Prompted by Facebook chat with the lovely Cath Thomas, and inspired by her new ‘Petals to Pods’ project, I stole the boy’s fake Hama beads and made my first petals.
Cath’s technique is really clever, works up quickly and easily and has loads of potential for organic forms. Sadly Hama beads do not – too square and clumsy unless you truly scale up. This is what Cath plans to do, and recently we saw an amazing example from the always imaginative Kris Empting-Obenland – her extraordinary fag bag. However, trying the components this way though has allowed me to get the hang of them quickly, to learn that I’d like to spend some time with them, and to give me some ideas as to direction. My plan is to try using size 8 seeds next to create some dramatic 3 petalled pods (lots of people are already doing marvellous flowers, so I’m going to branch out into pods).
At the end of the evening I thought I’d have a play with my old friend the Fortune Teller bangle – I used a modified RAW Rick rack start, with five repeats of five.
This on reflection may not have been the right size (I have always struggled to size these, and this one will currently go round my wrist about three times), but looking on the bright side, I don’t think a standard Fortune Teller would have worked later anyway, as these beads are far too square and chunky to form elegant horns.
So when I have time I will have a go at using this base to work up an entirely new shape, which may be a disaster, but will also be a useful creative exercise/learning opportunity. And because it only takes 5 minutes to do a round, instead of many times that with delicas, I can learn those lessons nice and quickly! And as previously, if the sizing can’t be rescued, I can zip up one side to make a bowl.……….
The Indecisive Beader 