K was a kite
Which flew out of sight,
Above houses so high,
Quite into the sky.
(From the Nonsense Alphabet
by Edward Lear)
Which flew out of sight,
Above houses so high,
Quite into the sky.
(From the Nonsense Alphabet
by Edward Lear)
I love tiny cube beads, so when I was able a few years ago to get a surprise assortment at a sale price from one of the bead shops I order from, I jumped right on it.
Then I remembered that as cute as they are, I always struggled a bit what to do with them. I loomed with them (the result is stiffer than with seed or cylinder beads) ...
... I wire knitted with them (so slinky) ...
... I did peyote with them, in the round and folded ...
... and I still had a box full of cube tubes (this wasn't even everything I made).
So when I came upon a quick tutorial for a beaded diamond kite shape, I thought I'd give that a try (this isn't the only tut for it, it was just the first popping up in my recommendation, but it works well) with cubes instead of cylinder beads.
I first made a test piece in Delicas and immediately decided that instead of the original design I wanted to make some variations, ripping up the test piece again.
These are the results so far.
The kite shape made me think of Art Deco patterns and inspired this design. Simple but with a bold color combination.
One theory is that kites have their name from the hovering birds of prey. In German, however, we call the bird "Milan" and the tethered flying object "Drachen" after dragons.
Inspired by the name, I beaded a smaller version of the design and added dragon charms. Readers who have been around for a while know I can't resist a nice dangle and I love these 3D dragons!
I also tried a pair of earrings using just the open V shape in a combination of clear, pearly white, and matte black cubes.
While I liked the color combination, I wasn't completely happy with the overall look and will be playing with that some more.
Delicas as used in the tutorial are very uniform beads, the cubes not so much although I cull the ones that are way too big or crooked. So it was a nice surprise how well it worked after all.
Cubes also stiffen the design a bit which isn't a bad thing for earrings.
These beads come in different sizes, so expect another post with some "big ones" (3 mm instead of 1.8).
No comments:
Post a Comment
If you like what you've read, if you have a question, additional information or if you simply want to say hello, please do! I love comments and would like to hear from you.
Comments are moderated, however, to protect from spammers and trolls, so they will be published after approval.