So, you know how after the holidays, all those holiday-themed goodies go on sale? I decided to get some plastic clear ornaments because bead crochet was just continuously showing up on my social media feed! I thought “You know what? I know how to crochet and I love beading so why not? What do I have to lose?” Then I fell into a bead crochet rabbit hole. I went from zero to bead crochet nerd in no time. I learned so much about beads, different brands, different sizes, different threads that can be used with each of them. Now alongside my yarn stash, I’ve got this whole collection of bead stuff. Who saw that coming?

So, there I was, off to Daiso and local craft stores on a mission for some nice thread, beads, and getting small crochet hooks (I feel like I was just losing my eye sight with how small). Currently, I managed to whip up like 6 of these babies so far. I ended up using some thread at Daiso and a DMC thread but a thinner one, I think it was #30 size or a smaller one. After trial and error, those two just seemed to work the best.

For beads, I used Toho because they were pretty consist in size, easy to find, and seemed to hurt my wallet less than Miyuki beads. There was a local shop that carried so many colors and sizes! Toho beads and Miyuki beads are more uniform in size, so after I made a few I could use the same pattern size and just shake up the colors.

First I started with a pokéball and a one-star dragonball because they did not take many colors and had less room for messing up in my opinion. Plus, it gave me a chance to play around to with bead sizing and other things.

As you see I made the pokéball bigger and with black thread where I probably should’ve gone with white thread for a smarter choice and a lil one-star dragonball! I do plan on making a dragonball set eventually too. I will have to say putting the beads on the thread take a while even with a bead spinner. It was interesting though because you can fill it with a styrofoam ball, stuffing or the plastic ornament. Initially I used a styrofoam ball but after a while and the pressure the styrofoam ball would get smaller and wonky so I used the plastic ornaments I had for the next ones.

Then after making those and leveling up from gaining that xp, I decided to make Demon Slayer ones! Because those complex patterns looked like nothing but fun. Also, there are just so many different haori designs for different characters throughout the anime, I have options. I just love the anime so that is even more motivation! I have read the entire series and successfully got family members into it too! You know what that means? I can not only talk about it with them but also give these out around the holidays hehe. I decided to use the different textures or properties of the beads too.

For Shinobu’s I used like shiny ceylon finished beads for the white, pink, and blue and just a matte black for the outline. The image just doesn’t do these ornaments justice. For Zenitsu’s I used a clear matte yellow and orange and a regular white. For Kyojuro’s I used a matte white, yellow and a bit of orange with a clear red for the flames on his haori. For Giyu’s, oh my goodness it took forever to bead but it looked so pretty, I used shiny greens, goldenrod, orange and a maroon color with a matte black. Each of these were inspired by their haoris and if you knew the anime I hope you’d be able to guess where each of these were from!

What do you think of these bead crochet ornaments? At a glance would you be able to guess where it was from? Should I spill the beans and make and release these patterns? Which one should I make next from Demon Slayer or a different series?