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/

Learn to Make Geometric Color Wheels with Watercolor Paint

My new watercolor tutorial on color wheels gives an advanced beginner’s lesson on how to paint artistic color wheels in a full rainbow of colors. 

Learn how to paint extraordinary color wheels using just 2, 3, 4 or 5 pigments. The tutorial include 4 projects, explained over 29 pages, including 77 illustrations and full color photographs of 7 paintings that are all explained in the text. This tutorial includes templates for 4 different projects for you to trace or copy.

Start with detailed step-by-step instructions for a painting that uses just two pigments. From there you will learn to mix three, four, and even five pigments to create increasingly complex compositions. There is lengthy discussion about choosing specific pigments for each of the four projects so you can do the projects more than once and get different effects depending upon the colors you start with. If you love colors, you'll love this tutorial on painting color wheels and making the projects.

Tools & Materials: watercolor paint, watercolor paper, palette with wells for mixing colors, pencil, kneaded rubber eraser, brushes: round size 3 and 6 (or similar), cup(s) of water, water dropper, paper or cloth towel, hair dryer, and a way to transfer the templates (discussed in the text).

Don’t just make swatch charts. Make art.

Baroque Cube Earrings tutorial

Itty bitty beaded cubes to hang from your ears. 

Make your own. 

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

Something Old Is New Again

When I opened up the file to update it, I saw why I haven't been selling the tutorial for the Seven Sisters Pendant in quite a while. This was one of my earliest bead weaving designs, and I wrote the tutorial before I figured out how to write a tutorial very well. The only thing that was salvageable was the illustrations and some of the photos. I rewrote pretty much all of the text and shot a whole new sequence of step photos. Plus, I added lots of tips so that your pendant will turn out pretty, and increased the gallery with new photos of beadwork.

y section. Anyway, here's a link to the new, and much improved version of the tutorial.

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! 

Floret Earrings and Charms with Modified Prismatic Right Angle Weave PRAW

Learn to make Floret Earrings and Necklace with this original variation on Modified Prismatic Right Angle Weave (MPRAW). This version of MPRAW is like Modified RAW described in Contemporary Geometric Beadwork, and other beading patterns. This tutorial is written for intermediate beaders who want to learn more about right angle weave (RAW). Knowledge of cubic RAW or modified RAW is recommended.

This tutorial includes detailed instructions for making the Floret Earrings and the matching necklace with of tiny pendants with matching beaded beads. Everything uses Japanese seed beads in two different sizes with the addition of other small round, roundel and/or bicone beads. They are a wonderful way to small amounts of leftover seed beads and other small one-hole beads.

Each floret is 11/16 inch wide (12 mm) and almost an inch tall (23 mm). They’re small and light, making them comfortable to wear as earrings.

The tutorial is detailed including 15 colorful pages, with 110 full color illustrations and photographs. The tutorial gives detailed illustrations, photographs, and written instructions to make the Floret Earrings and matching necklace.

 Thanks for looking!

Fairy Chrysalis Tutorial and Bead Soup Sale

I recently updated an old tutorial on free form beaded pendants.  Ten years ago, I wrote instructions to show how to stitch a Fairy Chrysalis, a pendant designed to look organic and constructed from a wide variety of beads. You can read all about the tutorial here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/536288125/tutorial-fairy-chrysalis-beaded-pendant

If you would like a kit to make a Fairy Chrysalis, then you should visit my Etsy shop this Wednesday July 19, 2017at 5 PM Pacific time. I will be having a big sale of kits of bead soup.  I hand selected each lot, and each lot of beads is unique. You can go to Facebook to tons of photos of all of the lots before they go up for sale, with sizes and prices.

Lot #1 has a crazy lace agate with crazy cool banding.  Red and earthy.

 Lot #3 has an amazing piece of orange bumblebee jasper. 

Lot #4 includes a very flashy labradorite.

Which looks really different under different lights.

There are lots more lots. To see the rest of the lots that I will have for sale on Wednesday, see this gallery on the Bead Infinitum fan page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/beadinfinitum/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1516325788427996

Thanks for looking!

Free Pattern for Puffy Heart SRAW and LOVE Letters

So, there's a blog called Bead Love...

It's a blog of inspirations on love and beads, and a group of about 50 of us bead designers are writing it, one post per week for over a year, until we have all had a turn.  

This week, it was my turn to contribute.  So, here.

New Tutorial - Cellini Marquis Pendant

Here is my latest design in my series on Cellini spirals made with peyote stitch and seed beads in different sizes.  With this new tutorial, you can learn to bead weave this Cellini Marquis Pendant.

The beadwork is stitched with just 3 sizes of regular Japanese seed beads. So if you are a bead weaver, you probably already have everything you need. Using just a pinch of each color, this a great way to use up seed beads leftover from other beading projects. No fancy shapes required!

Making the pendant is a suitable project for advanced beginning to intermediate bead weavers who like seed beads. The pendant measure 6 cm high, 7 cm wide, 12 mm thick.

The tutorial is 16 pages, with over 70 full color illustrations and photographs. The tutorial gives highly detailed instructions for every step in the pendant.

Thanks for looking.

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.

Free Beading Pattern - Sierpinski Triangle

Once upon a time I was going to write a beading book on beaded angle weaves.  The first part of the book was going to show how to bead many of the basic angle weaves, and the last part of the book was going to show lots of charts of flat weave designs.

I abandoned that book idea long ago, although I haven't abandoned the idea of writing a beading book, just that one.  Some of the designs that I would have included in the book are now available for free here on my blog, including Hexagon Angle Weave, Circle Earrings, David's Star, and Super Right Angle Weave.  Others are in my Etsy shop and website, including Kepler's Star, Night Sky, Honeycomb, Lozenge, Book of Kells, and Solaris.

Before I tossed aside the idea of completing the book, I created three sample pages for the section with the charts.  Today, I'm sharing them with you because they're not doing anything particularly interesting sitting inside my computer.  I hope you enjoy them.

Have a great day. Thanks for looking.

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.

Tutorial - Bicone Bangle Bracelet Pattern Made with Seed Beads

This beading tutorial explains how to bead weave a bracelet with two sizes of Japanese seed beads and two sizes of bicone crystals. Use Swarovski crystals for a lot of sparkle! No fancy shapes required! The Bicone Bangle Bracelet is hollow and somewhat flexible, but if you reinforce your stitching, it will be stiff like a bangle should be. It measures 11 mm wide and 9 mm thick, 79 mm in outside diameter, 62 mm inside diameter.

This tutorial includes step-by-step instructions for weaving the bracelet into a continuous bangle.

This tutorial is designed for intermediate bead weavers. The weave is a variation on David’s Star, an angle weave like a cross between hexagon angle weave and super right angle weave. If you like angle weaves and want a new challenge, you’ll love this.

Thanks for looking.

New Tutorial - Kali Beaded Pendant and Little Bird Earrings

I'm still playing with new designs using beaded Cellini spirals in peyote stitch.  Now you can learn to bead weave little bird earrings and the Kali pendant with seed beads and thread.

This is Kali. She is a Hindu goddess of time and death.

The beadwork is stitched with just 2 sizes of regular Japanese seed beads. So if you are a bead weaver, you probably already have everything you need. Using just a pinch of each color, this is a great way to use up seed beads leftover from other beading projects. 

Beaded in the colors of fire, you can make a Kali Pendant that looks like a flaming phoenix. 

Making the earrings is a suitable project for advanced beginning bead weavers who like size seed beads, and the pendant is for more advanced bead weavers, first, because there are more steps, and second, because it's a little tricky to assemble the pieces. Both the pendant and earrings scale nicely with bead size.  The beadwork in the photos above use size 15° and 11° seed beads. You can also use size 11° and 8°, which make correspondingly larger pieces of jewelry. The little birds are either 35 mm or 46 mm, depending upon which size seed beads you use. The pendant is either 72 mm or 90 mm across.

I would guess that you could even scale it to use size 8° and 6° with good results, but I haven't tried it yet.  The larger beads are easier to work with, for sure.

The tutorial is 20 pages, with nearly 100 full color illustrations and photographs, a colorful feast for the eyes. The tutorial gives highly detailed illustrations, photographs, charts and written commentary showing how to make the earrings and pendant.

After writing the tutorial, I found a new color scheme for the earrings, the Ruby Slippers, still on the wicked witch.

Thanks for looking.