WIP - Coffee Ballerina Bead Dress

Hello, beaders and friends of!

I've spent this week working on a single new bead dress. I honestly thought it would only take me a couple days to do and then I could move onto the next, but I've run into an extremely unexpected problem that has hindered progress to a slow crawl.

{On deviantART}

She's based upon the Ballerina pattern I've mentioned so often before! My cousin Amelia, who I went to help clean with about a month ago, picked out the colors for the dress. (You can also buy a custom one [here] for the time being!)

The colors picked are luster cream, luster light cream, copper-lined clear, and Picasso brown. They're all glass seed beads in size 11 and 15. She's also picked out a creamy ribbon to match and I'll be adding in an antique crystal that I'm "up-cycling" from an old saloon chandelier I took apart. The copper beads she picked out do use real copper, as opposed to the silver-lined beads only being the color silver (is it tin maybe?).

The bodice went over without any difficulties. In fact it was so smooth after working on Alicia for so many hours that I was feeling rather confident about finishing it in one or even two days.

The bodice was done entirely with white Japanese One G nylon. I did the first row of the skirt in white as well since changing to the brown One G would've showed up a lot more drastically on the bodice than white would've in the skirt.

Coffee photo by my cousin Amalia, Instagram @amelia_love

Then I started beading the skirt.

As you can see in the photo collection to the right, my finger tips are turning a ridiculous shade of faux tan orange-brown from working with the Picasso beads! I've never worked with these beads before, but they weren't exactly cheap, so I didn't expect the dye to start bleeding all over me.

It's both a good and bad thing that the dye comes off my hands easily in water. It's good because, yay!, I don't have dye all over my fingers! It's bad because it means the same is also true of the beads. I've warned my cousin that once she has it that she will need to be careful not to touch the skirt (or let anyone else do so). Luckily it's going to be displayed in a bell glass anyway, so the chances of someone touching it are slim.

I myself while beading have been meticulously careful not to touch the skirt and then the bodice after. I fear the dark dye getting on the cream beads, something I'd really rather avoid happening. This change of pace has changed my confidence from a two-day job to hoping that I'll be able to finish by the end of the week.

If you were wondering more about these beads, the specific name for them is Hybrid Natural Picasso, Transparent. It's possible I've just picked up a bad batch but since I don't have money to throw away I'll just be avoiding this particular type of bead from now on!

An article for further reading: [Beading Daily]

Until next Sunday,

Pinky

Ashley Mae