A Bracelet a Week: Tribal Mosaic

When you find a material that you really love, it’s hard to give it up. This is true for many types of art and crafts, and is especially true for beaders. It probably explains why you can’t go far without finding some amazing beadwork done with rivolis, and why Delicas are the number one choice for peyote cuffs. When you’ve found the best, why use anything else?

This is sort of how I’ve come to feel about trade beads, especially Christmas beads. Although they are technically just Czech seed beads, a strand of "love beads" is so much more than that. Even though they are often rough and irregular, I’ve fallen for them even harder than I did when I discovered how superior Japanese seed beads were to what I had been using.

This week I wanted to work with them a little more, and perhaps use up what’s left of the large strands of Christmas beads I purchased earlier this year. They aren’t quite as versatile for me as the smaller versions, so I thought it would be best - and fun - to get them all together in one piece.

Since the beads are so colorful and busy all by themselves, I chose a single bead color to work with - one of the last remnants of Czech seed beads in my stash. Copper-lined gray has been one of my favorite go-to shades when earth tones are called for. Even though they have a little metal in the finish, I kept them in my stash during last year’s inventory clean up because they’re good quality, and I had so many. It’s so much easier to design when you know for sure that you’ll have beads left over.

I am so happy with the way this cuff turned out. It was a little scary towards the end, as I worried that I wouldn’t have enough nicely shaped trade beads to finish. I also had to double up on beads in a few places to get the right sizes.

Even though this is the tamest possible kind of freeform peyote I could try, it has me wondering what other possibilities there are. Perhaps it’s not as scary as it looks? I am very tempted to have another go at a cuff like this, with a wider mixture of beads styles. Starting with cubes, I think.

Copyright 2011 Inspirational Beading
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