Amateur Amalgam

Sep 9, 2026

I’m back with a short project this time, but with lots of pictures!

I was looking for something small to make with the artist collection purple mixed beads that I got a while back from Artbeads.com and at first I thought to make a little choker but that didn’t work out. Trust I tried many, many times, but I just couldn’t figure out a pattern that I liked enough to keep; and there was always too much or too little. I didn’t have enough for the original design that I had in mind so the beads just sat in my “to fix” box. Then one of the Valentine’s emails caught my eye. There was a little heart pattern that looked really interesting and the final size is about 2in so that should be more than enough!

The day I started to work on it I was feeling bleh – a feeling that I learned is called acedia – so I though I might as well do something to at least try and get out of the funk a little. The pattern calls for 4 colours, but I only had the three so I doubled the use for whichever I had the most of – in this case the dark purple. The estimated time on the pattern said 4-6 hours so I figured why not give it a shot?

When I picked it up I only had an hour to work on it, so that was just setting up my supplies and figuring out the tension on the string I was using. I hadn’t done anything in brick stitch in a while so I was pulling way too hard at first.

The next time I could work on it was a few days later, and I had to stop and start a lot on this one but I still made it. It took a lot longer than I thought it would though. I got about halfway before I had to put it away, and leave what was left to continue the next day.

I got interrupted a bunch the next day too, but I forced myself to sit through it and actually finish!

So it took me 2 hours more than what the pattern approximated, and that’s probably because I had to stop and start a couple times, re do a few spots, and look up how to do the brick stitch properly cause it wasn’t looking so hot; but we got there in the end!

It looks soooo good in the light.

Now I had initially thought this would use up all the beads I set aside for this but it used alot less than I was expecting. I actually have enough to make another. I might do one in Peyote just for practice with that stitch, but for now I’ll stick to just this one!

I did break a bead while going back through it but it’s on the wonky side of the work so I’ll leave it. I don’t want to go back and redo the whole thing after it’s already done.

The whole process took about 8 hours and I was expecting the final size to be 2in x 2in but it’s actually closer to 3in x 2.5in; maybe the peyote one is gonna be smaller?