Oscar’s Bauble was originally made as a fully beadwoven babies’ rattle. It formed the winter part of my entry for the Stitch N Craft Challenge in 2014. In 2013 just as I was working on the piece our second son Oscar was born – a winter baby, the beads I had to incorporate for the challenge were soft cream opals, palest pinks and blues, and they matched his lovely delicate skin tone, so I made him a rattle. It has a tiny bell, a cellini spiral candy cane handle with lovely pink opal chatons at the base, and the main body is a dodecahedron made of hexagonal gumdrop bezels.
Whilst I don’t think I could repeat the rattle as a whole (there was a particularly challenging join to the handle involving a 20 bead hole needing to meet up with a 7 bead spiral), the bauble works really nicely on it’s own, with gumdrops or spikes, so I’ve finally written it up as a Tutorial which is now available in my Etsy shop. Hopefully in a week or so I will also have some Materials Packs for it as well – it’s taken nearly 4 years to write up the Tutorial though so for now I’m just focussing on getting it published!
Techniques – Circular Peyote
Difficulty Level – Intermediate. Knowledge of 3d beading is useful, and you’ll use the concepts of ‘step ups’ and ‘point rows’ so if you already know about these that will help.
The finished bauble measures 5.0cm in diameter made with Gumdrops, and 6.5cm with Spikes.
What will you need?
12 qty Czech Gumdrop beads 7x10mm, or Czech spikes 7x17mm
11A 11g Size 11 seed beads, colour A (main colour)
11B 8g Size 11 seed beads, colour B (highlight colour, forms the petals/star)
15A <1g Size 15 seed beads, colour A (although these are not seen so you could use any colour).
Something to hang the bauble with – fine chain, thread or fine ribbon or cord.
Beadweaving needles, thread of your choice, scissors.
The Indecisive Beader 
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