Creativity

What inspires you to create?  Is it a life changing event, such as a wedding, graduation or even a death?  Does nature inspire you?  For me the inspiration is beads.  There was no secret there!  LOL  

This past weekend I was restocking inventory when they smallest of the Miyuki Square beads, SBS, 1.8mm beads caught my eye.  

The silver lined beads just seemed so Christmasy I knew I had to create something!

So knowing that I wanted to use these Christmas colors, I pondered the best way to show off these little beauties.  Since they are cubes, they fit best together in square or rectangular shapes.  What Christmas items are shaped as squares?  Christmas presents, of course!

Now the next problem, how to create a bow out of beads.  I did not want to try to tackle bows made with square beads, so I decided to try other Miyuki beads to assemble my bows.    I experimented with my design.

Here is my first attempt.  The bow really overpowers the gift, so I decided to make the gift larger and tweak the bow a bit.  Here I used size a 8/0 Rocaille for the center of the bow and used 6mm bugle beads for the loops with 4 15/0 Rocailles curving the loops.  I used gold, but did not like the effect.  So I switched to silver.  I also wanted to add some pattern to the gift wrap.

I switched to an 8/0 Rocaille bead for the center of the bow.  I added one 15/0 Rocaille as a spacer between the bugle bead and the 8/0 Rocaille center of the bow.  I also switched out the 15/0 Rocailles on the loop for 3 size 11/0 Rocailles to give more body to the bow. I brought both bugle beads to the single spacer 15/0 Rocaille bead and ran my Fireline through the tiny bead each time to bring the loop tighter in the bow.  I used 20 of 15/0 Rocaille beads for the top loop to attach the earring wires.

Here are the finished earrings.  I really like how cute they turned out!

Then I got to thinking that I could do them in other colors, not just green and red.  Then I thought, why do they have the be Christmas presents?  Why not make a few Hanukkah presents as well?

 It never hurts to experiment with beads, you never know what you'll end up with, and at worst, you might have to undo a little bit of bead work.  Experimenting will broaden your beading repertoire ~ I know, it certainly has given me more confidence and opened new possibilities for me!  

Happy Beading!

Betsy