
I've been interested in doing some beadwork since last year when I proclaimed my Summer Crafty To-Do list, but as you know, I never got around to it! But when I saw this on one of my favorite blogs, Minieco, I knew I needed to try it. I LOVE the look of Perler beads (also known as Hama beads)... they just look like candy to me. They are also large-ish and I'd much rather work with larger beads than tiny sead beads.

I was also hugely inspired by these vintage beaded baskets that Elisabeth Dunker blogged a while back. What an incredible collection! I've searched high and low for these online and I can't find any. They were popular in Sweden in the 70's.

I also can't seem to find any patterns for making the baskets. I'm hoping one day I can figure something out on my own.
I searched online for some peyote patterns and stumbled onto this one (of which I tweaked a little). As you can see, butterflies seem to be popping up in my work a lot. While this one seems much more 70's, these below have a much more 60's feel to me with the colors and shape. I handpicked the individual bead colors on Amazon instead of buying one of those big containers at the craft store. I didn't want to have a lot of leftover colors I didn't want to use. I bought these in lots of 1,000.



It's a bit tricky starting out, but once you get past the first few rows, it goes easily. I completed this over a few nights of watching the first season of Game of Thrones. : )
I'm going to look for a small cylindrical vase or candle holder of some kind to wrap it around like she did on Minieco. I want to make something even larger at some point - trying to figure out what I want to do next.





If you'd like to try out peyote beading, you can check out this and this tutorial. I used the second one and it's very helpful. And you don't need a loom to do it!
Do you like doing beadwork? Any fun projects you want to share?