The latest thing covering my dining room table.

If you’ve read “The Stakes Are High” from October of 2021, you’ve seen this before. It was one of my yard art posts about beaded plant stakes.

These are from August of 2016 and 2017, respectively. I don’t even remember what post they are in. But I’ve always thought art with beads was a cool idea.

In “The Stare”, you saw this project and may have wondered what it was. I had recently gotten the idea that I could do bead embroidery and make hair bands. It took me quite a while to figure out the best thread and needles for this stuff. But once I “got a bead on it”, I was on a roll!

First off, I had no clue what I was doing. This is usual for me when I get into a “new” craft. Apparently, I prefer to learn by trial and error than by thoroughly searching out the directions in advance. I used fabric interfacing for the backing, and I drew the leaves onto it with no trouble. Then I thought it would be a good idea to string the outline beads onto beading wire and stitch them down with thread. I guess I thought this would help the design to hold its shape better.

Once I figured out that wasn’t the best idea, I put the rest of the beads on with the white thread, without the wire. I didn’t use beading thread, just regular sewing thread, which was also a bit of a mistake.

Here’s what it looked like, front and back, after both leaves were finished. I put another piece of interfacing on the back, and then decided to do a border around the leaves with yellow-gold beads.

I stitched it onto a plain metal headband that I got from Amazon, and this is how it looks. Since my hair is growing back from having chemo last year, I thought it would be okay to show you that, too. This was originally going to be for someone else, but I didn’t trust the thread not to come undone, since it was only sewing thread. So, I decided to try another one and do it right this time.

Now that I “knew what I was doing”, I drew another design onto interfacing and got started. It turned out that each half leaf section took about an hour to finish.

Once it was done, I ironed another piece of fusible interfacing to the back of it and then trimmed both layers close to the edge of the beading. I basted it onto a piece of black felt and trimmed it again.

Here is a close up of the outline beads. I had found out how to do this somewhere on Pinterest while making the first headband. What’s good is that the outline beads will cover up the edges of the background material and give the project a more finished look. Since the backing was now black, I used black thread for the border.

Somewhere during all this, I finally found the type of thread that works best for me. That’s not to say that it’s the best thread for everyone or every project. Remember, this is a “DIM” (Did It Myself) blog, as opposed to your usual “DIY”. It’s kind of like, “Do as the experts say, not as I do.”

Headband #2, finished! I did give this one away, and the recipient really liked it, so that made me happy.

Here’s headband #3, which was a gift for the first recipient’s sister.

Here are headbands, #4 and #5, that I made for two other people.

At one point I decided to try this “daisy chain” pattern. I will tell you; these are a major pain. This time I used a beading thread that is kind of like fishing line.

It worked pretty well, but I found out I like bead embroidery better. I ended up making two of them, and I wear them all the time, but they were still a pain to make. The daisy chains had to be attached to the metal bands with the “fishing line”, and then I put some hot glue on the underside.

THEN, I decided to make a little beaded coin purse based on some things I’d seen in stores and online. Of course it had to be a fox, like the one in the book, “It Will Be Okay”.

It was going to have a zipper, until I ended up making it a lot smaller than my original plan. But it is a nice little pouch to put things in all the same.

After doing all these projects, one thing I noticed was that it would be so much easier if the beads were organized in some way. I’ve had that box of beads for years, along with most of my beading supplies, because at one time I had tried bead embroidery, only on a smaller scale. I think they came that way, but I also know that I won’t be likely to purchase beads that way again. It was hard digging around in the container for just the right one and then trying to fish it out with the beading needle.

My latest beading project has just been organizing the beads into these little containers.

In case you’re wondering about the dish towel, it helps the beads not to roll off the table as much. They still do, (actually I think they jump off the table) but not as bad. But if a few of them end up on the floor, it’s still better than if they were pieces of cut glass for mosaics. And of course, if you have a trusty assistant, it’s better yet!