Beaded Flowers and Wire Dipped Foliage

I used to make a lot of beaded jewelry. Over the years I acquired a wonderful assortment of (mostly) Czech glass beads. I bought some in  Jablonec, some at  Michaels, and some from Shipwreck Beads in Lacey, WA.

   However, after about 10 years, my passion for making beaded jewelry waned. It seemed to me that beaded bracelets and necklaces were no longer as popular. The flame fizzled.

I became more focused on painting, doing art with my grandchildren, and making costumes and clothing.

   In the grim winter months of 2026 when the news was so depressing, 

I needed color! 

I needed my beads! 

I needed flowers! 

Inspiration came. I wanted to make glass flowers for various Czech vases on windowsills in our house. The vases just seem so empty...

My husband Milos, for several years, had collected beautiful vases, especially Pavel Hlava Exbor Glass. There were also two bud vases that I bought directly from the Czech glass artist Jan Beranek in Skrdlovice, Czech Republic. 

  I could easily envision the flowers being made from beads, but the leaves not. Having worked with wire in my jewelry efforts, I wanted to dip wired shapes into resin for the foliage. I set myself up with some green resin and a UV lamp and ventured into a new craft. 

This was my first bouquet in a bud vase by Beranek:

This is what it looks like in my workroom when I am making the beaded flowers.

Here are some further bouquets:

The Blue vase below is by Beranek.

I ran out of resin and am waiting for another jar to arrive - shipped from China it turns out and it is very slowly making its way east. This bouquet is in a traditional Czech cut crystal vase.

Heirloom Lace Collection

 I inherited lace from my husband's cousin Elizabeth Hartshorn Nebesar, who came from a Quaker family in Pennsylvania. I do not know who the original owners were. She had become the caretaker of it, and she passed it on to me. It took considerable time and effort to sort through it all, learn how to best store it and to launder certain pieces without damaging them.

If you are interested in lace and lace-making:

https://www.brooklynlaceguild.com/

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CwhYb8x7M/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Link to pdfs: About Lace and My Collection - five groups

Here are some photos to give an idea of the range of items.

 Heirloom Chair

Creating the Heirloom

I had the idea to collaborate with my forebears, long ago deceased, 
to create an heirloom chair that might manage to stay in the family. 
The hope is to have the chair be a symbol of the family's creativity, 
to be more than just an old chair.

My grandfather William Welles Lyman (1888-1969) loved furniture and was a skilled craftsman. 

His woodworking was a hobby, but he sold some items. I inherited a reproduction Chippendale chair, seen in the photo below, that he made sometime around 1920. I do not know the exact date. 

Here he is in about 1955, many years after he made the chair:

Here is the chair to the left of the buffet in the dining room:

Grandpa Lyman's sister - his only sibling - Great Aunt Virginia Lyman (1886-1969) was a painter. 

I inherited some of her artwork, including this painting:

This is Aunt Virginia in her brother's dining room in Norwich, Connecticut in 1959. I am the little girl to the left.

Here is Virginia painting en plein air:

...and in her studio:

Process

The chair came to me with a faded and drab-looking seat.

I went online to see if needlepoint seat covers would be appropriate:

Yes!

This photo shows the painting by Aunt Virginia, my sketch scaled down for transfer to needlepoint canvas, and way in the background, the portrait of Welles' and Virginia's grandmother, Rosina Newport Blagrove (seen in the photo of the dining room above), that I also inherited:

This photo shows the needlepoint canvas rolled on a loom, with the design transferred. 

I used Sharpie pens and acrylic markers.

Below shows the stitching with Persian needlepoint wool well underway.  

I realized that this project was going to take much longer than I thought! 20 stitches per inch, that's 400 stitches per square inch. With the piece about 18 inches by 18 inches... well, that multiples out to about 130,000 stitches total. I listened to many audio books while stitching! This project took hours and hours and hours!

I had a stash of yarns that I wanted to use that included two 30-yard skeins of vintage Rhode Island Persian Point in off-white. I felt the forces of the universe were aligning with my goals, as I wanted the background to be just that shade of off-white.

But I hit a snag. My estimate was way off. The canvas really sucked up the yardage!  

I was able to find more of the same color on EBay. BUT, whether because of storage conditions or simply a different dye-lot, the color white did not exactly match. I did my best to blend. 

I felt that a hand-stitched label on the underside would be a good final touch.