Designing a Bead for a Fabric



My friend, Luana, makes beautiful quilts and fabric purses/bags.  When she asked me to make 4 large beads for the rope she wanted to use in her latest ‘origami’ bag, I was flattered!  And of course I said, ‘sure’.   And we all know it wasn’t as easy as that!
 
I had a package of Sculpey’s Ultralight Clay that had not been opened and I thought this would be a great time to learn to use it.  It was such fun!  I molded lots of large beads with the idea that 4 needed to be about the same size.  These were going to be handcrafted and I did not want them to look perfect (like a machine made them).  After forming the bead and made a large hole in the center, I cured them in my convection oven. 
 

The colors in the fabric turned out to be a challenge with lots of pinks and oranges.  I started polymer flower canes and made several and did not like any of them with the fabric flowers.  I made more.  And then I realized that if I combined the pink canes with the orange canes and added the turquoise canes it just might solve the problem.  And it worked!  I sliced the canes and placed them on a thin polymer backing, smoothed everything into a sheet and cut circles to cover the ultralight beads.  Cured and finished the multi-flowered beads.
 
The only problem was that the holes were not big enough.   Drilling larger holes was so easy.  Absolutely no problem!  The origami purse/bag is finished and we are all happy!  
 
p.s.  I had enough scraps that I made Luana a pair of matching earrings.  Probably over the top to wear all that at once! But it was fun to do .












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Location: Prescott, AZ, USA

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