Karyn's Beading

I haven’t been beading as much as I used – my husband even commented that he thought I had lost interest! “Well compared to before,” he said. Truth be told, I was struggling.

I’ve had this string of flat tear-drop pearls sitting on my table for ages.

Since last summer, in fact, as I bought these in Singapore. They are such lovely petals. I imagined a necklace of these overlapping, cascading over each other in fluid movement. But could I achieve the effect I was after? No. I felt very frustrated. I tried; put them away. Then tried again. And again. With wire. In different gauges. With silk thread. With knots; without knots. With chain. No joy.

That’s when I realised, that one of my prime motivations is the joy of creating something tangible from my imagination. Before the advent of hot-desking, I used to have a lovely poster on my desk at work which said:

“Everything you can imagine is real” – Pablo Picasso

But now I was stumped with this one. Now what? Do something else? Come back later? This really bothered me.

On Saturday, I had this out again with lots of scrap lying about. My seven-year-old wanted to make a necklace too. She got her stash out but she was getting really frustrated because she just couldn’t find all the pieces she wanted for her necklace. Then I said to her: “I’m sure you can make something just as beautiful – it may be different from your first idea but it will be just as nice.” And as we sat there discussing the merits of each bead she examined and listening to her chat about her creation, it dawned on me that I too could do something different. I could imagine something else…

Totally different from what I first envisioned. Maybe one day I’ll learn how to create my ‘cascading’ idea but for now, I like this creation and I’m back in a happy space. ♥K

Tagged: Cambridge UK, Necklace, pablo picasso, Pearls, Pink, Silver, UK