Rose Petal Beads

I first saw these rose petal beads at Redbeet Mama.  We have an amazing rose garden that my mother has cultivated over the years and the roses are spectacular at the moment.

First we went out and collected the petals.

While we were doing this a tiny humming bird came by to get the nectar from the flowers.  She stayed for ages and I was lucky enough to get this picture of her.

Once the petals were collected we tore them into tiny bits, relishing in their beautiful fragrance and silky texture.  We took turns dropping them on each others hands.  I've been really trying to stay in the moment while doing things with L and this was so wonderfully enjoyable!

We then put them in the blender and added some water.  They turned into a paste which we stewed for about an hour.  The smell was heavenly.  Now you think I would have realised after all of the color blending activities we've done that putting all of those colors together would make brown!  I ended up adding some red food coloring to the mixture and next time we'll separate the colors first!

Once they had cooled off we poured the mixture over a cloth and squeezed out all of the moisture.  We then rolled the paste into little beads and left them to dry in the sun.

The next day I threaded through a tapestry needle to make a larger hole and then L used a regular needle(for the first time! She did poke herself a few times!)to thread them with some other wood and felted beads to make this bracelet.

(the purple ones are the rose petal beads)

We also made these beautiful hanging beads strings for our chandelier.

This turned out to be one of my favorite activities!