O beads!

O beads are perfect for bead embroidery

I just love it when a new bead begins. Happily my friend, bead artist Sabine Lippert, invited me to join in the fun right at the start of this little bead's life. Sabine has thought up a great little bead, subtle, easy to use, and a very pretty addition to the bead stash.
The first bag of samples got my creative ideas going right from the offset. O beads are, simply put, miniature do-nuts of glass, perfectly formed to nestle between beads.

Various designers around the world have put them through their paces, to check they work up well in lots of different stitches.  I'm loving them in Albion stitch, and Netting, they bring a whole new dimension to Right Angle Weave, and they are the perfect bead for bead embroidery lovers... It's been an age since I did some bead embroidery and now I can't resist!

O beads weave in nicely too

Meanwhile, whilst we've been busy testing both the beads and our ingenuity, somewhere in  Czechoslovakia ... the bead master behind the new bead has been busy cooking up recipes for a truly delicious palette of colours. It takes many months to go from the charcoal grey test beads we have to play with, to a rainbow of colours and finishes, months where we ache to try the new colours and are tormented by preview pictures that simply make our fingers itch!

Below are some of the first O beads, worked into tassels, earrings, and bracelets. I think they are destined to be one of my favourites!


O beads will be available from December 1st and I'll be creating these (and more) patterns as downloads and kits just as soon as the bags of those lovely colours arrive. I'll post the info just as soon as everything is ready.

A little bit of seaside

Dreamy Dagger beads

Bead love alert!
dreamy dagger beads!
When these arrived in the post, I decided that deadlines could
go hang, time to follow my bliss for a few evenings and bead me a necklace!

The hanks of beads were silky and tactile and I soooo wanted to have them with me as fringy pendants to swish my fingers through.

The colours reminded me of a piece of Abalone shell, picked up during a last long walk on a beach at the end of a holiday. I kept it to remind me of the pure luxury of sand between the toes, salt in my hair and the warmth of the sun.

The necklace grew simply, from the colours and with no particular plan in mind. More importantly, no stopping. No stopping to get caught up with re-works, rip outs, or planning, no stopping to think too hard about bead choices... Instead I kind of worked with the same frame of mind as that walk on the beach. Oh, and no stopping to tidy up the bead board, random messy, definitely a new approach and the random juxtaposition of beads gave me ideas and choices I might not usually have made.

Random act of beadiness!

The cord is a length of crochet, worked in fine cotton around a length of narrow jewellery tube, which gave a simple base to add a bail and beaded beads around.

The finished necklace

The pendant is simple bead embroidery, it's been an age since I did any, but it seemed the easiest way to bezel the irregular shell piece, and add the swishy fringing. Accent beads include semi precious stone beads, of South African Jade and pink Phosphosiderite.
I'm really happy with the outcome, it's not ground breaking, all the techniques are old favourites, but it's a fun piece to wear, and while I might not have time to go dig my toes into warm sand just now, instead I can run my fingers through those swishy fringes and take a moment to dream.

Lots of swishy fringes

Random embellishments