By Sharon Hori
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Butterfly clips and hair wraps are old news. But that only means
the next trend is about to strike.
Or maybe it already has, thanks to Marilyn Green’s
“Beaded Bobby Pins,” the how-to book that teaches
readers how to decorate bobby pins to wear in their hair.
Recently published by the same Klutz company that taught a
not-so-coordinated audience how to juggle and do magic tricks,
Green’s book offers a new craft that will keep children and
adults beading and wrapping. The kit, which includes more than
1,500 Bohemian glass beads, 40 bobby pins and 60 feet of wire,
provides hours of cross-eyed beading and wire clipping, resulting
in a jeweled product.
Although geared toward a younger audience, “Beaded Bobby
Pins” is still perfect for anyone interested in taking up a
new craft. The book provides easy-to-follow instructions for
creating eight different types of beaded bobby pins. Furthermore,
the colorful examples pictured throughout the pages show that the
varied designs are only
limited by your own creativity.
The first few patterns provide the basic procedure for attaching
the bead to the pin. It may seem easy at first ““ because it
is. Readers will basically thread their beads through 28-gauge wire
and wrap them around the straight edge of a bobby pin. Repeating
this basic procedure produces the final beaded product that girls
will wear in their hair.
Varying the patterns is easy since the kit includes a rainbow of
colored beads in different shapes and sizes ““ flowers, stars
and cylinders. When the wrapping is finished, the book clearly
shows how to fasten the wire to the pin so that the beads stay
intact (it would be quite a pity if the beads came tumbling down
after you spent hours tying them in place).
From there, readers can make daisies, grapes, dragonflies and
almost anything in between. The simpler designs can take around 15
to 20 minutes to make, and the more complex creations can require
up to an hour.
Green recommends that bobby-pin enthusiasts work in a well-lit
spot ““ you’ll go blind on a hunt looking for those tiny
beads in the dark ““ and setting the beads on a light-colored
towel so they don’t roll away.
And she’s right. The greatest frustration reaps when the
dish of beads spills, and the tiny little suckers bounce every
which way into the crevices between the walls and floors, burying
themselves into the carpet.
Once a bead is wrapped in place, unwrapping it will only produce
kinks in the wire. Too many kinks and knots and the wire will not
behave ““ either it becomes weak and snaps, or it is too
zig-zagged to string the beads. Preventing kinks only comes with
practice. Practice takes time. As for time, well, to get good at
this hobby any dilettante will need at least a couple of free
hours.
But once you’ve obtained the skill, you’ll have the
talent to impress any of your friends. The scalloped bobby pin
provides more of an elegant touch, classy for any formal occasion.
The daisy teaches readers how to string the beads to form a line
of
cutsie flowers.
The most impressive is the dragonfly, which is ironically not
the most difficult pin to make. With a keen sense of color, readers
can create the hair pins that most accessory stores would sell for
$5 to $8.
Green encourages readers to work with more than just beads.
Using buttons, sequins and charms, bobby pin fanatics can make
almost anything.
Klutz products are available in 19 countries around the world.
The company, which began in 1977 when three Stanford University
graduates tried to sell bean bags and juggling lessons along the
side of the road, launched a publishing group that now sells how-to
guides, books, kits and other extras. So besides making bobby pins,
the bored reader can now learn to juggle, make anything from clay,
play Chinese jump rope, weave friendship bracelets, learn magic
tricks, bake cookies, fold animals out of a dollar bill and so
on.
Bobby pins are just another step in the chain of trends.
True, the final product is a tiny trade for all the hard work,
blindness and numbed fingers. But in the end, it’s the little
things that matter most.