National Craft Month Challenge

Well, earlier this week I decided to celebrate two ideas in one challenge! March is National Craft Month, so it’s a great excuse to get out your beads (or other favourite crafting materials) and make some projects…as if we need an excuse to do that, let’s be honest! Secondly, I am constantly reminded how much of a community we have amongst beaders. We are a friendly bunch and like to share our work and help our fellows and that way, the art form is constantly growing to reach new heights. So, I invited any of you who would like to join in, to take up one or more of the challenges I’m going to be setting this week, use them to create a piece of jewellery and then share photos of your piece (or pieces!) on here along with the story behind them.

You can find the complete idea and the first two challenges here. Today, as it’s the 1st of March, I’m setting the next challenge:

3. Make a beaded bead…or some beaded beads

If you’ve never tried this before, I love making these. Beaded beads give your work a really personal touch and you can make them as simple or as complex as you like. I often use them as a project for teaching new techniques. You can get to grips with the basics of a technique, stitch a few rows and end up with something to show for it…a bead to use! It also helps with the repetition – if you have to get used to starting off each time you make a new bead, you really get into the swing of how to start techniques, like tubular peyote, which can be the tricky part. I’ve also got a lot more adventurous and used beaded beads as small objects, like my ever popular liquorice allsorts or strawberries. So, if you want to have a go, there are some patterns for inspiration on here, or just invent your own.

As I’ve been setting the challenges, I’ve also managed to get ahead and have completed my first project, actually managing to use all three challenges so far! I picked a colour scheme that I rarely use…unless I’m making leaves for my beaded flowers, my green beads rarely get used. There’s no particular reason for this – I don’t dislike green, but for some reason or another, I realised I have made very few projects in green. So I combined some green beads with gold to make a couple of beaded beads as a beginner’s tutorial for tubular peyote (see how I managed to get beaded beads in there too!) and then I combined them with a little stretch of chain maille. This is a completely new technique for me, so that crosses off challenge two! Although I work a lot with wire when I’m doing French beading and I’m always making wire wrapped loops, I never really do a lot of other wirework, so I’m thinking that perhaps I will start learning more chain maille now and then I can combine all sorts of chains with my beads.

I’m liking this challenge already, so I hope lots of you will also join in and enjoy it. I’m looking forward to seeing the results, so keep looking out for more challenges this week…