Hello there my beady friends. I’m doing a quick little blog post today about a weird French Beading experiment I did recently. This isn’t a full blown, fully studied and tested idea where I can tell you exactly what to do or what not to do. This is just a quick little idea that I wanted to pass on and you can do whatever you wish with it.

While bead shopping I came across some Czech beads with two holes and I wondered… Can they be used for making French Beaded Flowers? Two-holed beads come in lots of shapes and sizes, but I just grabbed a few kinds that looked interesting to test it out.

I cannot actually remember what the gold ones are called and my tube doesn’t say. But they were my favorites of the three shown here.

Naturally, having two holes, you would string the first hole with one row of beads, then string a second row of beads through the second holes. This proved to be a little problematic. It’s hard to get the exact number of regular seed beads between the two-holed beads on the second row. It’s also hard to get the wire through the second hole without scratching the finish off the wire.

Here are three little things I made from 3 hole beads.

This pink one was the easiest. For some reason those gold beads were easier to pass the wire through on the second time around without scraping up the wire. Also, because the holes are closer to the ends, I didn’t end up with as much of a gap between rows. I chose to use ruffles around the second row, just for kicks and giggles, and it was fun.

 

​The second one I envisioned as an earring. I used a larger size 8/0 green seed bead along with some vintage 3 cut beads (I think they were 11/0…). I chose the spear two hole beads for this one. 

 

And the third one I used two different two hole beads – the studs and the spears. As you can see in the picture, there is a larger gap between rows with these beads, though I wonder if using a larger sized seed bead (like an 8/0) would reduce those gaps. I didn’t plan far enough ahead on this one to make sure my beads would be evenly spaced throughout the “petal”, so it looks a little lop-sided. 

​So, yes you can use two-holed beads for French Beading, it’s just kind of a pain. I’m not sure I’d use them in my usual flowers, and I definitely won’t use them in my patterns and tutorials… though I do have one idea for using them that I might test out soon. Just thought it was a valid enough idea to pass on. If you guys end up using them (or any other type of 2 hole bead) in your flowers I would love to see your results! ​

Okay, now let me talk about a few updates and upcoming stuff.

First, let’s update my One-A-Day project.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you have probably seen that I’ve been making one flower every day in 2018. At the end of the year I will have a wreath made of all the pieces. I chose to do a color-wheel type wreath, and for the first part of the year I made flowers in every color Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, and Pink.

Here is a layout I made of all the flowers in each color. It took ages to get all the flowers to lay like this…

I finished the flowers in every color in July… with 5 months left to go in the project. So I have been going back around all the colors making leaves to help fill in each section. I don’t have enough months to do a full month in each color for leaves, so I’m just doing 3 weeks of each color. So far I have finished the red, orange, and yellow leaves.
I forgot to take separate pictures of the red leaves that I added to the red flowers that I made in January… but they are there!

I’ve just been making very simple leaves. Quite frankly, I have several other projects that need more of my time, so simple leaves will do.

And I’ve also started attaching flowers to the frame.

It is so exciting to see it all starting to come together!

Yesterday I started on green leaves to go with the green flowers from April. And I’ll be putting the yellow flowers and leaves into bunches and adding them to the frame. 🙂

My last update is about my new website. Well… it’s not ready yet. I am using WordPress to make my website instead of Weebly, and it’s been a huge pain in the rear. I thought I was close so I picked an opening day, but then it all went down the drain and I had to start over. Mixed with so many other issues that I can’t even describe. But I am finally getting it all together so I’m hoping it will be up and ready by the end of the month. So, my next blog post will be announcing the new website, my new Business Name, and inviting you to come take a peek.

Until then, I wish you all very happy beading adventures.