About Me

Thank you for stopping by Amlou's Bead Spot. In future posts, I plan to include photos of my work and comments and concerns about projects I'm working on, but for now, I'm just going to introduce myself by tossing out five random facts about me and/or my beading hobby:

• When I was about 9 years old, my great-aunt gave me my first loom, which she made herself with two nails and three pieces of scrap wood, two of which had notches cut across the top to hold the thread. I wish I could say that I've been beading ever since, but the truth is, I was kind of a lazy child. I learned how to work the loom when I got it, but then I put it away. A couple of decades passed before I dug it out of the closet, dusted it off and took an interest in beadwork again. The loom has since fallen apart, and I have purchased others that work just as well, but every time I use them, I feel a little nostalgic for my old wooden loom.

• I don't consider myself an expert ... yet. :) When I first started beading again, I spent a lot of time doing the things I already knew how to do or what I could learn relatively quickly from my sister. Within the last couple of years, though, I've been more interested in getting out of my comfort zone.

• For me, seed beads rule. I can't say why exactly, but I think it's because they were my first beading medium. (That ol' nostalgia again!) Now that I have been branching out in what I do, I've come to appreciate these tiny beads even more, because now I shop for beading books and magazines and have seen some projects in them that have just wowed me. I had no idea seed beads could be that versatile.

• My favorite place to buy beads is Fire Mountain Gems because of the assortability feature and the $5 shipping. However, I'm not positive, but that I think that the seed beads I buy costed less when only certain items on the site were assortable, because it seemed like I could get a lot more beads for $50 than I can now. My second favorite online bead seller is Fusion Beads. I first tried Fusion after seeing an ad for it in one of my magazines. I was very happy with the quality of beads and the service!

• A couple of books I have feature projects that combine beading with knitting. Since I didn't know have the first clue about knitting, I got some advice and some books on that, too, and have SLOWLY been learning how. It's not as easy as I thought it would be.

Have a great day!

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