Meusli on a bit of string - a beader's progress

I started beading at the age of ten, with a blue plastic build-it-yourself loom that came free with one of Mum’s magazines. We scoured our local shops and eventually managed to buy four dusty little bags of seed beads in white, green, orange and blue, and with this limited palette and lots of help from Dad (who helped build the loom and drew me a Greek key design) I set off on the voyage of beady discovery that I’ve been on ever since. Christmas that year brought a ‘proper’ loom, a book on Native American beading, and lots more beads, which were stored in an assortment of tins from which ‘Strepsils’ throat sweets, Dad’s cigars, and my school geometry sets had been turfed out. I still have most of those tins and even some of those beads, although now they are accompanied by lots more. And then some. I can't get over how easy it is these days to get hold of fantastic beads – I’m like a kid in a sweetie shop, I want to buy them ALL!

It is this excitement that shapes how my beadwork has evolved: I want to use all my beads at once, to play with lots of textures and colours. I used to make elegant netted collars with seed beads, very formal, very safe, but then one day my neighbour went on a beading course and came back with a tiny piece of textured peyote stitched with lots of different sizes of bead. A light bulb went on in my head at that point and I started living more dangerously, mixing seed beads with larger beads and chips and making peyote-stitched collars with lots of picots and surface texture and a dramatic fringe. This is still where I go when I’m not sure what to make next.

I like to work at random, not knowing exactly how a piece is going to turn out. For example, having said for years ‘I never make amulet bags’ I set out one day to make a freeform sculpture and it turned into… an amulet bag, which then spawned a whole series of other bags, which have taken me into different beading techniques where I never thought I would go. I keep notes as I go along, what worked, what didn’t, possibilities for related items: a whole file full of ideas I’ll never have time to bead but which might come in useful one day.

The actual making process is (usually) as rewarding as having the finished article, although often I’ll bead halfway through something and have serious doubts as to whether it’s worth finishing. (My 8-year-old son, also a keen beader, is very useful when I get stuck: the other day he pointed out that the peyote vase I was on the point of unpicking made a perfect mushroom if turned upside down, so now I have plans for a whole series of beaded fungi…) I like to get utterly absorbed in creating something challenging and to try something new every time I bead – I read a lot of magazines and books for ideas but rarely follow a pattern except maybe to learn a new stitch or if I’m making a specific commission.

If there is a single word to sum up my beading it is ‘diversity’. I never make exactly the same piece twice. As well as having a serious bead-purchasing addiction, I recycle jumble sale finds, beachcomb for shells and pebbles with holes, even pick up discarded buttons or washers off the pavement. I love beads with character and irregularity and rarely use Delicas or Swarovskis as they’re just too perfect for my world!

I am inspired by natural textures and colours and the way in which structures such as plants build up complexity from simple repeating units. I let my beadwork grow organically, adding embellishments as I go. I rarely make pieces from lots of separate components – loose ends of thread drive me mad – and I am not keen on the tangly and repetitive process of making long branched fringe, although it’s worth it for the gorgeous texture of the finished result.

Colour for me has to be varied, rich, and not too sweet; my ‘default’ palette is acid lime green with contrasting autumn leaf and fruit colours. I also love girly pink mixtures but I always sharpen or deepen them with olive green and red or garnet. Blues are another favourite, especially frosted colours, which have the added bonus of making a lovely scrunchy sound when you wear them.

My pet beading hate is flat, formal beadwork copied from a pattern and so perfect that the maker’s character doesn’t show through in it. I put a lot of myself into my beading and I think I can safely say that nobody else makes jewellery like mine – although my lovely father-in-law recently described one of my gorgeous creations thus: ‘Well, I don’t think much of that. It looks like you’ve threaded some muesli on a bit of string.’ So clearly I have some way to go before my artistic genius is recognized!

Having spent thirty-odd years beading away in isolation, I went to the West of England bead fair in 2005, discovered the existence of the Beadworkers Guild, looked at a lot of other people’s work, and realized that beadwork was something I was good at after all. So I have begun to join in with the beading community, publish some projects and develop a small business selling my beadwork at craft shows. This is still at an early stage, but I’m gaining confidence in my own creativity all the time. I’m having a lot of fun on my beading voyage. Who knows where it’ll take me tomorrow?