Once again I had the opportunity to teach a little workshop at our guild's annual retreat, and at the request of our guild's prez, presented a class on French beaded flowers. One of the variations I've developed is replacing the rather lame cupped doohickey traditionally used in daisy-style french beaded flowers with a lampwork bead. And it's a great way to use up bad mandrels, too.

French beaded flower. About 4–5" across. Completed Jan 2009.

The learning flower is a very straightforward execution using three or four of the most basic techniques, but owing to some scheduling issues I ended up teaching the class twice, with one student in the morning and two in the afternoon. In other words, I had time to do some work on my own. I'd already assembled the large purple colorline petals for another project where I decided they were too large. So all I had to do was the pink ruff and the orange looped petals. This latter component was new, and I was playing a bit with what I think of as ribbed, or dagged, petals. I prestrung fairly heavy wire (24ga) with some 8/0 beads (rescued from a fri night bead soup activity, actually) and then did a series of continuous single loops, running the return wire behind the beads, as for 3 strand crossover loops. Then I used a second wire, prestrung with orange beads to make the petals, using the basic frame technique. If I'd had more time or gumption, I could've hung gallery-wrapped dangles from the ends of the loops...

The very center of the flower is a small lampwork button. I also twisted the continuous loops in pinks. All in all, though not a fantasy style flower, I think it has some interesting innovations. I love the color combo, which is not something likely to be found in nature. At some point, I need to come up with some equally interesting leaves for it.

Flower completed 25jan, photo, file 5feb09.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.