Some sad news to begin with. Today I discovered that at some point, either at the end of yesterday's class or during today's, someone wandered off with my latest Zinnia. I am still hopeful that it was an error and it will re-appear at some point in the future. I know I can take months to unpack after a class so fingers crossed it will show up at some point. If not, I hope whoever took it loves it as much as I did and that all my beading wasn't in vain and it lives on somewhere.

Anyway - onto nicer things, though I'm not sure many of today's students will agree!

Today's class was Beaded Frames and let's just say this was not as easy as some people had thought it would be from looking at it. Did anyone really think I could come up with a nice easy beading project? I had to sneak some little tricks and turns in there somehow!

The project is made up of separate components that you join together to create your bracelet, bangle, earrings, necklace etc and whilst they don't take too many steps you have to get your head around what you're actually doing... which some people found hard at first. But everyone got at least 2 frames done (or started at least...) and some nearly finished a bracelet so all was not lost.

I also finally put beads to thread and made up some samples, which you can see in these photos, showing how the exact same instructions can be used with different sized beads to create different sized frames - no other alterations necessary. Though if you want to alter the frames in other ways I can tell you how to do that also...

This was the first time teaching this class and at the moment I only plan to ever teach it twice more so hurry up and enrole at either Beads By Blanche in New Jersey for the 18th May or BeadFX for the 22nd June if you want to learn how to make your own frames.

Even if you're not sure you want to make frames, this class will show you a very clever (and easy when you know how!) way to get from tubular peyote stitch to tubular brick stitch (or herringbone stitch, or square stitch...) which is a great jumping off point for lots of interesting ideas...