French Beaded Flowers - The Complete Guide by Zoe L. Schneider is a new book about how to make those gorgeous sculptural flowers out of wire and beads.

It's a very comprehensive book. Designed for a beginner to learn from, the first chapter covers things you need to know to start. Inspiration, showing how to look at the shapes that make up different plants and flowers.Wire, what sorts are best to work with, including a good table of wire use by gauge. Tapes that you will use on the stems, and the kinds of beads to use and how to string them on the wire. It also talks about what to use to arrange and display the beautiful flowers when they are done and the tools you'll use to make the flowers. It's also spiral bound in a hard cover to lie flat while you're working on making flowers and learning the techniques.

The second chapter goes into techniques. Different shapes and types of petals, stamens, leaves and stems. How to assemble the individual units to create flowers. It is all very well laid out and photographed with clear text to make the construction methods clear. The author discusses pros and cons of different methods of assembly and explains the tables she uses as patterns. The tables show the bead type and colors, suggested wire gauge, technique used and the bead counts on the rows.

The last chapter is flower patterns. There are a lot of patterns available in other places for common flowers. So instead of retreading ground that's been walked before, she did something which absolutely charmed and inspired me. Her flowers are the ones I see regularly here in Alaska. She shows how to make fireweed, prickly roses, the beautiful flowers of my home state. There are instructions for a petite brooch of a tiny spray of forget-me-nots (Alaska's state flower) and instructions for making high bush cranberries.

I really recommend this book.


This is an example of what a French beaded flower looks like if you haven't seen one before. They are made from wire and seed beads. Looking at you, you can imagine how gorgeous it looks with sunlight shining through it. This example was beaded by Sara Schoedinger.


You can buy this book at your local beadstore, from MyCraftivity.com or below from Amazon.com.




North Light Books provided this review copy of French Beaded Flowers to me free of charge.
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