Victorian Beaded Ornaments

Yes, I’m recovering from surgery. Yes, I’ve been keeping that leg elevated. But I’m way too obsessive to simply sit and watch the crap on TV. Sure I’ve got books I could read, I even went to the library in advance and got a few more in case the unread ones by my bed didn’t please me. But I didn’t feel like reading.

So what have I been doing while I’m laid up? Making Victorian beaded ornaments, of course!

In November I’m doing the Christkindl show in Canandaigua, and I’ve been accepted with my handweaving and my beaded Christmas ornaments, which are a form of bead weaving. I didn’t have enough stock, so I planned in advance so I could do more beading while I had my leg propped up. Since I often make ornaments in the summer, working on a snack tray on my great front porch, this was only a slight modification.

I’m teaching a class in making hand beaded ornaments at the local library in the fall, and needed to both have some samples for them to look at, each using a different number of beads in each section so they could see the difference. Also I needed to actually write down the directions. This was an opportunity to do both at once, and not wait until the last minute. Although it looks complex, I think beaded netting is actually one of the more simple techniques to learn, so that’s what I’ll teach. Here are the first four I made.

As I kept working, I got more into it, as is often the case with me. Push your skills further, try out new ideas, develop new patterns and methods. In order of creation, here are the next four.

I really like that last one a lot. As you can imagine, it took a lot of time, but I think it’s worth it. Will my customers be willing to pay more for it? That remains to be seen.

Your turn – what been on your plate lately?