Remember those multi-coloured plastic beads that were all the rage in primary school? You’d arrange them in your design of choice (a basic butterfly or heart, probably), then fuse them together using an iron – or water, depending on the brand.

Rachel Burke, Brisbane’s arty tinsel queen and our issue 120 cover artist, has been experimenting with inexpensive kids’ crafts a lot these past couple years. In the spirit of prioritising secondhand and recycled materials, she’s turned all kinds of mundane stuff into vibrant, playful artworks that would’ve blown our primary-schooler minds.

As a kid, Rachel only used Beados to make jewellery (her mum wasn’t keen on wee Rach using an iron). It wasn’t until recently, after a craft workshop left her with a stash of Beados, that she became “obsessed” with the meditative process of arranging them into intricate designs and ironing them flat – to the point where she’s asked her 212k Instagram followers to pitch in. “I felt a bit funny about buying all these new plastics to bring these works to life,” she says. “I was really stoked that people actually started sending me their stashes. It’s gotten so great and so wonderful that I’m now starting a post office box for people to send me their craft hoards.”

During her experiments with the medium, Rachel had an idea: “It just occurred to me one day that this would actually make a really cute cover for frankie,” she says. “It’s always been a dream of mine to do a cover. But I guess I was always like, ‘What would that cover be?’ We’re not going to do a close-up photo of tinsel.”

When Rachel heard frankie’s 20th birthday was coming up, a party theme sprang to mind. She initially came up with a patchwork quilt of Beado designs – like fairy bread, lamingtons, candles and gingham-print tablecloths – that felt reminiscent of the parties she had attended during childhood. “My mum is Maltese. She would always go all out, making amazing pastizzi and figolli, almond bread, and things like that,” Rachel says. “But it was always a treat to go to all my Aussie friends’ parties because they would always have the Iced VoVos and the lamingtons and the whole thing.”

One of the beaded tiles Rachel created was a present, and from that, we landed on the frankie issue 120 cover: a flower-covered gift, wrapped up in a big bow. Surrounded by thousands of melty beads, her “stinky” sausage dogs, and in-progress home renovations, Rachel says the experience of making the cover was a little chaotic – especially because she had the tricky task of fusing all the beads into one seamless artwork. “This was the first time I’ve ever done a continuous melt like that on such a big scale,” she says. “And as soon as I started doing it my mum just appeared at the window and was like, ‘Rachel! We need to talk about the fence!’ and I was like, ‘Not now!’

“I’ll be honest, I was working on the artwork every day and night for a good week, till 1am. But I was determined. I can’t tell you how enjoyable it is. Like, it scratches an itch in my brain that is like nothing else.”

Rachel’s new-found love of Beados goes deeper than a crafty hobby – it has also been a soothing creative outlet during tough times. “I had a rough year last year with pregnancy loss, and I think that’s why I really cracked into melty beads because I found it really therapeutic,” she says. “And really, if ever there was an art therapy for me, this kind of repetition has been an amazing tool.” From this, Rachel is now busy making a whole body of work out of melty beads that will be exhibited in 2025. “It is actually exploring some quite heavy personal material, and it’s been extremely cathartic,” she says.

Rachel adores her creative community, so making the issue 120 cover out of their old Beados has been a heart-warming experience for her. “My community online has been such an integral part of my practice. That they now exist within the work is so exciting,” she says. “And when you use people’s stashes of mixed materials that perhaps have been sitting around for five to 10 years, the work is harder to reproduce because it is imbued with something really unusual and special.”

Find more of Rachel's rad stuff here. A stage adaption of her new kids’ book, Fancy Long Legs, plays in Brisbane this September. 

This interview comes straight from the pages of issue 120. To get your mitts on a copy, swing past the frankie shop, subscribe or visit one of our lovely stockists.