Module 6 Chapter 6 Making and Using Beads

Thinking about found objects as beads – here is a collection of items that could be used.

6.1

And some with colour added (acrylic paint and Goldfinger).

6. 2

Making beads with shrink plastic – pieces of shrink plastic painted with acrylic interference colours.

6.3

Holes cut out before shrinking.  I tried linking the pieces while heating thinking they might join up but they did not stay together (whereas normally when I use shrink plastic it curls up and sticks when I don't want it to).

6.4

Key to photo 6.5 below 

6.5

1,2 and 3 are the shrink plastic shown above.  I think 1 was overheated as the acrylics went crunchy and changed colour – maybe the interference colours aren’t really suited for this technique.  2 is some of the cut out pieces left unchanged and for 3, I stopped before it had entirely shrunk which gave these little shell-like pieces which shine like mother-of-pearl.

My next experiment was with glass paints on white plastic and this time using the oven rather than a heat gun. 4  is little circles again and triangles;  5 is two circles on top of each other, heated for a very short time and pulled out when they started to curl, which gives these shapes like flower heads, with the smaller piece nestling inside (I thought they would stick together but actually the inner pieces are loose).  8 is the same method with the randomly shaped offcuts which twist up rather nicely.

6 and 7 are paper pulp painted with acrylics and Goldfinger.  6 was pulp pressed into the lining from a box of fruit sweets – I forgot to make holes so these ones will need to be couched down or trapped – and 7 is shapes moulded with fingers on a skewer so they can be threaded.  I think these ones look like muddy lumps of fools gold.

Photo 6.6 below – a selection of rolled beads made from scraps of dyed scrim, permanganate dyed bamboo cloth and sheer fabrics bonded together and incised with a stencil cutter.

6.6

Photo 6.7 Moving on to using beads, this sampler shows from top left

1.Beads threaded with peyote stitch and found objects added as a trim.
2. Weaving on a bead loom.  I stencilled the little bird shape from chapter 5 using ratio graph paper to get the proportions right for the shape of the beads, but unfortunately I didn’t realise until I had finished that I had the paper the wrong way round, so it is rather long and thin.
3. Netting laid over one of the shrink plastic shapes and backed with  onion dyed silk.  Below it are two tiny samples of different beading stitches.
4. A square woven on the bias with a single length of yarn (pin weaving)  strung with shrink plastic beads.

These four samples are mounted on one of the dyed pieces from chapter 3.

6.7

And some close-ups

6.8

6.9

6.10

Finally, paper pulp beads placed on a  Tyvek background and held down with strings of bought beads.
Looks a bit like a rocky desert scene.

6.11