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/

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!

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!

Cellini Asterisk Pendant in Czech Etched Seed Beads

This Cellini Asterisk is a beaded pendant, woven from hundreds of glass seed beads in the colors silver, burgundy, and metallic pink. Many of the beads are the new Czech etched beads that shimmer and twinkle in the light. This ornate cluster is composed somewhere between 1200 and 1500 beads, too many to count. The beadwork is hollow, making it light for its size.

This pendant is 6 cm (2 and 3/8 inches) from point to point and 16 mm thick, suitable for a focal bead on a necklace. The hole is the center is 7 mm wide. It looks a bit like a five-legged spider from the back side.

If you would like to learn how to make your own Cellini Asterisk, I have a tutorial available here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/261775731/tutorial-cellini-asterisk-pendant-beaded.

Thanks for looking.

Cellini Flower made with peyote stitch

Here is the newest piece off of my beading needles, a Cellini Flower made with several different metallic seed beads including the new Czech etched ones that shimmer and twinkle in the light. If you haven't tried the new etched beads, I really recommend them.  I have them in a few colors, and I'm totally in love.

Find this flower here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/552902817/
Find the tutorial here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/255173329/

Beaded 4D Archemedean Polytope Omnitruncated 120-Cell

I beaded a four-dimensional thing that I don't understand very well.

What I do know is that it's a beaded version of a 4-D Archimedean polytope that goes by many names.

It's made of different polyhedra, in the same kind of way that a polyhedron is made up of different polygons. 

I learned about this structure from a book called, "The Symmetry of Things" by Conway, Burgiel, and Goodman-Strauss. You can see the various names it goes by in this photo, which is a page out of that book. This page is the direct inspiration for this beadwork. More so, it's a recipe for how all of the loops fit together.

As a mathematician, I simply beaded this recipe using beaded angle weave. Each n-gon is a loop of n beads. The arrangement of the loops is the same and the arrangement of the polygons in Conway's illustration.  (However, I left out the thread to stitch the 10-gons because by the time I got to them, the beadwork didn't need or want it.)

Now that it's done, I'm pretty sure what I beaded is called an omnitruncated 120-cell on Wikipedia. Fritz Obermeyer created and gifted this image into the public domain. Isn't it pretty?

This beautiful blue thing has 2640 total polyhedra:
       120 4.6.10
       720 4.4.10
     1200 4.4.6
       600 4.6.6

I didn't bead anywhere near that entire mathematical object, but I did bead a little chunk of it. In fact, I only finished one of the 120 of the (4.6.10). The weird thing about beading this object is you can just keep adding more and more loops and more and more polygons. It feels a lot like beading the infinite skew polyhedron faujasite because they share many of the same shapes connected in the same ways. However, faujasite is an infinite 3D structure, and this is a finite 4D structure. And in this thing, the angles don't work correctly in 3D. To see what I mean, look at all of the distortion in that blue image above. Everything in the center is squished, and everything near the outside is all stretched out. So you couldn't bead the whole thing the way I beaded mine here. But we can bead lots of different chunks of it. I definitely could have kept going. The challenge as an artist is to decide where to stop.

I made this beaded sculpture by weaving glass beads together with a needle and thread. It contains nearly 25 grams of chocolate bronze size 11° seed beads, which is more than a full tube. There are usually around 100 size 11° seed beads per gram; so that's about 2500 beads. I'm pretty sure it's the only one like it. This piece is very tactile and fun to turn in your hands to see all of the different views.

Largest diameter is 6 cm (2 and 3/8 inches). You could put a piece of cord through it and wear it as a large pendant, if you were so inclined. If you would like to have it, you can find it here in my Etsy shop.  Thanks for looking.

Prismatic RAW Pendant with Etched Seed Beads

I'm absolutely obsessed with the new etched seed beads.  I can't stop looking at them, which is good, because it makes me want to bead things. Like my previous post, this piece is stitched with prismatic right angle weave and square stitch.  I also added picots so I could see the etched beads "end up" which, as you can see, is where most of their color is. When you hold this in the sunlight, those little ends shimmer with orange fire.

When I weave beads, I typically think about how I would explain what I'm doing, so that I can eventually write up a tutorial.  Unfortunately, that kind of thinking can really hold me back creatively because I don't want to try things that are too hard to document. The frustrating part is that I haven't beaded anything I like very much lately, at least not any new designs.  So, in the last pendant and this one, I've been slowly letting go of the idea of documenting my process. Instead, I'm just enjoying making and watching the design emerge in my hands. It's liberating, and even exhilarating, but it also makes a piece like this difficult to reproduce exactly. 

Thanks for looking.

Atomic Beaded Pendant

It's been a long time since I beaded a new design I like.  I hope you like it too. The technique here is primarily prismatic right angle weave (PRAW) with square stitch.

The mat beads are the new etched  beads that have been recently released on Planet Bead, and I absolutely love them! I want them all! You can't tell from the photos, but they shimmer and twinkle and throw off tiny flashes of aqua and purple. I'm having fantasies of selling off three quarters of my bead collection and stocking up on etched seed beads in every color. But in the mean time, I was able to squeeze a few new tubes into my bead box.  

Thanks for looking.

Cellini Marquis Pendant

An old friend commissioned me to make a pendant incorporating an old tooth that one of her friends gave her. She had a pretty clear vision of what she wanted, and here's what I came up with. The design of the frame is almost identical to the Cellini Marquis, but I added a few extra rounds to make it bigger.

Boy, you blow up a photo of beadwork, and the mistakes really jump out at you. Fortunately, the missing beads on the bail were fixable. Ahh. All done.

You can find the tutorial for the Cellini Marquis pendant in my Etsy shop.  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.

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.

Mini Ionic Polyhedra

This round beaded bead is a Mini Ionic Rhombic Triacontahedron.  It has the symmetry of a dodecahedron with 12 blue 5-stars and 20 purple 3-stars.

It measures 29mm (1 and 1/8 inch) in diameter, suitable to be worn as a pendant. There are a couple of different ways to string this, and the 30 largest holes are big, 3-4 mm wide, wide enough to accommodate a cord or chain.

This ornate cluster is composed of over 700 beads, each one precisely woven into place. This beaded bead is very round and hollow and stiff. It's wonderfully detailed for its size. The shape is like a Buckyball virus.

This round beaded bead is a Mini Ionic Dodecahedron. This piece contains over 350 beads.

It measures 24mm (1 inch) across, suitable to be worn as a pendant. There are a couple of different ways to string this, and the 12 largest holes are big, 4-5 mm wide, wide enough to accommodate a thick cord or chain.

Here you can see a few different Mini Ionic Polyhedra together, including the two above.  If you would like to learn to make your own Ionic Polyhedra, I don't have a tutorial for these exact beaded bead variations, but I explain the technique in the pattern for Ionic Polyhedra, available here: http://www.beadinfinitum.com/Kits/Ionic_Polyhedra.html

Thanks for looking.