Not all beads are created equal

I went to start a new project yesterday and needed to match a color size  6 seed bead to use as the base.  Lets talk about beads for a minute.   First of all size.  Seed beads come in a variety of sizes the four usual ones being size 15, 11, 8 and 6.  The smaller the number the larger the bead.  If they come smaller than a size 15 I know my old eyes wouldn't see them and forget using a needle, I can barely string the 15's!   Larger than a size 6 and they're generally plastic and called pony beads.

From left to right, size 15, 11, 8 and 6 Toho round seed beads.  I've laid them over a needle so that you can get a perspective for actual size.  

Seed beads also come in a variety of shapes, round being the most popular/useful but they also come in cylinder shape-generally going by the trade names of Delicas or Treasures, Hex, Square, Triangle, Bugle...and all these shapes come in the same range of sizes although Bugle beads are generally measured by their length.  

I touched on this a tiny bit in a previous post but not all beads are of good quality.  Does quality matter?    Well, you decide.

The beads in the bottom picture are beautiful colors and would have worked nicely in the project I had in mind and I thought perhaps since I only needed them for the base, which would be covered up with lots of pretty embellishment that the wonkiness wouldn't matter.  But the shapes were so widely varied even if all the holes were the same "size" that the resulting ladder base was a real mess.  So I'll save these for a project where uniform shape doesn't matter.  They'll probaby sit in the box on my shelf collecting dust til I'm long gone and my kids go through my stuff and shake their head at their batty old Mom who collected everything.....

First is second

You know that section in Barnes and Noble where they sell all the discounted books?  About 7 years ago as I was indulging in my first and most consuming addiction which is anything to do with books---I found myself sipping my cappucino and browsing this section and I came across a kid's book with supplies and instructions for making beaded jewelry.  I can't remember the price but I'm sure it couldn't have been more than a couple of dollars.  I played around with my new toy and this is what I made:

The beads were really cheap; so many were mishapen and irregular in size and I think some of the color rubs off on most of them.  I didn't  know about the difference in quality in beads, I'm sure I thought a bead is a bead, right?  I wouldn't learn about quality until I'd exhausated the book's ideas and run out of beads and found myself in the local bead shop where quality was the rule rather than the exception (and the price was MUCH higher).  But even with sorry beads, I really like this.  The book didn't say what technique it was (netting) but it was fun playing with colors, shapes and patterns.  I was hooked.  

And this was something Mom didn't do.  My Mom did *everything* fiber art related and she did it all really well.   When I was a kid she tried to teach me to knit.  That didn't take.  But this...this I could do and when I showed her the things I was making, she was impressed!  Wow did that feel good.  I was tempted to write that the emotional high was being able to impress the unimpressable, but maybe that's not fair.   I don't know that she was never impressed.  She was just reserved with her emotions and praise.  It didn't matter.  I liked how I felt and I'd made something wearable and pretty.   But life got busy and I really didn't do much after this until Mom passed away.  In my grief the only two things besides my family that sustained me were my little dog and beading.

Sometime in the first year after Mom was gone I took my first class at the local bead shop that taught me basic bead weaving techniques including all the in's and out's of the different supplies and materials available, and I was off and running.  The instructor was an artsy hippie sorta free spirit and really, really fun.  I picked up the techniques pretty easily--starting with herringbone (ndebele), right angle weave peyote both flat and tubular and double spiral weave.  All this stitching and I didn't know the first thing about basic stringing.  Crimp beads?  What's that?  I don't really like simple stringing even now.  *yawn*

Now I was equipped with the basics and I had a go to teacher if I got stuck on something, so I started haunting all the bead shops.  I'd since branched out and found several more within driving distance.  I would make mental notes of some of the beautiful, creative examples and go home and craft my own versions.

I had spurts of beading productivity that amaze even myself.  There was (is) something so meditative and soothing about some of the stitches...peyote in particular, for me anyway.  My "grief therapy".  I'd sit in my chair with my little dog tucked in close next to me, my craft pad and beading project in my lap and I'd just get lost in color and pattern and in no time I had a bracelet.  This always led to a minor dilemna...how to finish it, what sort of closure?    And now I really, really missed my Mom.  Now I really had something more accomplished to share with her...

I still miss her an awful lot.

What better way to start than by sharing my favorite piece.  This is not an original design of course.   I love all the beading magazines (yes, another addiction), Bead and Button and Beadwork in particular.  This design came from one of those.  I know, I know, I really should be more specific and give proper credit but I can't find the pattern right now in that mountain of magazines.  This project is a series of simple flat peyote stitched squares of delicas, strung together with shiny firepolished czech glass beads.   This piece is fun because I got to play with lots and lots of colors, though time consuming.  I really must start logging hours worked on pieces like this.  Size 11 Delicas (the type of bead used here) aren't the smallest bead you can find but they're pretty close. 

Delica Beads - Delica seed beads are perfectly cylindrical modern Japanese beads with thin walls and large holes.  They can be smooth or six-sided.  Their uniform size and shape make them perfect for precision work      http://www.smallpleasures.com.au/20.html

Working the geometric design keeps it interesting and challenging. 

If you bead you know the one major pitfall to the craft is -- friends and family coveting your work.  This piece now has a nice home with my sister in law whose first words when she saw this was "for me!!??"