Great Scott, y’all, we’re approaching TWENTY!
I’m sad to say that this is the last of the beading projects. I’ve really quite enjoyed them. One of the benefits to me of the Craft Challenge: I’m not sure I would’ve tried all the beading projects had it not been for working through the book. It seemed a little, I don’t know, banal or something. But I’ve kind of fallen in love with beading. Now I’m making beaded skulls and martinis and who knows what next? Blog post to come on those, soon.
So, this final project simply requires you to string a bunch of beads (of one color, although I’m sure you could make a pattern if you wanted to) onto a long wire and then shape that wire into a letter. Martha provides an entire alphabet template of lovely calligraphic letters, but I’m sure you could do any font you wanted. She mainly suggests that you use these letters as adornment for gifts, as a kind of monogram of sorts. But I was thinking you could probably make smaller ones into necklaces for little girls or, maybe, even big ones.
I decided to make a “J” for my mom’s birthday, which is coming up this month, and I will decorate her present with it. I hope she likes it.
I think it’s cute. I’m not sure I’d go through all the trouble for a gift package, but it could be cute in a smaller size on a necklace or barrette.
This one would go really quickly as there’s no counting involved– you just keep stringing beads until you have a long enough segment. But of course, there was a glitch. There has to be a glitch, you know? I’m not sure this is me or Martha, but I’m hoping to figure that out.
So, the instructions call for 20 gauge wire, which is pretty thick, and 11/0 beads, which are standard seed bead size. I even checked one of my seed beads to see if they’d fit on the wire before I began. I must’ve picked a lucky one. Turns out, about 60% of my beads didn’t fit on the wire. The good news is that that means 40% did fit, but the bad news is that I had to put them on by trial and error, and nearly 2/3 of the time the bead didn’t fit. Bleh.
To be fair, this problem wasn’t really Martha’s, I don’t think. I suspect that the beads I had were of, shall we say, questionable quality? They were Michaels’ specials. It may be that if I bought higher quality, premium seed beads, they’d be more uniform and I wouldn’t have had the issue. I’m pretty certain the Japanese make some rockin’ seed beads.
TIME INVESTED
About 1 hour
As I mentioned above, it would’ve taken half the time if I could’ve just freely strung beads.
DIFFICULTY
Easy
TOTAL COST
- 20 gauge wire, $2.99
- seed beads, $2.99
Total = $5.98
WAS IT WORTH IT?
Well, yes and no. I’m not sure it’s worth all the effort for a gift, but it might be cute in other contexts. It’s certainly easy to make.
So, that’s all for the beads, folks. I’m sure I’ll post some of my own bead creations since I plan on continuing to mess around with them. BUT… coming soon to a blog near you: BLOCK PRINTING!
Ooh look at the pretty! This appeals to me in its simplicity. But was it hard to get the wire bent into the letter just right? I think I would have wound up with a bendy wonky letter, especially if the goal is that fancy calligraphic look.
Can’t wait to see over the next craft horizon!