After writing my last article for Handmade Spark (Tell me About your Creative Process) I have been asking more and more people how they create and taking more time to document my own processes.

A couple of people commented about ‘happy mistakes’ that happen during the creative process (look out for an article on those soon).  Others suggested we may be limited by our materials, or in other cases we can be inspired by the very same materials.

Here I have documented a recent project in which the materials both created the idea and determined the process I was to take in crafting a beaded bracelet.

THE BEADS!
How excited was I when a gorgeous elderly man and his lovely wife came past my market stall with a huge bag of off-cast jewelry and beads for me!?  I’d gotten chatting to them at a concert the night before and we’d talked about beads and such things.  What a wonderful surprise to be given a whole stash of new materials, totally out of the blue.

THE GREENS…
It was an odd mix of recycled and new glass beads collected during the couple’s travels all over the globe.  As I set to work on the rather daunting task of sorting them out I was totally lured by the combination of two bottle greens – one dark and rich, the other pale pale pale.  I liked them, I wanted to make something out of them but what?

THE HOURS
I collected up needles, thread, beads and began to play.  A few hours later I must say I was a bit disheartened.  I wanted to make a sort of checkerboard art deco pattern, like a very modern stained glass window, but my beading skills weren’t quite good enough.  I had to make and un-make the thing about 6 times before getting it right…. Frustrating…AND being recycled the beads were not all the same size and shape and some had sharp edges which sheared my thread – tricky!

As I worked it began to take shape and I modified my peyote stitching as the bracelet developed so it was not too floppy. Tension is everything with beading – too tight and you risk breakage and the piece does not hang nicely, too loose and its,  well, too loose.

When the length was right I had to work out a way to secure it on the wrist.

My first choice (2 small green beads)  was a disaster! It just kept falling off.  Back to the drawing board… I really don’t enjoy it when what you want doesn’t work, but my next choice (a big button) seemed to do the trick and looked cool too.

THE CUFF
The piece is not quite finished, the button is great but it needs another point of contact to hold it squarely on the wrist. I’m thinking those little hooks dressmakers use…

So there it is, it should be appearing in my etsy shop very soon.

I’m still out looking for artists and crafters who would like to share what they do here on Handmade Spark.  All you need to do is take a few photos at different stages of your process – I’d love to feature your work.  Send me a comment :)