Description
Beaded decorations are eternally popular, especially for the festive season. I stumbled upon this idea as I was playing around with bugle beads and ideas for netting. These little lantern style beaded decorations are really quick to make. You will need to be familiar with peyote stitch, basic netting and basic Right Angle Weave.
These beaded decorations encase a single bead inside a seed bead structure. Once I had developed the pattern, it reminded me of a lantern. Hence the name.
Although I was thinking along the lines of beaded Christmas decorations when I worked on the design, my customers have given me plenty of other suggestions. This works well as a pendant if you want something for year-round wear. It also sparked the suggestion that I develop it into a box with an opening to allow the central bead to be removed. Naturally, this has sparked all sorts of ideas. So, I plan to develop this!
Materials for these beaded decorations
This project has proved very popular. However, some people have contacted me to ask about the right size of faceted bead for the centre. The actual beads I used came from Creative Beadcraft. You can get a great range of colours, so you can create an assortment of beaded decorations.
Lunasoft round beads also work well in these lantern beaded decorations, as you can see in Dora’s samples.
You will also need to ensure that you use the right size of bugle beads and seed beads. Otherwise the structure for this won’t work.
The seed beads I used came from GJ Beads. When I’m not using delicas, I tend to use Matsuno brand seed beads. I find these pretty regular and great to work with. So, I now sell them on this website too. You can buy 10g or 50g bags. Choose your colours here.
As ever, if you have any questions, do just drop me an email.
