Doodle No. 37 Three Cats of Dr. Caligari

Never be afraid to go full rainbow. 

Prismacolor black ink, Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils, Finetec and other mica watercolor paint on Stonehenge 250 GSM 100% cotton paper

4”square

See the flash of the mica.

Sold

Baroque Cube Earrings tutorial

Itty bitty beaded cubes to hang from your ears. 

Make your own. 

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

New Tutorial - Ginkgo Leaf Earrings Beaded with a Variation of Cubic Right Angle Weave

With nothing more than seed beads and thread, make these Gingko Leaf 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 beading. Knowledge of CRAW is strongly recommended.

Each leaf is nearly inch wide (23 mm) and 20 mm tall. They’re small, and CRAW creates a lot of negative space. So they’re light, making them comfortable to wear as earrings.

The tutorial is 14 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 the earrings. Included are 14 different pairs of Gingko Leaf Earrings in different color schemes. That I have made so many pairs is a testament to how much fun these are to make and wear. Since they use mostly size 11° seed beads with just a few colors of 15° and 8° they are a wonderful way to explore color combinations with just seed beads.

I beaded Ginkgo Leaves from time to time for over three years before I figured out how to write it down on paper. In my blog, I said I'd be "insane" to write a tutorial for this design. This is actually because I didn't really understand how to do it. As I posted more and more pairs of these earrings on the internet, bead weavers wrote to me, asking me to write a tutorial. So, I kept making pairs and eventually, I drew some pictures, and my method became clearer to me. Months passed, and I made more pairs, and drew more drawings. Then I made more pairs and eventually I understood the method, and I was able to draw all of the steps in a way that makes sense. Then I took photos to match the drawings, and wrote it all up. This tutorial is the culmination of a long process to document these earrings so that other bead weavers can enjoy making them too. This tutorial is also super colorful. I used a rainbow pair for the step photos and illustrations in the hopes that you will enjoy looking at this the tutorial as much as making and wearing the earrings.

Free Tutorial - Lentil Lantern Beaded Bead Earrings

Here is a free beaded bead earring tutorial!

This little Lentil Lantern is a design I made with beads I got from Starman Beads. I'm on their Trend Setters team, which means that I trade them designs for free beads. This is my first designs that they turned into a tutorial.

It's a pretty fun deal for me since they did most of the work.  Amanda Hundt did the writing, illustrations, and stitching of the samples. Nichole Starman worked on the writing, and Lisa Jordan did the photography. All I had to do was he fun part... designing with their fancy two-holed beads, and a little proof reading. I hope you enjoy it!

Beaded Cube Math Lesson for Kids

Several people have asked me to write a math lesson for kids using beading. The challenge is to make something mathematically interesting with bead weaving that can be completed within a single lesson, under an hour, preferably less.

So I wrote this lesson on beaded cubes (PDF). The lesson begins with some background on what a beaded cube is with lots of drawings and a photo. It uses terms like edge, face, vertex, and graph of a cube. The second section gives step-by-step instructions for how to bead weave a cube with a needle, string, and pony beads. After finishing this lesson, students will have practiced basic sewing skills like measuring thread, threading a needle, and tying square knots. The final section provides several math and spatial reasoning "challenges" to extend learners' thinking about beaded cubes.

This lesson teaches several things, especially spatial reasoning, where the learner has to move back and forth between a 2D representation on paper to the 3D model in their hands. It also teaches the importance of carefully following instructions because every step is laid out, and if you skip one of them, your work won't look like what is on the paper. The challenges encourage students to build different symmetric coloring of a cube, extend the construction to a row of cubes, and think about a minimal thread path.

I taught this lesson at the Julia Robinson Math Festival and another version at MoMath. With just 12 beads, this task is not easy, but it is enticing, approachable, and engaging for children, especially girls, and boys like it too, as do their moms and dads. It seems appropriate for children as young as fourth grade, and most of them generally need a good amount of help, but they can do it with coaching. Fifth and six graders have a bit easier time with it.  Interestingly enough, my experience in teaching this lesson to adults and children is that it is not any easier for a typical adult than it is for a typical fifth or sixth grader. In fact, I watched one man get completely lapped by his fifth grade daughter today. GO GIRL MATH POWER!

Here are the materials you need to teach a group of kids:

Pony beads
Size 18 tapestry needles, one per student
String: Cotton is good.  Something thin enough to fit through the eye of the needle, but thick enough to provide some friction.
Magnetic pin cushion: an easy way to collect the needles
Snips or scissors: I tied them to the end of some crazy yarn so they wouldn't disappear.
Beaded samples
Ruler(s)
Cups or bowls to hold beads
Hand outs: I designed the PDF file to be printed once, and then photocopied onto two sides of a sheet of paper, with one sheet per student.  Print the PDF file for best quality, not the jpgs.

I encourage you to try this lesson with your own students or children. If you have anything meaningful to contribute to making it better, please do not hesitate to send me an email or leave a comment below. If you want to see what else you can do with beaded cubes, you should search for my blog for CRAW or "cubic right angle weave" because a beaded cube forms the basic unit of one of my favorite bead weaving stitches.  Also search Planet Bead to see the many beautiful things that have been beaded with cubes.

If you think this lesson is useful, consider showing your support by perusing my Etsy shop, gwenbeads and buying yourself a little something special. You deserve it.

Thanks for looking. You're awesome. Yes, you!

Edited to add: Emilie Pritchard suggests using long plastic beads, called "spaghetti" beads, to help visualize the edges of the cube. Search the internet to find them for sale.

Baroque Cube Earrings

Sometimes I like very simple jewelry, like this pair of silver earrings with a touch of blue.  The limited color scheme makes them easy to wear with lots of different outfits. 

I call this design the Baroque Cube. They are mini beaded beads made with peyote stitch.

 

Do you want them?  This pair is for sale.

Do you want to make your own?  The Baroque Cube Tutorial is available.

Octahedral Cluster

This is a recent example of one of my all time favorite beaded bead designs, the Octahedral Cluster. Octahedral Clusters all have six stars, like the 6 faces of a cube.  In the beaded bead below, I colored two of the stars silver.

I colored two of the stars black and two of them gold.  Each pair lies on opposite faces.

The points of the stars come together three at a time, one star of each color. There are 8 places on the beaded bead that look just like this.  Four of them are identical, and the other four are mirror images of this.

The beaded bead has the symmetry of an octahedron, which is the same as the symmetry of a cube. Knowing this, you might wonder if this beaded bead is really an octahedron, as I told you, or maybe, it is really a cube. If we look at the largest beads (in green), there are 12 of them.

That could be useful because cubes have 12 edges, but so do octahedrons. In fact, the holes are line segments.  So if you look at the holes of the largest beads, and you extend those lines so that the lines intersect, you will form the 12 edges of an octahedron.  For that reason, I think it is an octahedron, and that is why I call it an Octahedral Cluster.

Here you can see how big it is.

Do you want it?  This beaded bead is for sale.

Do you want to make your own?  The tutorial for the Cube and Octahedral Clusters is available. If you make one of each, then you will really see the difference.

New Tutorial - Baroque Cube Beaded Beads and Earrings Made with Peyote Stitch

I love beaded beads, and one of my favorite inspirations for them is the symmetry of a cube.  This version is one of my smallest and most detailed.  Since the design is based upon the structure of a cube, each beaded bead has 6 holes running through its center. 

This tutorial will show you how to weave little beaded beads with seed beads and little drops.  Using just a pinch of each color, these beaded beads are a great way to use up leftover seed beads from other projects. The little beaded beads on the earrings use mostly size 15° seed beads.

This tutorial is suitable for intermediate bead weavers who know how to do tubular (circular) peyote stitch. Presented are the two variations shown. This is the larger version made with mostly size 11° seed beads.

Both are stiff and quite small for such detailed beaded beads.  Side length of each cube on the earrings is just 13 mm (1/2 inch), and for the larger ones on the necklace, they are just 17 mm. The larger version are still small enough for bracelets and necklaces. I like them simply strung on cord with lampwork glass.

See how small the earrings are, just the way I like them!  They're fancy enough to be noticed, but small enough that I hardly can tell I'm wearing them.

Each beaded bead contains over 300 beads, each precisely woven into place.
The tutorial is available in my Etsy shop, or if you'd just like to have these earrings and not make them, check out my earrings section to find yourself a pair.

Thanks for looking!

New Tutorial - Coral Cube Beaded Bead

Here's my newest beading tutorial.  This one shows you how to weave elaborate beaded beads with seed beads and round beads. 

The design is based upon the structure of a cube and, as such, has 6 large (6 mm) holes running through its center. Yes, those are huge holes for a beaded bead, and they go through every face.  I think they look like clusters of coral, hence the name, Coral Cube.

The beaded beads are hollow and stiff, and come in three versions.

This tutorial is suitable for intermediate to advance bead weavers who know how to do tubular (circular) peyote stitch and increases. I don't think the easiest one is too terribly difficult, but they do take a few hours to make.  Peyote stitch... that's a lot of stitches, but the materials aren't fancy, just regular seed beads and round beads. No fancy shapes required, so you can work from your stash.  Thanks for looking.

Bridges Paper - Highly Unlikely Triangles and Other Impossible Figures in Bead Weaving

I have been going a little crazy saving a surprise for you all, and today is finally the day to share it!  Meet the Highly Unlikely Tetrahedron.

These are photos that I will be presenting with my paper at the Bridges Conference in Baltimore this month.

My paper is called, "Highly Unlikely Triangles and Other Impossible Figures in Bead Weaving." It is now available from the Bridges website. You can download the free PDF file here.  I hope you enjoy it!

Be sure to browse the entire collection of papers in the 2015 Proceedings of the Bridges Conference.  There are so many great contributors this year; it will be impossible to pick a favorite. Seriously, go brew yourself a pot of coffee, start at the beginning and click on any title that looks interesting. Candy for your brain. If you can make it to University of Baltimore on July 29 - August 1, 2015 (Wednesday - Saturday), you can even go to the Bridges Conference and listen to the authors talk about their papers, which is way more fun than reading them because you can meet the people who wrote the papers and ask them questions.

If you don't know about the Bridges Conference, neither did I until about 2003, when I heard a talk at the Joint Mathematics Meetings by Reza Sarhangi, a Bridges founder and generally fascinating fellow. Reza talked about this meeting where people discuss connections between mathematics, science and the arts, including visual art, architecture, music, poetry and theater.  As I listened, I thought, "I think I have found my people." It was a big moment for me, listening to Reza speak.  So, I went home and wrote a couple short papers on quilting and math, and submitted them for review.  Next thing I know, I was presenting my work to a group of like-minded people, other mathematical artists and mathematicians who loved art. They had many fascinating ideas to share, and they educated each other, plus they had interest in my work and opinions about it. I was in math-art-nerd heaven. I went to four Bridges conferences in so many years, and then I left academia to be an artist, and stopped going, and started going to Burning Man instead and doing art there with that community. Then, after last year with the Genie Bottle, I decided to take a year off of Burning Man, and go back to Bridges this year instead. So I wrote a paper on beading impossible figures, they accepted it, and I booked my tickets.

Then, Kelly Delp and the other organizers sent me an email. They thought my paper was so swell that they asked me to give a keynote address to the whole conference.  That means that I get more time to talk and show slides, and there will be no other concurrent sessions while I will be speaking.  I also get a little spot on their website here among the other keynote speakers, including John H. Conway, Ingrid Daubechies, and Alan C. Kay, who all have their own Wikipedia pages, by the way. So, you get that I'm excited to go and see and meet all the people. They asked me to make a mosaic for their website, which you can see here. 

The mosaic includes photos of our jungle gym Bat Country and the Genie Bottle, two Burning Man art projects that I created with the help of my friends in Struggletent.  The beadwork includes a circular Celtic knot, my cover of the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts with an Octahedral Cluster and a Seirpinski tetrahedron, bacteriophages, DNA, a Highly Unlikely tetrahedron from my Bridges paper, and a few photos of cellular automata, which is the project I'm currently working on.  So stay tuned for that. It's going to be cool. You'll like it.  I promise.

I hope to see you in Baltimore!  As always, thanks for looking.

Marsala Beaded Bead Necklace

This necklace features Pantone's 2015 Color of the Year, Marsala with aquamarine blue and titanium gray.

It includes 8 beaded beads: 5 Nuts & Washers, a Cube Cluster, an Octahedral Cluster, and a Conway Bead. I carefully selected 7 lampwork glass beads to make the strand into an asymmetric, yet perfectly balanced strand of beads. That's 15 beads in all. Together they make a pallet that is rich and earthy, sophisticated, and oh-so in fashion.

They're all strung on a yard of blue cord of pure silk that I twisted and plied on my spinning wheel.

It includes almost 6 inches (15 cm) of beads. Largest beaded bead measures almost an inch (23 mm).  Thanks for looking!

More on Puff Beads, a design for the beaded bead connoiser who loves right angle weave

I finished a new tutorial last week, called Puff Beads.  The Puff Bead technique is shaped Super Right Angle Weave (SRAW) with some embellishment to make it stiff.  I'm pretty sure that puffs are not the most visually beautiful jewelry I've ever created, but structurally, mathematically, they are quite nice... fascinating, really.  If you are a connoiseur of beaded beads, and enjoy making them as an intellectual activity, I think you will really enjoy making this design.  I think what makes Puff Beads interesting is that you bead the surface of a shape made out of cubes, in particular, a torus. I mean, who doesn't like doughnuts, right? 

But seriously, most beaded tori include the whole doughnut, including the volume on the inside AND the surface on the outside: the cake AND the frosting.  Puffs are just the frosting.  Certainly there are peyote stitched tori where you only bead the surface, like my Nuts and Washers below, but with peyote stitch, the beads sit so close together, you can't see through the beadwork.   

In comparison, when you bead just the surface of a doughnut with SRAW, you get a square lattice of beadwork with holes that let you see inside the doughnut, like right through the side. 

In particular, you can see the big hole through the little holes from all different directions, and I think that makes this technique rather unusual. Thinking further, one could apply this technique to cover all kinds of crazy surfaces made out of cubes, like these pink cuboids, for example.  I just learned that a shape assembled out of cubes placed face to face is called a "cuboid."

My tutorial is designed to teach you the theory behind bead weaving cuboids with SRAW, and I chose the torus as my explicit step-by-step project because I like the idea of beading a hole through the center of a sphere.  At the end of the tutorial, I also show examples of beaded beads using the structure in figure C above, with some discussion about how to apply the techniques to this cuboid design, but I don't give explicit step-by-step instructions for how to do it.  My goal is that after you learn how to build a torus, then simpler shapes will be easy for you figure out how to bead without me telling you every step.  That's my hope, anyway.

... because there is so much cool stuff you can build with cubes.  For example, you could use the Puff technique to bead weave the surface of a trefoil knot, like this beautiful wooden puzzle by Tom Longtin.

I'm not saying it would be easy, just possible.  (I just thought I'd throw that challenge out there to see if I get any takers.)  Of course, you could also build this knot with cubic right angle weave, like I did for my Highly Unlikely Triangle. That would also be nifty.  

So if you really love cubes, and you want to learn the Puff Bead technique, you can find the tutorial here:  https://www.etsy.com/listing/210844618/

And for those of you who just want to look at pretty pictures, or want some beads but don't want to make them yourself, I put this pink necklace up for sale, you know, just in case you like pink.  Thanks for looking.

New Tutorial - Highly Unlikely Triangle with seed beads and thread

I finally finished a tutorial for the Highly Unlikely Triangle, now available.

This piece of beadwork is based upon the impossible triangle of Roger Penrose and MC Escher. I beaded my first impossible triangle in 2006, and it’s taken me until 2014 to write this tutorial. This wasn't my first try, or second!   Until recently, I couldn't find a good way to explain how to do it on paper.   In those 8 years, I have been developing my tutorial writing skills to the point that I could manage explaining such a tricky and challenging design in a way that I think advanced beginning beaders will understand.  And now, I think I finally got it.  The solution was lots and lots of illustrations.

This tutorial is designed to teach you cubic right angle weave with seed beads, including turning corners and joining ends to make a closed loop.  You will also learn to embellish CRAW with seed bead, on straight-aways, and also around inside and outside corners. You can even use tiny bugle beads, like I show here.

 Or even longer bugle beads, like I did here.

I hope you will enjoy my newest tutorial of one of my oldest designs.  Thanks for looking.

Infinity Dodecahedron Necklace with Lampwork Glass Beads

My favorite way to wear beaded beads is strung simply on cord.  In fact, that's how I usually wear them.

For this necklace, I made 4 beaded beads, including three Infinity Dodecahedron and an Infinity Cube (on the far right). Then, I added 4 borosilicate and lampwork glass beads torched by 4 different artists. Together they make a pallet of aqua, silver and gray. This is an unusual and pretty strand of beads, eclectic yet harmonious.

They're all strung on a 26 inch piece of silk cord, tied simply at both ends. If you enjoy stringing beads, you could use this set as a beginning of a more elaborate necklace, but I would wear them just as they are, strung on cord.

Includes 4 inches (10 cm) of beads. Largest beaded bead measures just under an inch (22 mm).  This necklace is for sale.  Click the photos to go to the listings.  Infinity Dodecahedron Beaded Bead tutorial is available here. Thanks for looking!