Custom Jewelry, By Request

One of my bffs, Ellen, was looking thru my Tahoma Beadworks photo album on Facebook and saw the sports logo hairpieces I did for the teams that I follow. This is the San Francisco 49ers.

Tacoma Rainiers baseball.

She commented that she'd love it if I made her a Boston Red Sox logo hairpiece. As a longtime Sox fan, I seized on the idea. I decided that, since the Sox in the baseball would be a little too technically difficult, and since I wanted to get it to her at the beginning of the baseball season rather than spending weeks trying to get it right...

..... I opted to use the Red and White "B" against a midnight blue field, like on their ball caps.

I first shrunk the logo down to a manageable size, on the copier at work. Then I half traced, half sketched it onto a red felt background. This is actually the hardest part of the process, b/c felt is very hard to write on. Normally I bead on white felt, but this being the Red Sox, I wanted there to be flashes of red behind the blue. The beads get sewn onto the felt, but the felt must also be backed with a bit of paper, and I get the best results with brown grocery bags.

I printed off the Sox logo in colour and took it with me to Bead Boppers in Puyallup to match the blue. I was walking really slowly in front of the Japanese delica beads holding out the paper. The shopkeep asked if she could help me find something and I told her I was just trying to match a shade of blue. She came over to help me and I showed her the "B" and said, "I'm making a Red Sox hairpiece for a friend." She looks at me, grins and goes, "Oh. I am a Yankees fan." Now, I cannot emphasize enough the animosity between these two ball clubs. And their fans. So I fired back, "OH NO! I can never shop here again!"

Once I started beading, it went very quickly. I did the "B" last weekend, and it only took a couple of lunch breaks during the week, and about 2 hours this afternoon to finish the blue background. I cut a circle of leather and both sewed and glued a French clip to the right side of the leather. After the glue set for a bit, I glued the leather to the paper backed beaded piece.

It's going out in the mail on Monday. I hope she likes it!