Alisa Lehman - Freeform Peyote Adventurer

Several of the Adventurers on our Freeform Peyote Challenge don't currently have their own blogs, so I'm hosting them here as guest posts.  Here's Alisa Lehman talking about her wonderful piece that seems right at home Under the Sea:

Alisa Lehman's first freeform peyote bracelet

This is my first try at freeform peyote -

 

detail of Alisa Lehman's first freeform peyote bracelet

I started by laying out some beads – I already had some left over beads in blues and greens from another project so I started with those.  There were a few colors of size 8 and some larger assorted beads.  I added some size 6s that I had hanging around, some bugles, some drops and some 15s.

 

I started the process by using a tutorial I found by Beki Haley that suggested making the first length of beads the length of your bracelet and starting with just one size.  I did that and just kept building out and adding bridges.  

For quite a while It went through an ugly duckling stage.  I liked a few bits, but some of the edges were rippling and some of the beads did not play nicely together.  Then I started embellishing the top and it started coming together.  When I finished, I felt like it needed a little something more and I found the starfish in my stash.  It seemed to work well with the blue/green ocean colors so I popped it on right on top of some of the top level embellishments (in hindsight, it would have probably been better to have added it early on and embellished around it.  I felt I need to balance the starfish color, so I added the 3 round gold beads on each side.

 

I used a glass button I had for a clasp.

 

I really enjoyed to process and I have already laid out my beads for my next bracelet (see photo at left).  

If that goes well, I would like to try a necklace.

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