bead corral

I've been making beaded beads the past few nights.  Right now I'm waiting for an order of Delicas to make a stunning dragonfly cuff I spotted at Good Quill Hunting.  I keep telling myself I won't make another one-drop peyote cuff, but I found this one and fell in love.  This is the photo from Christina's pattern site:

you cannot tell how shimmery this is in the photos

These are the beads I've been playing with since the weekend.  The little ones are woven on an 8mm core of 15/0 seed beads.  The larger ones are made from 11/0's and are on a 10mm core.

these are about 9.5mm across

these are the little guys; the big ones are rolling around in the background

I use circular peyote to make my beaded beads.  I make two halves and join them together.  This came about because I find it very difficult to decrease on a 3-D surface in the round.  Also because I originally followed a tutorial in French and the part about the increases was about all I could understand.  The details for the decrease were not accompanied by the best diagrams, so this was the solution  I invented.  I like getting all my rows to line up and not having any bulky areas sticking out as I had with some other methods.  I'm pretty certain this is fairly similar to the TQB beaded bead.  But if you check out her beads you will not believe how tight they are.  I guess mine will get better after 15 years of practice.

My mom commented that I needed another light source for my photos.  I've got three lights now, but they are not fancy photo lights.  I think I need to change the bulbs and see if this helps.  Above is my do-over pic of the celtic trefoil.  I think it is a little better photo, but I'm going to continue working on the lighting.