Beaded Cab Barrette

I’ve made a few barrettes where I beaded around a cab and then glued this to a metal barrette. Whenever I wear them, I get compliments. You can use all kinds of cabs for this project including stone, porcelain, or fused glass. You can even cut the shank off a button and use that as a cab. In this project, I used two fused glass cabs and two freshwater pearls that are flat on one side and round on the other.

You’ll need:

*Lacy’s Stiff Stuff (TM)
E6000 glue
pencil
scissors
ultra suede
choice of seed beads
cabs
ruler
beading needle/thread

*Patsy Bass was sweet enough to send me a sample of this great product. If you haven’t tried it yet, ask your local or favorite on line bead store if they carry it. Now that I’ve used Stiff Stuff, I’ll never go back to interfacing.

1. Cut your Stiff Stuff so that you have plenty of room for your cabs and beads, and also make sure it will cover the back of your barrette completely.

2. Use a pencil and ruler to draw a ruler on your stiff stuff. I added marks as follows on mine pictured: large lines for 1 inch, medium lines for ½ inch, small lines for ¼ inch.

3. Now use the ruler you’ve drawn to determine where you want your cabs to be positioned. Use the marks to help ensure they are spaced evenly apart. This is also when you need to estimate how many rows of beads you plan to sew around each cab. You’ll need leave enough room around your cabs for this. The size of your beads, number of rows, and size of your cabs will all vary. So, I can’t offer a specific measurement here.

4. Once you know where you want the cabs, use glue to adhere them onto the Stiff Stuff.

5. Allow some time to dry before continuing: a maximum of 24 hours and a minimum of 1 hour in case you can’t control yourself.

6. Next, start sewing seed beads around your cabs just as I described in the Beading Around a Cabochon project. I usually like to start in the middle and working my way to the outside. So, in the barrette pictured, I sewed two rows of different colors (purple and green) size 11 seed beads around the middle cabs.

Then I started sewing two rows of a third color (turquoise) around an outside pearl.,P.

I did the same to the pearl on the opposite side.

7. After you finish sewing around your cabs until all the rows of beads are just about touching each other as described in the previous step, you’ll notice there is no space between the cabs. Each outside row of beads are touching another row of beads. At this point you are ready to sew all around the outside of the beaded cabs as if they are just one piece. I’ve got a number of pictures here to show you how I did this.

You’ll notice I sew rows of beads into the curves where the rows join each other. At this point, a lot of this in intuition. Add a bead if it fits. If you can’t add a bead, just keep working your row.

8. If you want you could stop the beading here, but I like to add a small ruffle effect. Again, this technique was used in part 2 of my Beaded Cab project. Not only does this ruffle look good, it covers up some of the white Stiff Stuff (note….colored Stiff Stuff would be cool). I tend to use 3 beads for my ruffles, but you could also use 5 for each ruffle if you want a larger look. Add the ruffle all around each, individual cab or just add it to the last row of beads.

9. At this point, you are now ready to finish the back of the piece. Trim all around the Stiff Stuff making sure you don’t cut any of the threads on the back or any of your ruffle on the front.

10. Now cut a piece of ultra suede to the same size as your beaded cab piece. If you have light colored ultra sued, trace around your piece onto the suede. If you’re like me and have black ultra suede, ugh!, do the best you can by holding the suede up against the beaded piece and cutting around it.

11. You are now ready to attach the suede to your beaded piece using a whip stitch. This technique is similar to that in my Beaded Cab Necklace. Whip stitch, using thread that matches the ultra suede, all around so the two pieces are attached.

12. Squeeze some glue onto your barrette back, and attach the piece you finished in the previous step.

You’re pretty much done now. You just need to let your master piece dry before you start showing it off to the world.

All graphics created by Tammy Powley.

Previous Features