Our first contest was titled The First International Miyuki Delica Challenge. The contest theme was the sea. At that time we’d been importing and distributing Delicas for about four years. After the judging, we spent several months creating and publishing a book, The Sea, to share the best contest entries. It’s still in print and available on our site.
In 2000 we offered another Delica challenge competition with a theme of myths and folktales. The best of these entries were published in a second book titled Myths and Folktales.
More recently we’ve offered some smaller contests. (Publishing books, by the way, while really interesting, is also a tremendous amount of work. I had no idea.) We recently judged the third of these contests; you can see the winners below.
In our third contest, we invited entrants to create a beaded creature. It could be real (a snake, water buffalo, jellyfish, etc.), imaginary (griffin, dragon, etc.) or extinct (T-Rex, triceratops, etc.). We chose two winning entries which are shown below:
1st Place: Tropical Delight, a beaded macaw by Paula K. Singer
Tropical Delight is made of Miyuki Delica Beads plus an 11/0 and a couple of 15/0s. (Paula lives in Rhode Island, whereas Macaws come in many varieties but prefer warmer climates. Who can blame them? I’m guessing hers is the blue-and-yellow variety.)
Honorable Mention: Coral Snake by Juanita Finger
This venomous serpent is made of Miyuki Delica Beads. (Juanita lives in Texas where coral snakes live and slither happily.)
Artist’s notes: This lifesize snake is 24 inches long and 3/4 inch diameter. The snake is done in tubular peyote stitch over a form. It is flexible and can be coiled like a real snake. The tail is without a form inside so it too acts like a real tail. I have received comments that he is scary and almost too lifelike.
I used the following beads: 5,128 beads of Matte OP Red Luster delicas(DB 0362), 7,366 beads of gunmetal delicas(DB 0001), 2,238 beads of Lined Pale Yellow delicas(DB0053), and 2 gold rice beads for the eyes.
