As you are probably aware, we are fast approaching Remembrance Sunday, and with this year also marking 100 years since the end of the First World War, I thought a round-up of Poppy projects might be useful. There is still time for you to make something to mark the occasion in beads.
First, a selection of poppy themed kits that are available from us here at Spellbound.
We have launched two brand new designs featuring poppies this year the Poppy Pendant and the Poppy Field Necklace. Both of these designs use carrier beads in their construction, and the Poppy pendant works up reasonably quickly. The Poppy Field necklace is more of a project, but you still have time to have it finished to wear for any Remembrance events you might be attending this year.

Poppy Pendant

Poppy Field Necklace
We also have the ever popular Beaded Poppy Pin. This has been around for several years now and has raised lots of money for the Royal British Legion and Animal Aid. If you hadn’t heard, we donate £1 from the sale of each red poppy to the Poppy Appeal and £1 from the sale of each purple poppy to Animal Aid. The purple poppy can be worn alongside the red poppy to remember the animals that have lost their lives in conflict.
Red Beaded Poppy Pin- £1 from each kit sold is donated to the Royal British Legion
Purple Beaded Poppy Pin- £1 from each kit sold is dontaed to Animal Aid
We also have a Poppy Needlecase and a Poppy Scissor Keep so you can be fully accessorised with poppies all year round if you wanted to be.
The second thing I wanted to highlight for you this week was a lovely free pattern from the Preciosa website. They have masses of free pattern support for lots of their beads, but the one that caught our eye recently is the Flanders Poppies Bracelet
.
This lovely bracelet uses Petal beads, seed beads and Solo beads to create the lovely, double-sided poppy motif. We don’t stock Solo beads, but as they are the same shape as Twin beads, (just having one hole instead of two) you can substitute them in the pattern very easily.
Rather than make a bracelet, I decided to make up two of the motifs and make them into earrings.

Earrings made from the Flanders Poppies motif from Preciosa.
These are a little bit fiddly to make. You are using two needles to make each motif, and then join two motifs back to back using a peyote stitch thread path. This is a bit awkward as you don’t have much room to manoeuvre your needle in, and it is easy to get your thread caught around a petal if you try and rush the joining.
Overall this is a really lovely design to make- the individual poppies work up quickly and I think you could probably make up the bracelet in a couple of evenings work. As with other Preciosa patterns the instructions can be a little sparse although you have photos of every step to help you along, and as always if you get in touch with the shop I will give you any extra help I can.
To make the earrings I used:
R1 in pattern- RC740 8/0 Black seed beads
R2 in pattern- RC708 10/0 Black seed beads- I used these to make the hanging loop for my earrings
R3 in pattern- RC746 6/0 Black seed beads- the pattern calls for a 7/0 but a 6/0 is a good substitute.
S in pattern- TW001 Black Twin beads
Pet1 and Pet2 in pattern- GL5802 Siam Petal- I made all of my poppies in a single colour rather than the two colours in the pattern.
If you wanted to make the bracelet as in the pattern, I would suggest that you use GL6058 Emerald leaf. You need to use a cross hole leaf so that it will sit correctly in the final bracelet.
I used black nymo and two size 10 needles to make the motifs and a pair of FN001 fishhooks to turn them into earrings.
To finish, two more Poppies for you: Louisa’s dog Poppy, whose birthday is November 10th

and then my Poppy, who is now 8 months old and is still all legs:

and a bonus puddle of puppies- Poppy with her sister Maisie and her brother Bob.

Happy beading, and don’t forget to show us your makes on social media using #madeitwithspellbound.
Vicky x