When I was a teenager, my mom bought me one of those little looms that you can do beadwork on, and I really enjoyed making hatbands and other small things on the loom. Working with those tiny beads was hard, and you had to use a very thin needle to thread the beads on with; but I enjoyed watching the pattern come into place as I strung the beads on row by row. Now, I doube that I could see those tiny seed beads well enough to make anything , or if I did, it would be more of frustration than enjoyment. I do like the pony beads though, and it is great to take and old t-shirt, cut the sleeves and the bottom so you have fringes, and then add the beads onto the fringes for a kind of Indian/Hippie look. When I was in high school, we were allowed to do leather tooling in art class, and I really loved doing leatherwork. I ordered a bridle, breast collar and saddlebags from Tandy (Radio Shack now), and then carved a picture of my horse on all of them, dyed the leather, and painted the horse to look like mine. When I rode her, I had a very unique set and received many compliments on the tack and saddlebags.
It must be so nice to have crafts abilities! Are you still doing leather-work? I can write little stories all day long but when it takes physical dexterity, I missed the boat! This picture is about 12 years old but the lady let me try her loom. All you have to do is step on a lever and toss that stick across the loom. I never made one successful stitch! I could imagine what my leather work would look like!
My mom was real into crafting when I was little so we did so many different things. I learned to embroider, needlepoint, crochet, sew, do macrame, cross stitch, rug hooking, painted pottery and ceramics. We were always trying whatever the newest craft was. The only thing I never learned to do was knit - that's something I've always wanted to learn. Maybe one of these days. Macrame was always fun, we would do intricate designs and incorporate beads and ceramic figurines in it. Kind of like this -
I learned to macrame with my daughter when she was little, she was better than me. Now I don't do anything like that, I have been looking at learning to hook rugs, I know it will take alot of time to get one rug hooked but I would like to try it when I get time. I saw a show where the lady went to the second hand store got old mens wool suits, cut them up into little strips and hooked them into a rug.
Although I don't know a thing about beadwork or leather tooling, I have a feeling that this is a thread that others here might be interested in, and strongly suspect that it didn't go very far only because the forum was only about a month old when it was started, and there weren't very many of us here then. So, here's a bump on this one.
Yes, I had just joined SoC back then. I have been collecting beads when I'm out treasuring hunting. I plan to use some of them to add to dreamcatchers for my oldest son's room or wherever he hangs them. I've tried to make those bead bracelets and got all confused with the technique.