Lauren Harpster is a bead crafter/designer who works with French beading techniques. These techniques are used to craft flowers and plants out of glass seed beads and wire. The results can be as realistic or as fantastical as you like depending on your choices of style and colour of beads.

The origins of this style of beading are fuzzy, but the techniques go back centuries and occasionally enjoy a resurgence in popularity. With the internet giving modern designers more reach, French beading is once again beginning to flourish thanks to a few voices gaining an audience by fostering social media followings and by self-publishing instructional books. Among them, Lauren Harpster is my favourite designer.

One may create a simple flower…

…or an ornate bouquet, wreath, or bough.

For a few years now Ms. Harpster has done “one-a-day” projects that take her a full year to complete, challenging herself to make a flower or leaf every day. This colour wheel wreath was her 2018 project and it weighs six pounds:

My word, the sheer amount of work in there.

Anyway, go forth and bead. Have a nice day posting, Avocados.