Meet Your Host Sami Ali

When we would travel, we would look for bead stores and you know, along the pathway, there were just so many interesting people that we came across.

For example, somebody who owns a store has owned it for 40 years and just amazes me that you've, you know, that anybody does anything for 40 years anymore, but just to have an amazing bead store filled with lots of history just is, it's a passion, right? And I just love talking to people who have that kind of a passion.

At first I was stringing beads, making bracelets like this, doing the bead mosaics.

But over the past six months, I really needed something that was a bit more portable that I could start and stop and carry around with me because I was on the go a little bit more.

And so I took up bead weaving.

Bee weaving is using needle and thread, literally, to weave beads together, and so I want you to meet the bead.

This is my Cellini spiral.

This is a project that I've been working on for about on and off for the past two months, and it's probably going to be another couple months.

It's going to eventually be a necklace.

It's a little bit more than halfway done.

I don't really like an incomplete look like this.

I like when it kind of rise up a little bit high it's a hollow tube so it's hollow it's squishy it's super lightweight and i just love it and as you can see the colors are inspired by what i see out my window lots of nature and and green lush trees so anyways this selenie spiral in particular is inspired by the the outdoor landscapes of alaska Well, shortly after I discovered bead weaving, I discovered Bead and Button Magazine.