Beaded Geisha : 01

As a few of you may know, the past few months I've been doing a lot of bead work as a way to cope with not having a full sewing studio at my fingertips. I picked up some Delica beads on a whim this summer, and now I have a ridiculous amount of them, because I keep thinking of new patterns - all in a Japanese theme, because why not?

This is one I just finished earlier this week, and one of the larger pieces I've done. It's about 3" high by 1" wide or so, and was designed based off of a Ukiyo-e image. The design is completely original, and is stitched from about 18 different colors of Delicas, using mostly a peyote stitch, with brick to finish the geta at the bottom.

This is the first of three I'm hoping to do, and instead of having them as jewelry, I'm actually planning on framing them, because they catch the light so well!

My original reference

More randomness...

I'm considering taking these for commission, but I'm not sure anyone is interested. As I get more of the jewelry pieces up, though, that might be an option - what do you all think? Or would anyone be interested in buying the pattern and making it yourself? It's one of the hardest one's I've done yet, but I've been thinking of selling patterns for some of the simpler designs maybe.

Now, onto another random question for my amazing followers (or anyone who stumbles across this) - anyone have experience with having a craft book published? If so, could you message me or email me at tscosplay@gmail.com? I have around 30 different patterns made and tested, all of Japanese-esque things, that I would love to put together into a book, along with some of my photography (and there are more I'm working on thanks to getting to Kyoto... I figure I should do something with these pieces!)

Delica #11 beads
Approx 8 hours hand stitched
Original design ©2014 Samantha Lemieux
Tumblr : Instagram