Beads, of course…

Well, it’s settled: there’s no stopping me now. Beads everywhere had better beware. If only beads could, I’d suggest they arm themselves. But it’s hard to take up arms when you haven’t got any of either variety. Which leaves beads pretty defenceless and me pretty happy – hoorah!

OK, so I’m over-excited. This is perhaps excusable given that in the last few days I’ve been on not one but two beaded jewellery courses: the first at City Lit and the second at Creative Beadcraft‘s London shop. And I now know not only about knotting, but also how to make beaded beads. Brilliant!

So, let me start by telling you about the course at City Lit: Beaded jewellery making. Those of you who read my post Lend me your ears… may remember that I enrolled on this five-week course back in August. It’s amazing, frankly, that I managed not to burst with excitement and anticipation in the interim. But manage I somehow did: finally Friday 19 September arrived, and I made my way to Covent Garden for the three-hour evening class.

There were about eight of us, all women, everyone very friendly. Most of us had played around a bit with beads before, but we were all more or less beginners or near-beginners. All the tools were provided and there was a selection of beads available to choose from. (I have to say that this selection was rather disappointing and next week I’m definitely going to take some of my own beads with me – fortunately, we’re allowed to do this.)

The focus of the first evening was knotting – i.e. how to string beads together on silk thread by making a knot between each one. Apparently, this is the traditional way of stringing pearls – the knots mean that if the necklace (or whatever) breaks, then you only risk losing one treasured pearl, rather than several. To borrow the words of Professor Peter Hennessy, a cunning plan of Baldrickian proportions indeed.

We started by making a bracelet, and then moved on to earrings. The materials required included jump rings (split rings were also available, but I think they tend to look a bit clunky), lobster clasps, calottes, fish hooks, 0.90mm silk thread (I chose grey)… and beads, of course. The tools we used were wire cutters, flat nose pliers and round nose pliers, scissors and a needle.

And this is what I made:

Knotted bracelet and earring set.

As you can see, I went for muted colour tones, trying to find beads (not easy, given the ones on offer) that were a bit more me. (Secretly, however, I admired the student to my right, who went very bling to astonishingly great effect.)

In this close-up you can get a better sense – just – of the knots (you’d get an even better sense if I was more accomplished at lighting my photography!):

Getting knotted…

So that was the first installment of my City Lit course. Next time we’re working with wire – very exciting!

And what about the course at Creative Beadcraft? Well, this one – a two-hour Saturday morning workshop, this time – was great, too. I’d been to a workshop at Creative Beadcraft before. Last time there were five of us; this time it was just me! This might have felt a bit odd, but the tutor is so friendly that it turned into a really lovely and instructive one-to-one.

As with the last workshop here, the style of the jewellery we were making isn’t remotely me. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to learn how to make beaded beads – and I definitely did that, so mission accomplished. ‘But what is a beaded bead?’ I hear you cry. Well, here’s an example, on a necklace given to me by my late grandmother:

A lovely present from a lovely Omi.

And here is another example, this time on some lovely earrings I treated myself to a while back, from the ever-splendid Fringe:

Berry pretty beaded beads!

In other words, a beaded bead is a bead which is itself made up of beads. Now that we’ve got that clear…

In this latest workshop, we were making a beaded beads bracelet and earrings set. For this, we used dyed pearls (6mm for the bracelet, 5mm for the earrings), crystal bicones, nylon thread (0.4mm for the bracelet, 0.25mm for the earrings), wire guardians, jump rings, eye pins, head pins, fish hooks and a lobster clasp. The only tools needed were wire cutters, round nose pliers and flat nose pliers.

The first job was to make up all the beaded beads. Each beaded bead used 12 beads, which were strung together in a clever way using the nylon thread. Unfortunately, I don’t have ‘in progress’ shots. So at some point soon I’ll make something similar and show you exactly how it was done. Once all the beads were made, it was basically a case of stringing the elements together in the right order – in the case of the bracelet, that is. I’d never used wire guardians – clever little things – before, and this was a bit fiddly, but effective once I got the hang of it. For the earrings we had to make loops on the ends of the head pins and eye pins, which was a bit fiddly too and gave me cramp!

So here, then, is what I made (bear in mind what I said about this not being my natural style and the fact that I had no choice over colour!):

Beaded bead bling – eeek.

And here is a close-up for good measure:

In yer face.

The brilliant thing is that beaded beads are really versatile. You can make them with beads of any size, colour and (within reason) shape – have a look at these, for example:

Beaded bead variety show.

You can use them in all sorts of ways; for example, big wooden beaded beads for a child’s toy, or sparkly beaded beads for Christmas tree decorations. It’s brilliant! Secretly, I want to try to replicate the berry earrings I got at Fringe, but these use more than 12 beads per beaded bead – so first I need to get down to some maths!

And in anticipation of a great flurry of pre-Christmas beaded bead-making activity, and in light of my post-workshop discount, I did, inevitably, splurge on some new beads:

Can’t wait to use these!

I confess I also bought some equipment – thread, storage boxes, etc. – but this isn’t pretty enough to merit a photo. What IS pretty enough to deserve photographic attention, however, is my latest acholi bead haul. I used acholi beads in some earrings I made as a gift recently and, with another gift creation in the offing, I felt needed some fresh colours:

Gorgeous acholi beads!

The only question now is… where on EARTH will I find the patience to get me through to the next installment of my City Lit course? Roll on Friday!