Saturday, November 1, 2008

My Latest Compulsion...Beaded Sphere


After our LouisianArtisans (Etsy team) Meet and Greet on Tuesday, one of my fellow jewelry designers and I decided to visit our favorite bead supply shop. It isn't too terribly far away, but not in an area that I pass regularly, which is probably a good thing for my wallet.

Anyway, the bead shop is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. However, there's another bead shop a block away that is going out of business. I've been there before and it's a very nice shop. It's more of a specialty bead place, rather than the buy-in-bulk store. But I digress...

All items were 50% off. I bought the bead in the photo. No specific plan in mind for it, but it intrigued me. It's made of small rice pearls and woven together into a 3-dimensional open sphere. The diameter is smaller than a dime.

As it so often happens with me, 'intrigue' morphs into 'compulsion' (or is it 'obsession'?). I cannot tell you how many hours I spent online looking for instructions on how to make one of these. Especially challenging because I don't know what it's generally called.

Is it a beaded ball (one small typo in google brings up some very, very strange links. Oy!), a beaded sphere, a woven beaded ball....? You get the idea. I've found a few different sets of instructions, plus one online video tutorial, so I think I'll be able to figure out the technique and perhaps make a few of my own.

It's the mantra of the self-taught: "I read a tutorial (or saw a podcast) and now I'm an expert." :-D

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