pattern that I want to share with you here.
So, in one final plot twist that you didn’t see coming (although maybe you wondered what the main photo was all about!), this story isn’t about a beaded snowflake made with Spike beads for ice crystal arms. No, it’s the story of Elsa’s snowflake: the soft feminine design in pretty icy blues with delicate pearl tips and detailed pattern in the arms. This is the real beaded snowflake I want to launch in 2016. It measures 6″ across, will take a couple of days to make – or more if you like lots of short beading sessions – and mine is going to be hanging from the chandelier-style light (not quite as grand as it sounds) in my beading studio this Christmas.
The Final Word
Am I now happy? Not entirely. Will there be more snowflakes to come? Probably. You guessed it, that pesky little ‘perfect image’ is still bugging me and I still haven’t quite captured the snowflake that is floating around in my imagination, although I have come a lot 
closer.
I will leave you with one final thought. My beaded snowflake journey has come a long way since my first quick-make easy wire snowflakes. They are still a winner though and I’m heading off to make some more to sit on my Christmas tree this year. So, if you need a quick snowflake, I have kits that will make you a good sized collection in no time at all and they are perfect even if you have no beading experience. I am going to continue to ponder snowflakes and perhaps one day I will hit upon a design that satisfies!
