beaded christmas barrette

hi all!

well yesterday was the first day in 9 days i did not have a headache!  i actually played around in my craft room too for the first time in a week (last week's posts were pre-done) and recorded three new videos which i will be posting throughout the week.  have any of you been watching tim's 12 tags of christmas?  god i love that man - genius am i right???  i think the tags so far this year have been my fave ones since he started doing them.  i am hoping to feel well enough to participate in some of them.  are any of you doing them too?

i DID get a little crafty while i hung out on the couch - as y'all know i like to crochet and often crochet my own embellishments as well as hats and scarves and amigurami toys.  well check this out:

 
another long time love of mine is seed beads and i have always wanted a beaded bag - small like for debit card, license and cash.  before pezza came along i was working on way doing peyote stitch bead weaving - it is about half way done and then along came pez and millions of tiny seed beads just was NOT a good idea.  so i put it away and never picked it back up - i have since lost track of my beaded amulet books (which makes me very sad) and had given up.  then i came across this awhile back and ordered it:

Tapestry Bead Crochet

seed beads AND crochet! <3

so i pulled it out and began looking through it and reading it and realized it is actually pretty darn EASY!  you start with a pattern much like a cross stitch diagram and then string your beads row by row on your thread:

now for anyone who wants to try this - some tips to save you from pulling your hair out - most important is the beads you use - the vials of beads you get at Michaels are NOT going to work for several reasons - they are not uniform in size and shape AND the hole will be too small in most of them to get a needle through - this goes for bead stitching too.  the BEST quality are Delica seed beads followed closely by Dyna-mites from Fire Mountain Gems (a much better price than Delicas) and Toho which are the only ones available at my local bead store and what i used for the green, red and gold here. however, i will take the time to order dyna-mites or delicas for future projects because they are a little better in size consistency.  the bits of paper on the string indicate where one row ends and another begins.

from there it is simple single crochet, adding a bead to each stitch and working every other row from the back when you turn so the beads are all on the same side.  here is the back of the piece (a barrette for pezza by the way)

no my rows aren't exactly even but it does not take away from the piece i don't think.  i did this as a sort of trial to see what it was like and i designed the pattern myself.

i am planning on making my little pouch soon - though it will be much bigger than this and take much longer.  i will not be using one of the patterns in the book - i found one on etsy in Out Of the Flames i loved and lori helped by customizing it for a pouch rather than a bracelet - she was super fast and very sweet!  i highly recommend her!  in addition i will be working on some of my own pattern designs for a spring bag as well as some beaded easter eggs for Through the Craft Room Door so be on the lookout for those if you subscribe (and if you don't WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR???)for anyone interested - here is the pattern:

i have some more barrette designs i am working on and will share those here! t his barrette was done using size 8 seed beads but i will be doing the pouches with the smaller size 11 beads.

what do you think of this new endeavor?