Making beads

I've been making beads for embellishment of a book I am making.  The colour palette is black and white with a touch of silver glitter, so for the beads I used white crochet cotton, black crochet cotton, and some silver-edged organza ribbon and silver thread.  To make the beads, I wound the crochet cotton round and round a PVA-brushed straw keeping the thread close together, until it was long enough - each one a different length.  I added more PVA glue over the top to hold it in place - being clear this was no problem.  With the ribbon ones, I wound small pieces of the ribbon around and wound the silver thread over the top; again finish with more PVA.  I find three or four beads will fit on each straw comfortably, and then I slip the straw over the top of a wooden skewer stuck into a sponge.  These can sit until the beads are dry.  Usually they slip off the straw but if they don't you can just cut the straw.  This is a technique I learnt at Marden Senior College in Cert 3 Visual Arts (Textiles), with Suzanne Gummow.

Hand-made beads 

©Christine Linton

Sustainability

One of my most important concepts in my work and my life is the issue of recycling/upcycling.  Apparently someone called   Reiner Pilz of Pilz first used the term upcycling as opposed to recycling, because recycling often means smashing up items to remake them into something of less value.  Upcycling as a term means giving an item more value by reusing it in a different way.
With recycling/upcycling comes sustainability - for our own personal resources and cash, for the beautiful planet we live on.  There is much in our daily art and craft practice that we can reuse.  When we experiment with a technique and hate the result, we can use that as the backing layer for something else.  If we print an article that we decide is irrelevant after all, we can upcycle those pages into a trial run for a folded book.  You get the idea.  My own favourite is using bread tags as beads - yes those little plastic things around the top of the plastic bread bag.  More and more plastic, but this is something I collect and use to hang from the spine of my journal.  Use heat-protective gloves when heat-gunning; they curl up beautifully, singly or in groups.  Or use them as they are because even a small heat gun uses up electricity.

Bread Tag Beads, heat-gunned

I have been inspired often by re-reading the following post on "Slow Cloth".
http://www.handeyemagazine.com/content/slow-cloth
Jude Hill (Spirit Cloth) and Elaine Lipson (Red Thread Studio) are two artists who use and promote Slow Cloth principles, which you can read in HandEye above.