Yesterday’s Barbie version of my ‘I Heart Beads’ brooch may have been a big pink failure, but hopefully today you can see I took what I learnt, made some slightly different decisions and came up with something which is very me and actually works! Whilst the pre-Barbie versions were light on beads, this one brings me back to the heavily encrusted style I usually work with and I was relieved to be able to use it. So, here’s what I did:
1) Back to ultrasuede for the ribbon, and stem stitched letters with 2 strands of black DMC cotton.
2) Red hard felt heart on another piece of black hard felt. No padding. Both heart and ribbon outlined with couched 1.25mm black pearl purl.
3) Beads added with stacking (cup beads on varying height 11 seed stalks, sequins sandwiched with seeds for height and texture, size 8 seeds stacked singly). All with size 15 seed stop beads.
4) Other beads added with seeding – rizos, small czech drops, miyuki 2.8 & 3.4mm drops, and 11 seeds.
Those two combinations allowed me to vary the finished heights for interest and texture – work as if you’re contouring a landscape, with gradual transitions between the higher and lower patches using either the stacking on stalks of fringe or varying sizes of bead.
5) Finally backed on black ultrasuede and finished by couching black 1.25mm pearl purl onto the edge to hide the layers. I’d tried using seed beads but it looked too busy.
So the big lesson today was about getting some balance back – I pared back the black and white elements as far as they could go, and then went wild with the beads. A success!
The Indecisive Beader 