December 2019 – The Indecisive Beader

Squidy is my younger son’s favourite cuddly toy – the one he needs at night and takes with him on long car journeys, so when an oval cabochon and some rumpled hand dyed silk ribbons came together to make a squid pendant, what on earth else could I possibly call it?

Squidy uses a variety of bead embroidery, beadweaving and goldwork embroidery techniques, including back stitch, bezelling using circular peyote, seeding, right angle weave bezelling, goldwork and beaded edging to make a statement pendant, brooch or even a beautiful ornament. I’ve written him up as a detailed tutorial because frankly he seemed too much fun not to share, and it’s now available in my Etsy shop.

He’s not horrifically tricky if you’re patient, he’d suit intermediate bead weavers or bead embroiderers, or experienced embroiderers looking to learn some beadweaving techniques. Everything is stepped out in the tutorial, and there is a full techniques section with hints and tips which should set you up well to try out some of these techniques on your own designs.

The materials are probably slightly tricky to get hold of, so I’ve put together some component packs – you can select your own individual cabochon, and the packs also include the goldwork wires, hand dyed ribbons (from HopeJacre designs), Swarovski chatons, beading foundation (Nicole’s Bead Backing), and Ultrasuede. These packs don’t include beads as you need such tiny quantities it’s not worth me weighing them and packing them up – you can just add them in from your own stash and make a unique piece. They’re available in my Etsy shop (which has 10% off until the end of December 2019).

I really enjoyed making Squidy, and he now also has some other sea creature friends which I can’t tell you about just yet – I’m working my way through lots of lovely ribbons to make as many tentacled creatures as I can and it’s really, really fun!

For ages now I’ve wanted to use the bezel I did for the chatons at the end of the handle on my Oscar’s Rattle to make the centres of the dodecahedron pentagons. The bead count and general construction was the same, so logically I hoped that I could adapt the gumdrop bezel included in Oscar’s Bauble, and simply substitute the chaton bezel for some of the early steps, continuing on to build out the skirts and pentagons, and join them in the same way as the current variants.

Well it wasn’t quite as straightforward as that, but it wasn’t too awful and in the end only 4 of the steps are actually different, which is pretty good for a 25 step piece! Anyway, I’ve written it up, added it to the current version available on Etsy, and sent the extra variation out to everyone I can find who has already bought the original version (please let me know if you think you’ve bought this one and haven’t had a message from me with the new section).

If you’d like to have a go, you can purchase it from my Etsy shop here (currently with 10% off until the end of December 2019). If you’d like to learn more about the original bauble then read my blog post here.