Beading Inspiration for You

People often ask me where I get my ideas. What is my beading inspiration? In fact this is one of the most common questions put to designers.

What is it that sparks an idea? For some people, the question is simply curiosity. Perhaps the desire to find out more about the designer. For others, this is a question that they hope will help them to find their own beading inspiration.

Now, I’m not going to give you the answer you are expecting here.

Instead, I want to share a story. Last week, I received a truly inspiring email from a lady who had bought my Advent Calendar pattern. She was writing to say that she had finished her version already and she sent me a teaser photo.

After a few emails back and forth, Petra had sent me the full story. It included her design notes and photos of all the lovely creative details she had included.

So, I’m going to share Petra’s story with you (with her permission, I hasten to add) and then I’ll give you the beading inspiration you’re seeking.

Petra’s Story…

Dear Katie, it was such fun to bead this calendar and I’m really looking forward to hopefully enjoying it for years and then to leaving it for my kids and the generations to come…

Please find in what follows some remarks about the way I realised your great idea.

Please note that most of the pictures had been taken during the beading process. Hence they do not necessarily show the finalised item.

Beaded Boxes

As for the boxes, I followed (more or less) your description. What I did differently:

• I started each bottom hexagon with an armspan of thread and began a new thread for the walls in order to avoid running out of thread in the middle of the box. I later took the thread tails from the bottom section to bead the 2/3 extra rows for the assembly.
• In order to avoid any boredom, I put different patterns on each box. Some are quite straightforward, some are more subtle and some are a bit more complex. It was really fun to find out that there are not only diamonds but flowers, circles, hearts and much more hidden in this simple little peyote design….

For the upper Delica rows, when beading the „enforcement round“ after step 24, I simply put another Delica in each gap of a corner. I had to push it a bit inside the box, but it works fine for closing the gap (not easy to show it on a photo):

I did 3 special boxes:

Special Box 1

…with only 3 rows for the walls, containing some beaded matchsticks. I added a secret second level for fragrance. Take out the matchsticks and you can use this level to add a bit of cotton with some drops of a Christmas fragrance or some spices like cinnamon bark, cloves, dried orange zest…

The matches consist of Delica 15, worked on a 3 beads-base RAW with an FP bead on top.

Special box 2

…with 7 row-walls for the 24^th (for more chocolate!)

Special box 3

…with 11 rows serving as a „lighthouse“. This is the container for the 4 flames plus 2 replacement flames hidden in the bottom part. I made a Hexagon with a black wick to separate the „regular“ 4 flame stock and the 2 extra flames. It’s a bit fiddly to get the hexagon out of the box (might need tweezers) but that’s fully on purpose!!

While the 7-row-box is still stable, the 11-row-box became a bit wobbly. To stabilize it, I cut a strip out of these clear plastic boxes for prepacked grapes, tomatoes etc. from the supermarket. This material is nearly invisible, very thin yet stable, food-safe and easy to cut and bend.

The Lids

I made these like you described but with patterns…

The Labels

• I followed your instructions except that I put a little dot behind the „6“, the „9“, the „12“ and the „21“ to allow us to identify these numbers correctly as I had/may have years where I (will) fill(ed) the calender with short sections of a Christmas story so that the boxes would necessarily need to be opened in the correct order.
• I furthermore beaded two extra labels for my extra boxes: one with my initials and the year attached to the lighthouse, one with the emergency number to call the fire brigade (attached to the matchbox. Just in case! 😊)

The Candles

Following the good old German tradition, I only made 4 candles but all different sizes. I beaded 40 rows for the bottom halves and 18 for the top part of the smallest candle. Then, +12, +24, +36 for the other candles, respectively.

I did not zip the parts together immediately but did this only as the very last step of the assembly. Doing so made the whole construction much easier to handle.

I wasn’t really happy with the idea of wrapping paper around plastic tubes to stuff the candles as I want to keep the calender „waterproof“ to allow me to clean it from dust and melted chocolate…! So I went to a DIY store for a round log stick with exactly the diameter of the candles. This worked out perfectly.

The Wick

I did the first row with three size 11 Delicas in the colour of the candle and changed to a bright cream for the rest of the wick. No black as these candles hadn’t been lit yet…. 😊

Flames

I used a mix of Topaz AB and Capri Gold Topaz to have some blue and some golden hues in the flames. Golden Delicas for the embellishment. To give the flames a little tip, I beaded some extra Delicas on top of the flames.

Assembling

I had to put together 4 candles (only their bottom halves) plus the boxes with their lids attached but without labels so far. Given the form of my advent calendar, i.e. each candle surrounded by 6 boxes (what I will call a „module“ in what follows) plus one extra box at each end, it was not too difficult to assemble the whole thing.

However, there are 2 important things to consider:

1. If you want to allow free space to open for every lid, you have to ensure that the lids will all open to the outside of your work – which is not necessarily the opposite direction from the candle! (Guess why I tell you this…)
2. As the modules will be sewn together on 2 boxes, you have to keep in mind where to only put 2 extra rows for the zipping. Meaning, preparing 4 single modules with 3 extra rows for zipping wouldn’t work…

To figure out which arrangement looks best for me, I took a lot of pictures to be able to compare and choose. I then turned every module upside down to zip the boxes together on their bottom side which actually went very well as I only had the little stumps of the candles in the middle of each module.

After turning the whole construction back to the right position, I put little stickers on each lid to assign the labels nicely. Attaching the labels to the lids wasn’t too complicated but I wasn’t very happy with the Superduo solution on top of the boxes. Firstly, I personally don’t like to have empty holes in beads; for me it looks as though something had been lost or had been forgotten. Secondly, the 6 Superduos on the top were hiding quite a portion of the design of the lid and felt a bit wobbly and were not easy to grasp. Hence, I went for an extra round of Delicas 10 which I put between the empty holes of the Superduos. This resulted in something like little crowns on top of the lids. Nice to look at and good to grasp.

As a very last step, I zipped the bottom and top parts of the candles together.

Katie, once again: thank you very much for this great project and your excellent pattern!

And… yes you are right, beading these little boxes can be very addictive!

Since I have plenty of beads left over and a lot of ideas for what to store in these cute treasure chests (a gift coupon, an invitation, baby’s first teeth, a little USB stick, a healing stone, ….) I’m pretty sure to bead MUCH MORE very soon….. 😊

My Beading Inspiration

I hope you will agree, Petra’s Advent Calendar is wonderful. The reason I wanted to share it with you is partly to inspire you, but also because it inspires me.

I love to hear from the people who have bought and used my patterns. I am truly in awe of the changes they make. So, I see things that I never thought of, but which improve my designs.

Just thinking back to a couple of other memorable examples over the years. I loved Sanya’s creativity in seeing the ‘Suzy Q’ recipe as a potential crocodile. So, she used the design to create her cute snappy crocodile ring.

Then, Dora had a bit of beading inspiration of her own. She wanted to make a kite and had an idea of what she ought to be doing. But she then found a couple of my patterns to combine in order to develop and realise the kit image that she had in mind.

In case you’re wondering, the bows came from this earring pattern and the diamond shape for the kite is a Peyote diamond that I used in this necklace design.

Hearing stories like this literally inspires me to keep beading. We are all members of a wonderful community of ideas and inspiration, so how lucky we are!

How can you find beading inspiration?

Well, for those of you who started reading this in hopes of learning how to start creating your own work, I have two messages for you to take away.

Firstly, there isn’t some special gift or secret to doing this. All these stories come from people just like you. Beaders who have an idea and then seek out a pattern to bring their idea to life.

Secondly, neither I nor any other designer has any magical source of ideas. We literally just walk around and see beading inspiration in everyday objects. So, you can look around you and find something that sparks an idea right now.

In fact, I’m going to challenge you: find just one thing in your life today that inspires an idea for some beading. Leave me a comment to tell me what you found.

Or just share your personal beading inspiration for someone else reading this, just like you…