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Dimensional Beading Techniques - Virtual Workshop

In this course, students will learn an exceedingly cathartic and stress-free route to making jewelry, utilizing a fiber-based process to create color and form through the repetitive layering of seed beads. Using these beads, along with various bead embroidery techniques, students will create big and bold color, shape, and texture, covering a three-dimensional hand-sewn form of their own design. Finished forms can be worn as-is via a simple brooch assembly technique taught by the instructor or paired with other jewelry formats such as earrings and necklaces. The emphasis of this course will be placed on beading, but the instructor will provide examples and advice on various wearable attachments. If you wish to learn how to add an expressive flair to your jewelry with just a few humble materials, then this course is for you! 

Class will be held live via Zoom during the designated time frame. A link to the Zoom room will be sent via email. Please read the Materials & Tools tab! 

Students will receive a pre-recorded video two weeks prior to the class with instructions on how to sew their base form, which must be completed before the class start date.

Meet the instructor

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Breana Ferrara is a jeweler, metalsmith, and maker of excessive body adornment at her home studio in Fitchburg, MA. Breana moved to Fitchburg from Boston after graduating with her BFA in Fine Arts 3D with a concentration in Jewelry & Metalsmithing from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design, where she was nominated for the Windgate Fellowship in 2017. Breana’s work has been featured in many exhibitions in the Boston metropolitan area, and she’s branching out into the national contemporary jewelry community, recently exhibiting at the Adorned Spaces exhibition during the 2019 Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) conference in Chicago, IL. She is planning to exhibit at New York Jewelry Week in Fall 2019. When Breana isn't working in her studio on a jewelry line, body of work, or commission, she can be found teaching at MassArt and around the community, or working as a studio assistant to other artists.

 

Materials & Tools

To lower expenses for students, the following $70 kit will be sent to the shipping address you have listed on your Metalwerx account. Please provide a preferred color palette in the "order comments" box during checkout - if you do not provide a preferred color palette, one will be selected for you. Due to longer than usual turn-around times, kits will be mailed out as soon as possible. 

  • 1 x set of size #12 beading needles
  • 1 x set of sewing needles
  • 1 x spool of Coats brand thread
  • 1 x polyester stuffing for one project
  • 1 x piece stainless steel 
  • 1 x beeswax
  • 1 x assorted glass bead kit (in preferred colors)
  • 1 x priority mail flat rate shipping cost
Students should bring

In addition to the above items, you will want to have the following items available: 

  • ANY fabric you have on hand that is easy to sew through and in a color you like (for creating your 3D base form)
  • optivisors or glasses (if you need them)
 

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