Strawberry Bead Dresses

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Twelve days ago my computer decided to force itself into an update, update 1903. What should have been a simple restart and install turned into a six hour panic wondering if my computer would ever truly turn back on again. Well... during that time I needed something to work on that wasn't on my computer... so I dug these strawberry dress kits out and got to work.

I underestimated the time these would take by like, a lot. I kept telling myself "I can finish it tonight!" and then there it would be the next night, ahhh.

Okay, firsts! The is the first time I've used the superduo beads. I find them pretty pleasant, I like the shapes they make and I think it adds a nice touch the final piece. I don't think I like them enough to start stocking them in a zillion colors though. They also make for terrible sleeves on the smaller dress. This is the first time I've done RAW with two needles! Yep. Every single RAW dress in the past I've just done all my beading without a needle and been just fine. But this time I told myself "no! it must be faster with needles!" and after I got over the initial learning curve it was indeed a lot faster to do it that way.

Had to reteach myself how to pingpong my rows. That means one row goes left to right, the next row goes right to left, the next row goes left to right, and so on. It makes the pattern easier to keep track of but I'm not left handed so I had to figure out how to spin the piece around so I could still technically continue working right to left.

The most important part for me in finishing these dresses is that now I can apply them forward to more dresses. The next time I do these they don't have to be strawberries - they can just be cute little ballerina points!

Both these dresses are from tutubeads, I had a friend from Asia help me order them. They use matte green, shiny red and white, and metallic bronze size 11 seed beads, with cream superduos. I think probably the white seed beads were meant to be cream but oh well, that's what came with it. The patterns were a little wonky to read and weren't printed very well with the white beads sometimes not appearing at all; I had to go in and hand draw some of them in where the print had missed them.