Bead Barmy

We sent jewellery designer and Editor of Bead magazine, Chloe Menage, a parcel of our beads to see what she would come up with. The results were rather lovely.

Chloe was given a ‘bead soup’ of black and red beads including Czech rocailles, bugle beads, glass nuggets and twists. The brief was to use the beads in any way she fancied, incorporating any additional beads of her own should she wish to. Chloe told us about how she came up with her designs and the challenges she faced: 

Taken as red

This was exciting as I am usually arranging ‘Bead Soups’ for Bead readers and rarely get the opportunity to have a go myself! The colours were a bit of a challenge for me, although I work with black a lot, red is a colour that I never usually touch and combining the two was something new and slightly out of my comfort zone.

Ladybird, ladybird

My black and red ‘soup’ immediately made me think of ladybirds! I made a few, with both the size 8 rocailles and size 11′s. I planned to use several but rejected nearly all of them as they just weren’t working. In defeat, I used just one which was the most successful (I have to admit to throwing one ladybird across the room in frustration – sorry ladybird). I strung him onto Beadalon wire with the large glass twists and some Swarovski Xilion beads using a simple clasp for a fun bracelet.

Star of the show

Next I made some star earrings using some of my own tiny size 15 rocailles to create a herringbone star. I loved the black chunky glass nuggets and was excited to use these in some earrings. I finished these off with more Swarovski crystals hung on eyepins. I love my earrings to be big, with lots of long dangles and these definitely ticked the box.

Inspired Japanese lantern beads

My favourite creations of my ‘Soup’ challenge were my Japanese lantern beads. I admit that this design was a little inspired by Vanessa Walilko’s ‘Unfoldings of the Implicate Order’ necklace which won first prize in the British Bead Awards Seed Bead Jewellery category last year. This was the first time I had seen dramatic, intricate work using bugle beads and the colours were the same as my palette. I played around with the design until I got the structure right. These use a combination of triangle weave and peyote stitch with silver lined size 10 and black size 8 rocailles and are really versatile. I had some Jelly Yarn from America and was yet to play with it – this was the perfect material to string them on.

Japanese Lanterns tutorial and prize giveaway

Chloe very kindly wrote a tutorial so you can try your hand at making these lovely lanterns. If you’d like to give them a go and be in with a chance of winning all the materials needed for the project, please take a look here.

Pink Hot!

Chloe also runs has her own website full of gorgeous desings. If you’d like to see more of Chloe’s work, please visit Pinkhot Jewellery

Posted by: BeadsUnlimited