I have been beading for over fifteen years and my beadwork is bound up with my health. You will know this story if you have followed my blog before.
I started beading after becoming seriously ill and I have found the beadwork consistently therapeutic. Beading has also given me a creative outlet and I think this is a healthy thing for anyone. I have come to know a lot of other beaders and I realise that many of us are suffering from difficult health conditions.
So, although I wanted to write mostly about my beading adventures, I have also talked more personally. I think we can all support each other. Sometimes it is comforting just to know that you’re not the only one who is struggling. So, I’ve shared some of my struggles and doubts on here. Since I believe it’s important to speak out, I thought I had better start by setting an example!
I hope you enjoy reading about my general beading adventures in this part of the blog.
If you’re new to beading, or you’ve been away from the beading scene for a while, you may be wondering what National Beading Week is. Well, it’s an initiative started by the Beadworker’s Guild in the UK in 2015. So this is in fact our very first National Beading Week. It’s all about spreading the…
One of the questions I’m most often asked is where do the ideas for your beading designs come from? Mostly, I don’t really know. Sometimes I have an image in my head and feel a compulsion to make it in beads. Sometimes I want to experiment with a concept. Sometimes I see something in the…
I hadn’t intended writing this post, but I have received so much overwhelming support from the beading community on the Battle of the Beadsmith page, along with personal messages, that I feel I want to explain a little more about how I’m feeling right now. The past few weeks have been a bit of a…
In the three years that I’ve taken part in Battle of the Beadsmith, I’ve established two personal traditions: a battle blog written just after my piece has been revealed and an exit in round 1. So, this blog upholds the first of these two traditions and I expect to continue the second when voting takes…
In case some of you have been wondering where I was last week, I took a trip to Venice, Italy. This is a fascinating and incredibly beautiful city, which I have had the pleasure of visiting before, but only for a few days. I had seen the main sights and admired the wonderful light that…
It’s now about halfway through the allocated time for the biggest of my 2015 beading competitions: the Battle of the Beadsmith, so I thought it was about time I gave you all a little preview of what I’m doing this year… …although I can’t actually do that since my piece is shrouded in the deepest…
Well, it’s been a while since I posted on here, despite my best efforts, so time to remedy that and time to show you why Battle On! is such an apt title for this post. I think my last blog was about two months ago when I was announcing plans for National Beading Week. I…
This is the first of what will probably be a series of blogs about National Beading Week 2015. This is the first event of its kind and has been organised by the Beadworker’s Guild in the UK. The event will take place from 25th July to 2nd August. The idea behind National Beading Week is…
Do you have beads galore? Get your beading fix here>> Or, Read my newest blog post here>> Well what could be better than beads galore?! I confess I ‘may’ have taken advantage of a few of the many 2015 January sales that my favourite bead shops are currently offering. As with everything else at this…
I have just been adding three patterns to my website and, strangely, they bring me back full circle through the year, so I thought today would be the perfect opportunity to spend a little time looking back on 2014. January saw the publication of my coral reef bracelet in the Beadworkers Guild journal and now,…
