Beaded Butterfly

We’ve been talking for a couple of months about making a beaded butterfly, and this morning Madeleine decided today was the day.

Here’s what we used.

To get her started, I bent one end of the wire to keep her beads on, and then handed it over to her.

She chose beautiful colors, I think.

When the wings were done, I took over for a minute….

I cut a thinner wire for the body – leaving it long enough to be folded in half to make the body (doubled wire) and the antennae,

then placed on one bead, and crimped the wire.

After the first bead, I put the bottom of the wings through the wire, connecting the wings to the body.

Then we put on a few more beads.

When it was time to gather in the wings, I bent them firmly, and wrapped the wire through the ‘v’ of the wings (between the top and bottom part of each wing).

I had a rather large gap, so I added one small bead onto each gap,

and then collected the wires together again and Madeleine added the rest of the body.

When it was done, We wrapped the body to the top of the wings, then twisted them to secure it,

and then finally separated the wires to make antennae.

Madd put on the rest of the beads, then I tucked the ends of the wires back into the beads as best I could so it wouldn’t poke or snag anything.

This idea was inspired in part by a project we did a year and-a-half ago at a Mama’s craft circle, Dragonflies that were shown in Martha’s magazine.