Choosy Chicks Choose Chicklet Hop

Back in June Rita from Toltec Jewels Jewel School Friends posted that she went a bit nuts buying these cute Chicklet beads from Sue Beads. Can you blame her? They are pretty awesome, and they really do look like those Chicklets I remember from childhood ... except, well they didn't have the sweet flower imprinted on it.

What fun little beads these are. So when I saw the post from Rita, I took about 2 seconds to raise my hand to create with some Chicklets. But then here's the thing. Somewhere in my head I was thinking we'd be getting a few of them to create a pattern. When my single bead arrived I thought, huh just one? What in the world do you do with one bead? 

What I do is make it the star of the show and create a pattern around it. I decided to use it as a charm on a bracelet. I have been wanting to figure out how you bead a right angle to a peyote stitch. I figured how hard can this be? So as my husband would do .... I didn't ask for any directions. Yeah, not so smart.

I kept trying to bring together two ends of a peyote strip and it looked like a complete mess. Not even worthy of a picture to show you just what a disaster it was. So I broke down, and turned to YouTube. What in the world did we do before we could google anything we needed? I quickly found a tutorial on a Peyote Stitch Triangle. Of course a beading tutorial on YouTube wouldn't be complete without a Russian accent. A few pauses, and rewinds and off we go.

I wanted to bring out the orange in the bead which meant not over powering the rest of the bracelet with the same color. I used it only as an accent. This beaded up in under an hour once I had figured out the peyote triangle part of it. Yeah, I should'a started with the tutorial in the first place. Next time.

Apparently I was not the only one that found these sweet little beads a fun challenge to try. Originally Rita was looking for 20 people to join in on the hop, but she had so many people respond she actually expanded it to 44 people. This baby is going to be a big hop! So let's get on with it. Here are all the other artists working with Chicklets today:

Guest of Honor & Featured Artist:  Susan Kennedy
Sue Kennedy's blogs:         SueBeads...A Beady Girl's blog
                                    Art Jewelry Elements
Sue Kennedy's website      SueBeads
SueBeads Art Beads          SueBeads

Hostess: Toltec Jewels                 
Artists: Linda Anderson, Jennifer Reno, Shirley Moore, Kristen Stevens, Marybeth Rich, Jael Thorp, Melissa Trudinger, Andrea Glick, Nan Smith, Blanca Medina, Shai Williams, Carolyn Lawson, Kay Thomerson, Rana Wilson, Robin Reed, Robin Showstack, Sheila Prosterman, Karla Morgan, Kari Asbury, Kelly Rodgers, Jayne Capps, Mischelle Andrade Fanucchi, Heather Richter, Chris Eisenberg, Kathleen Breeding, Linda Landig, Crystal Thain, Cheri Reed, Heather d-Entremont, Dini Bruinsma, Lori Schneider, Tammy Adams, Melinda Orr, Lennis Carrier, Cynthia Machata (that's me), Elizabeth Hodges, Debbie Rasmussen, Tanya McGuire, Charlie Jacka, Ev Shelby, Sharyl McMillian-Nelson, Jasvanti Patel