www.robinatkins.com

Thanks for your interest in my book, "One Bead at a Time, Exploring Creativity with Bead Embroidery." This is the book I’ve always wanted to write! I can’t tell you how much fun it was to write and design… While teaching this subject for ten years, I’ve learned to empower my students to reach into their own huge creative capacity, to let go of fears of failure, and to produce something that has "heart", and therefore life itself! Now, it feels absolutely fabulous to have captured what I know and believe about creativity, artistry, work of our hands and hearts, and improvisational bead embroidery in this written and pictorial form to share with many more than I can reach with my classroom teaching.

In this book, you will see how beads, creativity, and healing are related. You will learn to stitch beads on fabric improvisationally, creating art work which is compelling, inspired, beautiful, fun, and satisfying to make. You will discover ways to break through the walls of doubt and criticism that prevent us from exploring our full artistic potential. This book is about improvisational bead embroidery as a pathway to greater creativity and source for personal healing. My intent is to inspire and to teach.

The techniques of bead embroidery are well illustrated with drawings, text, and photos with arrows pointing to the details of specific techniques. The materials and steps for beginning a project are fully described. For inspiration, see full-color photographs of more than thirty of the bead embroidered works I’ve created in the past 10 years, including purses and small bags, buttons, framed wall art, sculpture, artist’s books, dolls, and medicine bags.

Bead Magic
The Creative Force
Breaking Walls
Working Improvisationally
Improvisational Bead Embroidery
Nitty-gritty of Choosing Your Fabric
Nitty-gritty of Getting Started
"Just Do It"
Exploring Issues, Themes, and Relationships in Your Bead Work
Healing Old Wounds
Finding a Path Through Life Changes
Things You Can Make with Your Improvisational Bead Embroidery
Medicine Bags
Stitch Gallery
Seed Stitch
Back Stitch
Lazy Stitch
Couching
Embellish Your Work with Fringes
Basic Fringe Techniques
Fancy Fringe Techniques
Closing Thoughts
A Few Special Resources
About My Background

"One Bead at a Time, Exploring Creativity with Bead Embroidery," by Robin Atkins,
c. 2000, Tiger Press, ISBN # 0-9705538-2-X, paperback, perfect bound,
56 pages, 60 full-color photographs.