Books and beads, my two addictions

 I love to buy beads, and I love to buy books about beading. But too often, they sit around unused. So I've been trying to use more of my beads, and also to actually make some projects from books and magazines. Towards that goal, I made this bracelet from "Great Designs for Shaped Beads" by Anna Elizabeth Draegar.

This is an awesome concept for a book, because I know I'm not the only beader who has excitedly purchased a new style of seed bead, only to be totally stumped on what to do with them. Take the Tila beads that are in this project. I see a lot of designers doing great work with them, but I have not even tried. I took the easy way out and waited for a book project to grab me! It also let me use some size 10 Delicas (which helped dictate the color palette because I only had 3 colors, because I never use them).

The instructions and illustrations in the book were really clear, I was able to make this bracelet over the span of 3 nights while watching a DVD (I also worked on other projects, so I probably could have done it in 1 or 2 sittings if I'd focused). Another nice thing is that Draegar provides alternate options for a lot of the designs, so if you only have a few Tilas leftover, you can whip up a ring to match, or if you like a necklace but don't have enough beads, she scales it down to a bracelet.

I like this design enough that I might make more in other colors, but I think I should delve into another book first!