Tutorial for Beaded Cascade Earrings

New beading tutorial! Finally!

I call them Cascade Earrings. They’re for those of us who like itty bitty seed beads.

Find it here:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1446919002/

Baroque Cube Earrings tutorial

Itty bitty beaded cubes to hang from your ears. 

Make your own. 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/250952884/

Victory Pod Earrings in Red Black Silver

These beaded earrings feature Victory Pods. They are woven with platinum plated seed beads, and glass seed beads in red, black and silver. The wire is sterling silver.

 These are medium sized earrings. The pods are hollow, which makes them light for their size.

Width is 21 mm (less than 1 inch).
Length of earrings from top of ear wire is 48 mm (1 7/8 inches).

If you would like to learn to make your own Victory Pod Earrings, I have a tutorial available here in my Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/listing/258021406/

Updating Old Beading Tutorials with New Lower Prices

For the last couple of weeks, I have been updating old tutorials and moving them off of the Bead Infinitum website and into my Etsy shop. With the transition, most of the patterns are getting larger gallery sections, and significantly, the prices will drop. Because these tutorials are my earlier work, the designs don't use any of the fancy new bead shapes. Pretty much everything can be made with regular seed beads and round beads, with the occasional finding (jump rings, clasp) or rivoli. No two-hole beads! So you can work from your stash.

First is the Wisdom Mandala Pendant, one of my all-time favorites to make because you can use so many different colors, and it's super detailed. Plus it has two different sides so if you mess up one, you can call it the back.  https://www.etsy.com/listing/596085014/

Starburst Galaxy: Make yourself a constellation of stars! Necklaces, earrings and bracelets!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/596195590/

Ionic Polyhedra Beaded Beads
Detailed instructions for 3 polyhedra, plus photos and information on many more!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/596108446/ 

Borromean Link
includes three different link shapes.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/596079388/

Lotus Drops Necklace and Earrings
https://www.etsy.com/listing/596090984/

Rivoli Urchin Necklaces and Pendant
https://www.etsy.com/listing/598377582/

In the process of updating and moving old tutorials into my Etsy, I'm combining some of them together into collections based on a theme.

This collection is on flat angle weaves with stars. It contains two complete tutorials, plus the step illustrations for a third star weave, and two pages of extra bonus material including random photos and illustrations I found buried deep inside the folders of my computer.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/598454638/

Cluster Bead Tutorial Collection:
Cube Cluster, Octahedral Cluster, Star Cluster, and Sea Star
https://www.etsy.com/listing/598630846/

Infinity Beaded Bead Collection:
91 colorful pages including 4 complete patterns and extra bonus material never before released. Make them all with just seed beads!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/612440095/

There's still more to come.  Thanks for looking! 

Flu Virus DNA Beaded Earrings

I got a request for some more DNA beaded earrings. So I whipped up a few new pairs for the occasion.  The gent requested something from a Flu virus, so I had a look around the web and found a data base at National Center for Biotechnology Information which has a data base on the Influenza virus. There you can download genetic code sequences. (It's truly amazing what genetic scientists have accomplished in my lifetime!)

Green gold Earrings: The coloring of the base pairs uses the first ten base pairs in the sequence from the H1N2 Influenza A virus from Berkeley in 1968. The specific base pair sequence shown in each earrings is
GCTTG GAGAA
CGAAC CTCTT

Pink Gray Earrings (for sale): The coloring of the base pairs uses the first ten base pairs in the sequence from the H1N1 Influenza A virus from NY in 2001. The base pair sequence shown in each earrings is, specifically,
AGCGC GAAAG
TCGCG CTTTC

Blue Earrings (for sale): This pair doesn't have the flu. Instead, it's one of my old favorites. The coloring of the base pairs uses the sequence recognized by the enzyme SbfI, which is found in the microorganism Streptomyces sp. BF-61. Streptomyces is the largest antibiotic producing genus of bacteria, producing antibacterial, antifungal, anti-parasitic drugs. The specific base pair sequence shown in each earrings is a palindrome, specifically,
CCTGCAGG
GGACGTCC

 

I have written a lot about beaded DNA on my blog if you would like to learn more.
Thanks for looking.

Solstice Earrings Beaded with Prismatic Right Angle Weave PRAW

I made some new earrings.

You can learn more about each pair by clicking on the photos. You can also learn to make your own with my tutorial for Solstice Earrings.

Thanks for looking.

Penrose Tile Beading with Garden Weave

I released a new tutorial this month on Garden Weave.

Garden Weave is a flat beaded angle weave like right angle weave (RAW). This tutorial explains the basics technique of beading and designing with Garden Weave and gives detailed instructions for this pair of easy earrings and a pendant.

Here they are in orange. Super fun! Garden weave is a fun way to explore color combinations with nothing more than seed beads and thread.

The tutorial includes many, many different samples of beadwork and charts that explain their structure. Charts for two different repeating patterns are included so you can let your imagination run wild to make bracelets and design other elaborate pieces with Garden Weave, including the chart for this pendant.

For an extra challenge, the tutorial includes charts and a beaded pendant using Penrose tiles, including this one.

After completing the tutorial, I beaded this large patch of a Penrose tiling with Garden Weave using the techniques I explain in the tutorial.

 Here you can see how big it is.

I'm not sure yet what I'll do with it, but here's a detail.

 

And another!

 Thanks for looking!

Victory Pod and Solstice Earrings

If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, you already know that I like earrings.  Here are my two newest pairs.  First, these are Victory Pods to go with my new shirt.

Second are a pair of Solstice Earrings in an analogous color scheme that goes from purple to blue, aqua, green and gold. That's more than half the rainbow. These colors make me happy.

Thanks for looking.

Mini Crown Earrings Blue Jeans

It's been a long time since I made some jewelry just for the sake of making some jewelry. Lately, I've been focusing my attention on designing novel works for the purpose of writing tutorials, and that takes a lot of time to finish each project. But, last night, I made some jewelry using one of my older patterns, and gee, it was nice to finish a piece in one sitting. These are Mini Crown Earrings, in the colors of blue jeans.

Find this pair here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/522067551/
Learn to make your own: https://www.etsy.com/listing/202127734/

Free Pattern Beaded Pussy Hat

Sorry I've been MIA, but... politics.

With all of the craziness that has occurred over the last few months in the US, I have been inspired by politics in a way that I never have been before. The day after the 2017 inauguration, I watched as more than 3 million people protested across the globe for women's rights. In the photos, I saw huge crowds marching for the Women's March on Washington. I saw thousands, maybe tens of thousands of pink pussy hats, all made by hand to honor and draw attention to this event. Being an artist myself, I wanted pay homage to this symbol of women's rights. As a result, I drew this pattern for beaded pussy hats.

The pattern is free for you to use and share as you'd like. Please make lots of beaded pussy hats, give them to your friends. Use them as a reminder to stay involved, and always stand up for women's rights.

These beaded charms are quite little.  As patterned, they are suitable as zipper pulls, earrings, pendants, and bracelet charms. I'd recommend scaling the beads to 11, 8 and 6 to make it bigger for a key ring.
 
On the photo below, the one on the right has stripes. The two on the bottom and left use three colors of beads. Switch colors after each row. If you use a cycle of 2 colors, you get stripes, whereas if you use a cycle of 3 colors, then no two beads of the same color touch each other. There is another 3-cycle in the photo above (far right). You can compare the effect of the relative contrast in color values. Mix dark and light values (previous photo) or mix values of low contrast (photo below).

If you would like to make an origami version of the pussy hat, here is a free tutorial by Beth Johnson.

http://bethjohnsonorigami.com/instructions/ The paper hats here were folded and photographed by Ron Taylor. Notice the bottle cap for scale. Ron folded each of these from 3/4 of a sheet of 3.4 inch memo paper.

Thank you for standing up for women's right. Women's rights are human rights.

New Tutorial - Solstice Earrings

You can learn to make Solstice Earrings with this original variation on Cubic Right Angle Weave (CRAW). This tutorial is very detailed, written for advanced beginner beaders who have a basic knowledge of bead weaving. Knowledge of CRAW is recommended but not assumed.

Solstice Earrings use two types of fancy beads, combined with our old favorites of seed beads and rounds. The fancies include little drops or daggers and little beads with two holes. This purple pair below is available here: Purple Solstice Earrings.

Several pages show and describe 6 pairs of earrings using different types of fancy beads, including all of these.

Depending on which bead shapes you use, each Solstice Earring is usually a little over an inch wide (28-30 mm) and 20-22 mm tall. You can also make large earrings (48 mm wide) like this pair with long dagger beads, which are for sale here: Neon Pink Solstice Earrings.

The tutorial is 15 pages, with over 90 full color illustrations and photographs, a COLORFUL FEAST for the eyes. The tutorial gives highly detailed illustrations, photographs, and written instructions to make six different pairs of earrings. That I have made so many pairs of Solstice Earrings is a testament to how much fun these are to make and wear. This is my King Tut pair in lapis blue and gold.

Thanks for looking.  Have a great weekend.