Beading Arts

Hubble Stitch 2: Further Adventures into Planet Hubble by Melanie de Miguel Learn to Use Two-Hole Beads with 25 Fabulous Projects: A Beginner's Guide to Designing With Twin Beads, SuperDuos, and More by Teresa Morse Exotic Adornments: 18 Luxurious Beadwork Jewelry Projects by Kelly Wiese More 3-D Butterflies in Peyote Stitch by Sheila Root Making Wire Jewellery by Janice Zethraeus Crafter's Market: The DIY Resource for Creating a Successful and Profitable Craft Business by Abigail Patner Glassenberg

Last week, I showed you how I decided to trap this unusually shaped slab in a wire cage in order to add it to a bead embroidered necklace.  Starting where we left off... 8. I trimmed the foundation fabric close to the outside edge of stack stitched beads, and removed the guide thread. 9. Since this is a heavy piece, I decided to add another piece of interfacing (see step 3), this time to the entire piece.  I chose Lutradur, because it is extremely strong even though it is quite thin. 10. After cutting a backing piece of fabric, I used edging brick stitch to cover the raw edges all the way around. 11. Around the sides and the top, I added a simple stack stitch to each edging bead. 12. Near the bottom, I added heavier beads and stitched the stacks longer so that they became fringe. 13. I tested the piece for balance and chose two spots on the sides near the top where I wanted the necklace strands to attach.  At those points, I stitched two square

3D Goofy Turkey Place Cards Put smiles on guests' faces this Thanksgiving as they search for the goofy turkey place cards clutching guest names in the beaks. How-to and downloads. Pattern Mix & Match Card: Eye-catching & Easy Peasy If you enjoy mixing and matching patterns in your decor or art, then you'll love making this pattern mix and match card!

Sometimes you have to get more than just a little bit creative when adding a stone or other item to a piece of bead embroidery.  I have used wire wrapping many times to help secure a cabochon or donut (like in Orinoco Flow , below). The wire gives you more places to catch a thread and stitch the odd-shaped item down. But this slab of amethyst crystals had me stumped for awhile.  Until I decided to create a cage for it that didn't actually wrap around it! I'm going to share many of my steps with you over the next few weeks.  If you are a beginner to bead embroidery, please help yourself to a download of the first chapter of Every Bead Has a Story .  You will find step-by-step instructions for putting together a bead embroidered piece, including back stitch, edging brick stitch, stack stitch, all the materials and tools, etc. I can't give you an exact materials lists or exact measurements and details like that, but I've shared the techniques many many times, inc

Here's what I just finished working on...a tutorial is coming soon! Copyright 2016 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. 

Dream Create Inspire — Making Art Happen Eileen made a fun piece of postcard art from start to finish this week! If you sometimes get stuck and have trouble completing projects, she has a tip for you. Snap out of it, jean! There's beading to be done! Jean reviews the beautiful book by Christina Anton, Creative Leather Jewelry

Just trying to catch up here today!  I've posted quite a number of reviews of mixed media art books over on Mixed Media Artist since the last time I shared a comprehensive list of them here on Beading Arts .  That was back in April...wow! In chronological order, here's what's been posted since: Favorite Fabric Bowls, Boxes and Vases Creative Strength Training Acrylic Expressions Double Vision Quilts Art Quilt Collage Pigments of Your Imagination, 2nd edition Making Art from Maps Painted Paper Art Workshop Artful Improv Fabricadabra

This will be the last little bead embroidery pendant for a short while, because I finally started working on a BIG one!  This stone is rhodochrosite, and like the others from the past few weeks, it's been sitting in my bin of crazy-beautiful stone cabochons for too long.  It's a small stone, and so the seed beads are mostly size 15/0s with a final row of size 11/0s.   It's an odd shade of pink, and I felt that if I wasn't careful, it could end up looking like pepto bismol.  The stone has some crystalline "flaws" in it, so it wasn't terribly expensive; therefore, I felt pretty free to experiment with the bead colors.  The background of the stone has a peachy cast, but the swirling foreground is a cool pink, so I was a bit ambivalent about bead colors.  In retrospect, I think the deeper red color should have been cooler, but when you are looking at it straight on, the red doesn't show quite as much as in the angle of my photos...plus, the bead

Coloring Book Giveaway Find out how to enter to win the Bountiful Wonders coloring book. It will be a perfect companion to your families Thanksgiving activities. Embossing Tools: Machines and Folders Embossing tools add lovely textures to many craft materials from cardstock to metal. Marion asked what embossing tools Eileen used in some holiday cards. Read what you need to get started embossing.

A new volume by C+T Publishing , and it is a beauty!! The Embroidery Book , by Christen Brown , has the subtitle, Visual resource of color and design , and that's what makes it a treat far different from many embroidery guides.  The guide comes first so that you can figure out immediately what stitches you want to learn.  There are 149 stitches covered, with step-by-step instructions and so many lush lush lush examples that you will just be aching to expand your repertoire! I would say that this book would be best for those who want to take the stitches that you know, learn more, and design projects for yourself.  It is not an exhaustive guide, but it has lovely sections that cover a brief history, materials and tools, color theory, design basics, specific design compositions and color schemes that work, and different embroidery applications (including straight seam, crazy quilt, applique, trims, borders, etc).     If you do not have a good embroidery reference work, t