All the activity of last week finally caught up with me so yesterday was a down day. Some days are just like that; I just have to hold very still all day and let my old bones repair. Fortunately, I had a new craft to work on – French Beaded Flowers.

I used this book, French-Beaded Flowers, and this terrific video by Lana to get started. The book is very good for beginners but it was the wonderful video by Lana that finally made sense. Thank you, Lana!

I don’t have a studio so I do all my crafting on the dining room table. I try to only take over half the dining room table so the family can use the other half for actual dining. ha ha. My end is called “the work table” and here is what it looked like last night.

My work table (half the dining room table) covered with beading supplies for making French Beaded flowers.

The bead spinner was essential! In the photo above, it’s the little round wood bowl with green beads in it on the left. I was going to skip purchasing one until I tried to hand string about… (getting calculator)… about 2730 tiny beads. I put about 10 seed beads on the wire by hand and looked at the clock and figured I didn’t have the luxury of eight more months to finish. To string the beads quickly, I used the mini bead spinner from Bead Wrangler.  It works fantastic! It was fascinating watching the beads fill the wire as I spun the spinner like a spinning top.

The beading tools are from French General. They are very durable and are stored in a lovely roll. I’ve purchased many unique and gorgeous beads from French General over the years and hope to incorporate some of them in my flowers.

I didn’t take photos of the beading process because the day was all about holding as still as possible. These flowers were all made while watching two movies, so basically less than 4 hours.

French Beaded Flowers, made with size 11 seed beads and delicas.

The construction wires were wrapped with green floral tape to form the stems. Delicas are cylindrical beads, such as in the pink flower shown here, while seed beads are round, which is what I used to make the leaves. I made up the green loopy leaves because I didn’t want all the leaves to look alike.

I aspire to making stunning flowers like these, from the Bead Society of Greater New York. Until then, I’m really pleased with my first little arrangement.

My first French Beaded flowers.