Poppy

Here is my first finished flower, made using instructions from The Art of French Beaded Flowers: Creative Techniques for Making 30 Beautiful Blooms by Carol Benner Doelp. This project aims to use all four of the basic techniques: continuous loops, continuous crossover loops, continuous wraparound loops and the basic frame. Before this project, Doelp includes a history of French beaded flowers, a "basics" section, in which she talks about the different beads, wire and tools used, as well as a section devoted to the basic techniques. These are explained in detail and there is also a flower making math page, for estimating how many beads you need to complete a petal. The first project, which is the simplest, aims to give you practice with the four basic techniques. Of course, it would get pretty boring if that would be all that you'd be doing! What I love about this book is that in each project (there are 21), there is a new special technique, such as ruffling, outlining, reverse basic and many others. All of the flowers in this book look unique, not just because of the colors used or the number of
petals or leaves, but also because the techniques used to create them are unique. The first project is actually titled "Classic Poppy Pin", and calls for a pin back. I didn't really feel like doing that, and I chose instead to curl the end of the stem into a circle, so now my poppy can stand by itself.