French Flower Beading

I added some new info. to my bag of tricks this past weekend. I took a class in French Flower Beading. I've wanted to learn how to do this ever since I thrifted a book on this art. I've looked through the book numerous times, but it seemed to me that there were too many elements involved to teach myself from the book. Learning some things is really helped along by a live teacher. This was one of those times.

I learned the basic techniques & made a page of 'samples' to pin up on the wall in my bead area. Then I made a little bouquet of African Violets. The stunning image above is from ebay. These chrysanthemums sold for $130.

There was some talk about the thrifted, OOP book; ...cruel talk about the very same book selling for $350 on ebay. It just isn't true. But I have a nice HCDJ copy of Bead Design; written during the most recent renaissance of French Flower Beading - the 1960s & 70s.

The obsessive tendencies kicked right in, I cam home & bookmarked 5 or 10 flower beading sites & purchased just one book-let on the subject.

I don't know whether I want to make flowers with these techniques or something else. It will take a while to incorporate this craft. It's a craft which requires a little preplanning - stringing entire hanks of seed beads on wire in advance. I probably can't do this on the floor or my bed, but I am excited to experiment further.