Working on another Sea Star

It’s an interesting concept: basically it’s a simple set of interlinked rings in 6mm beads, heavily embellished to form the points of a star.  Could trivially be shrunk down (Gwen Fisher has a set of triangle beads on her page) or expanded, say to form a bracelet (for someone who has 30-40 hours to spend putting together a single bracelet) or a brooch.  The latter sounds more interesting to me – increase the number of “facets” and put it around a central round cabochon or crystal, and you get a very nice beaded shawl pin.  (I keep telling myself I’ll wear shawl pins even though the evidence says I don’t.  It’s a nice excuse to make jewelry, anyway.)

At any rate, I’m working on a gaudier version in flame-colored Swarovski crystal, white crystalline seed beads, and with a big red faceted glass bead in the center, and so far it’s coming along quite nicely.  I should finish it tonight, assuming nothing distracts me.

Beading is kind of fun, but it doesn’t hold much intellectual interest for me.  It’s sort of like knitting I suppose; there’s a lot of variations you can do, but the planning stage seems to be a tiny fraction of the amount of time you spend working the pattern.  On the other hand I suppose you could say the same thing about weaving, and beading at least is quick: it took me about 3 hours to make the first Sea Star and probably about 2.5 hours to make the second one.  I also suspect it would be a lot more fun/intellectually interesting if I were making my own patterns instead of following someone else’s, but I don’t think I want to put that much effort into it.  I guess I’m just saying that beading doesn’t “speak to me”, so (after this spate of work) I don’t plan to pursue it further.

It is neat, though.  I do recommend Gwen’s patterns, expensive as they are – they’re very well-written and it’s hard to go wrong with such clear diagrams.  And the results are gorgeous.