Toronto Bead Society Bead Fair

It's almost that time again for the Spring Bead Fair of the Toronto Bead Society.  This year it's on May 30th & April 1st.  For details check out their website at http://www.torontobeadsociety.org/.  They've got some nice class offerings as well.

For our little group it's the first road trip of the season.  We'll head down to the Bead Fair to be there before it opens.  After a few hours there, we'll go to Queen Street to Arton's and the other 4 or 5 stores on that corner...always fun.  Time to start planning the next few beading projects and create a shopping list for the trip.

Book Review - Sensational Bead Embroidery

I received my copy of Sensational Bead Embroidery by Sherry Serafini today - the 4th in Lark Books' Beadweaving Master Class series.  As with the first three in the series, this is a fabulous book.

I'm not a bead embroiderer in any sense of the word, but this book has projects for every skill level.  The Funky Earrings and Bee Bracelet are two projects that only require you to do enough embroidery to go around the stone you want to bezel, the rest is peyote stitch and embellishment.  There are bracelets and necklaces.  If you want a little more embroidery there's the Freeform Beetle Necklace, some earrings and bracelets.  For the more advanced and adventurous you can try you and at some of the larger necklaces and collars.  What surprised me was that even some of the collars that look huge in the pictures are actually smaller than one might think.

So if you've ever wanted to try bead embroidery this would be a great book to have both for projects and reference for the various stitches and techniques.  The instructions are well written and the supply lists give you size and color names of the beads used in the projects. 

I'm looking forward to seeing the next two in the series to be released later this year:
Bead Riffs by Rachel Nelson-Smith
Classical Elegance by Maggie Meister.

I hope they continue this series in 2012.  It's great to have books by well known designers on beadweaving.