Pony Bead Love

Jeanne used to make a lot of animals and such from pony beads. The last time she visited, we got all the beads out and dreamed a bit. She took a few home to make a project. That inspired me.

I've never done much with plastic pony beads, so I thought I'd try to learn to make a little heart. I found this tutorial on YouTube and followed it to make my beads.


The first heart I made (the red one) I used a flat plastic/nylon string to string the beads. The video shows how you cut the string and tie it in a knot. Then start a second string. Well, this flat string was thick and left an unsightly knot there on the right ... and another  on the bottom. (Click the image to see a larger version. The knots are very apparent.)

I tried the second heart (the pink one) about three times using three different string. None worked well. So then I tried a thin gold beading wire. Though it shows through the beads more than I'd like, it worked well.

Pony Bead Hearts

For the third heart (the blue one), I wanted to time how long it took to make. About 20 minutes. I was considering making these hearts and leaving them in geocache treasure boxes as my personal signature. That 20 minutes is a bit too much effort for my intended purpose, so I'll leave this project alone for the time being. 

It was fun to learn to do this peyote stitch pony bead project, though. It gets my hands twitching to do some seed bead projects again.

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