Bead Love: Beady Prompts - a source of inspiration from Nancy Dale

Bead Love member Nancy Dale has published a blog of beady prompts to jumpstart our imaginations when it comes to beading. It's a brilliant idea as many of us experience beaders block from time to time and picking up on someone else's idea can help us to become unstuck.

Nancy started off January with some beaded florals, followed by February's stitch combinations. Flowers in general are not something I bead, but I did give it a go. If you look up at our banner all the flowers were contributed by your members and there are some beauties there. Stitch combinations are something I love and my Love Beads banner hanger used many different stitches over a wooden finial. (And yes....I really do bead in that level of mess.) Here I used peyote, herringbone and raw to cover the different shapes of the finial.

But March......March I love. Beaded rocks. Last summers trip down the West Coast landed us in Ventura California for a few days backed up to the ocean and a holey rock beach! The motherlode of interesting rocks. So beading one seemed like a natural....I started but, well, as happens I got distracted along the way. Now with Nancy's bead prompt I am encouraged to see it through.

Here's one of Nancy's beaded rocks working from a lovely bead soup which Nancy is a master at. I know I've had the conversation many times over the years and there are those of us who delight in a bead soup and those who shudder. I'm a bead soup gal through and through and so is Nancy.

and look at this one. This is a collaboration! I have a LOT of bead soup and some months back I sent a large-ish bag off to Nancy. This is what she beaded! How wonderful is that?

I dug out my rock and it's beady beginnings.....not bead soup this time, but a series of components. i can't wait to get back at it and have my very own beaded rock garden! If you want to join along with Nancy's rock beading the blogpost can be found here.