DIY: Giant Bead

This week, I found a great tutorial to make a giant bead out of smaller beads. This craft is right up my ally! I was obsessed with seed beads when I was younger. Remember those animals you could make out of pony beads and string? Yea, I made those out of seed beads... I must have been unusually patient in elementary school! From there, I moved onto a bead loom, and created some cool bracelets and necklaces. After that I must have gotten distracted with knitting! Luckily, I kept all of my beads. Here's the inspiration (via Craft Gawker):

The tutorial can be found here. It is based off of another tutorial for rings.

For my first giant bead, I used these gorgeous matte beads that I had. I didn't have enough to make the giant bead as long as the pattern in the tutorial, so I shortened it.

I really like the result, but I'm a little afraid to wear it! One of the beads broke while I was threading it. To replace it, I would have had to undo over one row! I was lazy and left the broken bead on, but it definitely compromises the integrity of the bead. The whole process took about two hours (but to be honest, I enjoyed it so much I wasn't keeping track of time. All I know is that I accidentally worked through lunch). The next day, I made another one. I started off doing a good job of documenting everything, but quickly got distracted by beading, haha.

I drew out my own template for my pattern.

In the end, I decided to keep it simple. I'm still not used to the beading pattern!

Row 1 and 2.

Adding row 3.

Adding row 4. The beading gets pretty twisted in the beginning, but as you add more rows, it flattens out.

Sewing the seam of the giant bead.

I was really excited to find this necklace at JoAnn Fabrics for only $2! It's perfect. I can even switch out beads if I want to.

I'm hoping to experiment with more patterns in the future. The way the beads line up makes it a little tricky to make the patterns that I'd like to try. The ring tutorial has some great ideas, and it explains things better than the giant bead tutorial.