Abigail's Wedding Hair Pins

I dabble in bead embroidery when it's needed for specific pieces. In these cases I'm usually matching or complimenting some other design.  For example the bead embroidered Tiara piece that I created for Helen a few years ago. When some of my dear friends announce that they are getting married I offer to bead something for them for their wedding outfit if it calls for it. Not everyone takes me up on it, and if I don't think I can do what they want I let them know. 

Detail photo I was working off of from Abigail

Abigail asked if it was possible to do some beadwork for her hair that went with her dress. She sent me plenty of photos of the beadwork on her dress and sizes of beads and sequins to work with. I wasn't sure I could do it since I've never worked with sequins before but I started researching and playing. As I went down the sequin rabbit-hole I found this fabulous website to purchase sequins. 

I stitched a few pieces at a time on one piece of satin

I compiled white, off white and silver beads from my stash along with ordering a few different sequins that I thought would hopefully work. I mailed the sequin samples to Abigail to compare to her dress...whites and the various finishes are so hard to photograph and guess at! Once I had enough information and color options I started stitching. 

I always think that I don't like bead embroidery but these were super-fun. I was really amazed at how well they clustered together in Abigail's hair for her wedding. Her hair dresser did an amazing job at making the ones she chose to use look like they were all one piece. Her hair dresser had requested I put them on 2 inch U-pins which I ordered from Amazon. 

Abigail's Wedding Hair!

We had such a great time at all of the wedding festivities and getting to catch up with friends old and new. I'm always honored to have something that I handmade as part of a friend's wedding. Thank you for including us and congrats Abigail and Juan!

Lastly, I loved photographing these. I wished I had a macro lens to really get better detail of the sequins and beads together.  I'm am by no means a professional photographer but I took a lot of photos as close as I could get.  The shapes drew me in. So this blog post has extra photos!

Past Beadwork: Bead Embroidered Hair Combs

Sometimes I do bead embroidery, not very often, but lately while talking to some brides I've brought up the hair combs that I have made in the past.  They were made so far in my past that I don't have any images of them to reference on the internet.  So here's a little run down of some hair combs that I made and I still really like.

Layne's Hair Comb

Layne is a hairdresser that I have known since elementary school.  She initially thought she wanted beaded shoes, but she decided that she'd rather have hair combs for her and her bridesmaids (sisters).  I think it was an excellent choice, shoes get trashed at weddings (particularly outdoor ones) and that's a lot of beadwork to get dirty.

Smaller bridesmaid hair combs

Heidi wanted 2 hair combs with a long silk veil attached.  I made the veil with snaps so that she could wear the combs individually also.  the below comb had a match so that it fit on either side of her hairdo.  I'm particularly fond of gold, so I was excited to do a white and gold design for this commission.

In the same lines of hair pieces I also made Heidi's daughter's hair clip for her baptism.  The baby hair clip was much tinier with the smallest beads I can peyote stitch with, I blogged about it this winter HERE.