Flowers for Valentines Day

beaded flower

Flowers are always a great gift for Valentines Day.

With beaded flowers they never die or go brown, but can last a lifetime.

beaded fuchsia

Here is a small sample of some of mine.

beaded rose bud

beaded carnation

french beaded flower

Flower Website

blue fascinator

I have a new website that I've created to list all the flowers I make, and also to list everything to do with hair accessories.

French beaded flower

The new site is called Flower Cove, and it is a Weebly site instead of Freewebs, I may also eventually move all of Craft Cove over to Weebly as well. With Weebly I can use as many pages as I want, but with Freewebs I only have a limited number.

black fascinator

hair flower

beaded carnation

fascinator

Flower Cove has hair flowers, hair fascinators, hair vines, and other hair accessories, as well as French beading , Victorian beading , and other types of beaded flower stems, bouquets, etc. Not everything in Flower Cove is beaded. I have all sorts of fabric and ribbon flowers as well as paper flowers and quilling. For those who don't know what quilling is, quilling is the art of creating items with paper, most commonly very thin strips are curled into shapes, then glued into designs. Of the fabric flowers, there are folded flowers, flame singed flowers, rolled flowers, and many more. These are then made into hair accessories or other things.

beaded flower

fascinator

You can find it all here: Flower Cove

More beaded flowers

beaded flower

French beaded fuchsia

beaded iris

tiger lily

Here's a small sample of the new flowers that are available at my new website: Flower Cove

Care of Beaded Flowers

I just thought I'd mention a bit about the making and care of beaded flowers

Beaded flowers are often made with either the French Beaded method OR the Victorian Beaded Method.

Both of these methods require hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of tiny seed beads that are threaded onto wire.

They are then bent, twisted, and shaped into the individual parts of the flower. Then the parts are joined together and the stems taped with floral tape to create all sorts of different flowers.




To clean your beaded flowers:

The simplest and safest ways are a feather duster or compressed air.

If the flowers need more than that, you can use a damp cloth to lightly rub the beads.

If they need a more serious clean, you can dip the flower heads in warm soapy water, then rinse thoroughly. Every bit of moisture must be removed with a hair dyer on the lowest setting, or dried thoroughly in fresh air. Even a tiny bit of moisture left can cause it to rust.

With reasonable care your flowers should last a VERY long time, although some of the colours may fade with time.




Beaded Flowers are available from:

Flower Cove
Or email: craftcove@gmail.com

Beaded Flowers now available

an assortment of beaded flowers

Beaded flowers are now available from my web site. There's French Beaded flowers and Victorian Beaded flowers, other types coming soon.

beaded flowers

French beading

Victorian beading

Victorian Beading OR French Beading!!

Victorian Beaded Lily

Victorian Beaded lily

French beaded lily

French beaded lily

Victorian beaded flower

Victorian beading

French beading

French beaded flower

I thought I would show the difference between French Beading and Victorian Beading.

I always thought they were the same thing, but I've since discovered I was wrong.

I made similar flowers using the 2 different methods to show the difference. I'll probably make some tutorials soon.

Victorian beaded flower

Victorian Beading is made similar to ladder stitch and has similarities to Right Angle Weave. Is is made with horizontal lines of beads and both ends of the wire go through the whole row. There are more or less beads added to each row, to create the shape of the petal. This method can also be used to make the 3D animals that I showed in a previous post. They were made by every alternate row being behind the other, in a zigzag pattern to create the back and front.

Victorian beaded rose

Victorian beaded rosebud

 Victorian beaded daffodil

Victorian Beading is also know as English or Continental Beading.

Victorian beaded flower

French Beading is done with rows of beads that are twisted onto a separate section of wire at the top, then the row of beads is passed down the other side, and to another section at the bottom, where it is twisted around again and then goes back to the top. This is shown in the lillium flower.

Another way of doing it is to twist a long row of beads together at the ends, shown in the rounded petal flowers.

French beaded rose

French beaded rosebud

French beaded flower

With French Beading all the beads are thread onto the wire before beginning, and the wire is left on the spool and not cut till the end.

French beaded flower

French beaded fuchsia

I can't decide which looks better.

What do you think??