Woman Makes Mosaic of Bird Using Bugle Beads
This woman created an impressive mosaic of a brown pelican bird using only bugle and seed beads on a recycled cabinet door. She explained how she goes about making the mosaic and turn a board of wood into an art piece.
Transcript
00:00on how I created this guy whose name is Vlad, who's a brown pelican, that I
00:05created on a recycled cabinet door using seed beads and also glass bugle beads.
00:14The background was kind of unique and that I like to recycle items so this is
00:20a cabinet door that I got from Ikea and I got it in the clearance section like
00:25$2 or something, but it has a really beautiful wood grain so I decided to use
00:31it for this project. Here what I am doing and the way I start my projects is that
00:40I always use a base primer. I sand the area that I'm going to be setting beads
00:44down on and then I lay a coat of primer down. The primer is really important. If
00:52you don't sand the area and put primer down the beads won't stick. They will
00:56pull up because these cabinet doors are made to withstand sticky fingers and all
01:02those types of things and so make sure that you do a good prep on all of your
01:08pieces before you start laying beads down. It's very very important. What I'm
01:14doing here is laying a line of silicone and this silicone is really thick and
01:22goopy. Now you can use liquid nails. Here I'm using silicone and this silicone is
01:30made by GE. It's a product called Iron Grip. However this product is
01:34discontinued and I liked it because it came in a really easy to dispense
01:39container that again is no longer available. But liquid nails works just
01:44fine. Anything you can do use that is goopy and thick. Now here you'll notice
01:51that I am using a lot of different types of beads. I started out using the same
01:55bead. Now I'm mixing up twisted beads with straight beads with iridescent
02:01beads and opaque beads. This is completely up to you how you want to mix
02:07your beads and the look and effect that you want to create comes with
02:12experience. It comes with experimentation and just just play with it. As you can
02:18see here there's his breast is mixed versus his feathers which are a solid
02:25color and now I'm also adding a new color. Now I do these kind of in a
02:31straight line but as you can also see I'm randomly putting these in and I
02:37make sure that the head of the bead is kind of jammed into that goopy silicone.
02:44You want to make sure that the silicone does not get to the top of the bead
02:49because then it will look sloppy and this again comes with experience. Don't
02:54be hard on yourself if your first piece is really goopy sloppy looking.
02:59Learning how to use the silicone without slopping it everywhere takes a lot of
03:05practice and I've had years of practice to work with this but here I am
03:10incorporating a different color because I'm working on a different part of the
03:14bird and just trying to get a completely different effect than I had before.
03:23Now here the feathers on the back of this bird are completely different than they
03:31are on the side where his wings are so I'm using a new size the same that I
03:37used on the longer beads at the bottom but I had made them smaller going up.
03:43Again this is based on experience there are no patterns to this. This is just
03:48looking at reference pictures and using my instincts to decide which length of
03:53beads to use in which particular areas. It does require you to have a good
04:00selection of beads available. Because I do this all day long I have hundreds of
04:06thousands of beads and different styles available to me. Now this section I am
04:12doing his beak and because of the level of detail in his beak and the fact that
04:18his beak is not furry or fuzzy or feathery I decided to use seed beads and
04:24what I have done here is laid a line of glue down and then using pre-strung seed
04:32beads which I don't always use but here I use the pre-strung to get a very
04:36specific effect. I lay the beads down and I pull the string out. Now the reason I
04:43pull the string out is multi. One of the reasons is that the string will change
04:48the color of the bead depending on the type of bead that you're using and
04:52another reason is that it tends to get sticky and stuck and every time I try to
04:56cut it I end up making a bigger mess than I started with. So I usually just
05:01pull the strings out. This also requires some tweezer work. As you can see here
05:07I'm using the tweezers with individual beads to fill in the gaps and also
05:13create specific details. Now this nice little glue gun that I was using there
05:19is very interesting. It's called an air pen and it allows this air pen allows me
05:27to lay down very very specific lines of glue and it is like a syringe that's
05:33powered by air and I just refill it with Aleene's craft glue and then it allows
05:38me to lay down these very specific lines of glue. Now one thing you have to be
05:43careful of is here I'm using silicone and craft glue. These two items do not
05:49mix so whenever you use them together you have to allow very long and I'm
05:54talking multiple days of drying time to put them next to each other otherwise
05:59they have a chemical reaction to each other and change color. Especially with
06:04white you will notice it it turns like a violent green. I call it kryptonite green.
06:09So here I have done this where I did the silicone. I waited three days before I
06:16did his beak and then I waited another three days before I started using the
06:20silicone near the beak again. It is really important that you don't skip
06:25this process. Vlad was a great project because I got to use a lot of different
06:31techniques of mine and I have shorter videos that show kind of specifics on
06:37this but you know a lot of this is just practice practice practice having a lot
06:43of beads and inventory again like I mentioned and paying attention to the
06:48details. Don't do this rushed. This is not something you can do in a hurry.
06:52Something you need to think about and plan for. I hope this video has helped
06:57you kind of understand my process a little bit more and I do have several
07:01other videos that you can watch and also finished videos of other projects that I
07:06have done. I don't always film every process and stage of my pieces but I do
07:12everything I can to try to help you out. If you have any questions and need to
07:15get a hold of me please get on my website. You can email me and contact me
07:21and I am available at