Hope your art projects are going well, Do Art Nation. We’ve been having a great time at our last workshops of the year as we get ready for what promises to be an amazing 2026.
Last time, I mentioned our DO ART CHALLENGE: make art for someone else. I believe it’s a powerful to way to show someone you care. I’ve been immensely fortunate to be both the giver and receiver of works of art, but I figured I would start with the story of the Christmas ornament pictured above. It was a gift to my mom from me last year, and I made it at one of Ms Karen’s first bead art workshops!
Late in 2024 Mr. Jerry scheduled a bead art workshop at the Rochelle Public Library. Almost 2 years before, I’d done a comic book workshop there. It had been one of my first workshops–I’d been nervous but very excited for it to go well. Jerry’s whole family came out to watch and support me, so I felt like it was important that I go take part in the workshop with Ms. Karen. Plus, she’d been very excited about beads for some time, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about!
I got there early to help her set up, then sat near the back while some library patrons young and old filed in. I was at the same table as Jerry and his aunt Sue, and Ms. Karen quickly set us to making bead art snowmen and Christmas trees.
I did my best to put myself in the state of mind of somebody who was coming to one of these workshops for the first time. It helped that I had only made something with pony beads once or twice before, and didn’t really know what I was doing. Ms. Karen had string and beads already laid out for us, and showed them how to fold them and tie them off so you have two halves to the string, which you then tape to the table to make it easier to string. Mr Jerry helped me with the first few steps, and then Ms Karen showed the group how to string the beads. Snowmen and trees are pretty straightforward. You string the beads through one string, and then pull the other half through the opposite end. The string halves wind down in a double helix pattern until you get to the end. You make different shapes by varying the number of beads you use per row. For some figures like axolotls, lizards, or humans, you string beads on only one half in a specific pattern to create a gill, an arm, or a leg. But the snowmen and Christmas trees were pretty straightforward patterns, and soon we were all on our way to completing them.
Ms Karen did an amazing job helping kids and grown-ups alike finish their art projects, letting those of us who finished early make different designs with beads we chose from her collection. I made a bracelet–which loops all the way through the string usually in one row, using a different kind of string that’s more stretchy. Then we headed back to Ms. Karen’s house to congratulate her on a job well done.
I gave my mom the snowman when I got home, and now it sits on our Christmas tree. As those of you who celebrate Christmas in the US know, Christmas trees are covered with ornaments that accumulate their own stories over the years. I have ornaments I was given when I was a baby, a felt Nativity scene I made one year at church, and a particularly lovely noodle-and-cardboard monstrosity that I made in Kindergarten. So the Christmas tree becomes a kind of record of Christmases past for all those who share it, memories relived every time the ornaments leave their dusty boxes and find a new place on the tree. The bead snowman that Ms. Karen help me back now hangs next to my mom’s ornaments, a new chapter added to the ever-evolving story of Christmases past and present.
I’ll have another awesome art gift story for you next time, Do Art Nation. But let us know: what are you making your friends and loved ones this year? We’ll wait until January to tell people, so as not to ruin any surprises. But keep creating, Do Art Nation, and we will see you soon!