Beaded Dragonfly Jewellery

What do you call a group of dragonflies? Officially the collective noun seems to be a flight of dragonflies or a cluster of dragonflies.  Some more fitting terms that others have used are a glimmer of dragonflies or a dazzle of dragonflies.  But I’ll have to admit that the first term that came to my mind when I completed this project was a squadron of dragonflies.

I got the idea from ‘Queen Bead’ Nia at The Bead Hold and you can get a copy of the instructions on her How to page.   You will need:

• 2m 28 gauge wire
• wire cutters
• 11 x #8 seed beads (body)
• 2 x #8 seed beads (eyes)
• 22 x #11 seed beads (body)
• 80 dark delica beads
• 90 mid tone delica beads
• 90 lighter tone delica beads

If you have been following my earlier posts, you will have gathered that I have quite a thing for dragonflies.  So the hardest thing for me was to choose what colour dragonfly I wanted – and you can tell by the results that I couldn’t really choose at all and wanted to try lots of different combinations.  I won’t repeat Nia’s instructions here as they are free and really easy to follow, but I will show you some of the steps along the way.

The results are fabulous and you can use them in so many ways.  I glued brooch backs onto them using a strong bead glue.  They look great by themselves or you could combine them with other items to make a larger jewellery piece such as the wire rings shown. I’ve kept these as brooches but you could add a bail and a chain and make a fabulous necklace.

The dragonflies have been great little extras to add to gifts.  For one birthday where I wasn’t supposed to be giving a gift (but I couldn’t help myself), I made some ANZAC biscuits (the birthday is on ANZAC Day) and pinned a dragonfly brooch to the ribbon.

For another birthday, I used a dragonfly card and pinned a dragonfly brooch with the same tonings in the centre of the dragonfly.