Beading with Friends: Beadweaving with Lentil Beads

 Beading with friends is always more fun than beading alone.  Recently I had the great fortune of going to Bead Fest in Philadelphia and meeting up with two of my good friends from our facebook group, Creative Bead Chat.  It had been a year since we had been able to see each other in person and shopping and beading with Cynthia Machata and Melinda Orr was the highlight of my trip. 

During the shopping portion of our trip, we discovered a vendor that carried some outstanding beading patterns.  Recently I had begun to play around with seed beads again and particularly the new two hole beads that are very popular right now.  A certain pattern by Bead Dreamers called Lentille using two hole lentil beads caught our eye and we decided to give the pattern a try. Getting started with this pattern was a little tricky but once the first two rows were completed, it was a snap to make.

Each of us had a different take on the pattern.  Mine are both monochromatic while Cynthia's is an elegant piece using two colors with an extra special flower clasp.  You can see Cynthia's bracelet on her blog, Antiquity Travelers.   Melinda's bracelet is still in progress but she also utilized two colors.  My clasp is a knock off of the "M" clasp that I handcrafted out of copper wire.

It really is fun to bead with friends even if it sometime is only thru the internet sharing pictures back and forth in messages.