Victory Pod Earrings on a Hetty Friedman Scarf

I recently purchased a scarf made by Hetty Friedman. It's made of hand dyed, handwoven rayon chenille. The colors scream AUTUMN, and I fell in love with it from the moment I first saw it in Hetty's Etsy shop. The colors in this scarf include teal, jade, curry, blue, orange, and brown. When I saw Hetty's photos, all I could think is, "Could the colors of that scarf really be that pretty!? I must have that scarf!" And so they were!!!

As I do, I made a pair of earrings just before I bought the scarf, and as accidents will happen, the scarf matches the earrings perfectly. Since I just happened to be writing a tutorial for how to make this pair of earrings, I photographed the earrings on the scarf. Tada!

I fell in love the colors in these photos. So I wrote to Hetty, and she kindly gave me permission to share these photos with you. Thank you Hetty!

I couldn't stop taking photos of the earrings on the scarf, just for the sake of eye candy. Photos like these make me unreasonably happy.

This cat video also make me unreasonably happy.

If you want, you can learn to make Victory Pod Earrings with my new tutorial, but you'll have to find Hetty if you want a new scarf.

Thanks for looking. Have a great holiday. Spread some love. Be nice to each other.

New Tutorial - Victory Pod Earrings Beaded with Cellini Peyote Stitch

I just released a new beading tutorial, Victory Pod Earrings so you can make earrings with this original variation on beaded Cellini spiral, combining peyote and herringbone stitches. 

These earrings are stylized, dangling drops with an elegant symmetry, like a puffy V in 3D. The beadwork is stitched with just 3 sizes of regular Japanese seed beads. No fancy shapes required! So if you are a bead weaver, you probably already have everything you need. Using just a pinch of each color, these pods are a great way to use up seed beads leftover from other beading projects.

This project is suitable for intermediate bead weavers who like peyote stitch.

With ear wires the earrings measure 46 mm long.
Beaded pod measures 27 mm x 21 mm x 12 mm.

The tutorial is 11 pages, with over 50 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.

These earrings are designed to match the Cellini Flowers and Leaves.  Here you can see a pair of Victory Pod Earrings colored to coordinate with a Large Cellini Flower for a matching pendant and earring set.

That's all for today.  Thanks for looking!

New Tutorial - Cellini Flowers and Leaves Beaded with Peyote Stitch

I'm pretty excited about my newest tutorial, Cellini Flowers and Leaves.  With these instructions, you can learn to make earrings and a pendant with sparkling leaves and flowers. Cellini Flowers and Leaves are my original variations on beaded Cellini spiral, combining peyote and herringbone stitches.

Beading leaves is fast, fun, and easier than it looks. After you master leaves in two sizes, try a flower and a branch, and assemble everything into a cascading corsage pendant. Then bead earrings. And if you still want more, try the large flower beaded bead shown below. Aside from an 8 mm round bead in the small flower, everything is stitched with regular Japanese seed beads, using only a gram or two of each color. So if you collect seed beads, you probably already have everything you need. There's no need to buy more beads; just get right to beading!

This project is suitable for advanced beginning beaders who want to learn more about peyote and herringbone stitches. For you designer types, the pattern ends with drawings to inspire you to create your own beaded jewelry compositions with Cellini Flowers and Leaves. With so many different designs in one pattern, you could combine the techniques to make your own designs for pendants, bracelets and elaborate necklaces.

Cellini Flowers and Leaves is my third tutorial using the Cellini beading technique, and it won't be the last! The first was Slugs in Love. This is a new Slugfest kit with matching earrings that I assembled. 

 I still have a couple kits left before they are all sold out.

The second was Snail Shells and Twisty Bits. With this tutorial, you can make a bangle bracelet like this.

You can also make necklaces and doughnuts like these...

... as well as pendants in various sizes, like these.

And this example shows how Twisty Bits work seamlessly with classic tubular Cellini spiral stitch.

As always, thanks for looking.

NEW TUTORIAL - Horned Bangle Bracelet Beaded with Peyote Stitch

This tutorial explains how to bead weave a bracelet with seed beads and thread. No fancy shapes required! The Horned Bangle Bracelet is inspired by a workshop with Kate McKinnon on Contemporary Geometric Beadwork. This bracelet is a hollow tube and somewhat flexible. It measures 14 mm wide and 11 mm thick.

This tutorial includes step-by-step instructions for weaving the bracelet into a continuous bangle. For a short project, use fewer repeats to make a donut.

This tutorial is designed for advanced beginning bead weavers who know peyote stitch.

The tutorial is 9 pages, including 60 illustrations and photographs. The tutorial is a PDF file that gives step-by-step instructions for the bracelet and donuts.

You can make the horned cable with any size seed beads you like. Use all one size, or for a better fit, make the L beads one size larger. The smaller donut is made with size 15° and 11° seed beads. It measures 26 mm (1 inch) in diameter and 10 mm thick. It is a little too small to fit my pinky finger.

The larger donut measures 4 cm wide and is made with all size 11° seed beads. It fits my thumb.

The bracelet is made with size 11° and 8° seed beads, and if you want to make a faster chunky version, use size 8° and 6°.

New Tutorial - Victorian Parlour Earrings Beaded with PRAW

Victorian Parlour Earrings are little earrings made with seed beads and thread. The fan shaped drops are woven with beaded prismatic right angle weave (PRAW) and herringbone stitch. PRAW is a close relative of cubic right angle weave (CRAW). This tutorial is very detailed, written for advanced beginner beaders. Basic knowledge of beading is recommended. Knowledge of CRAW is helpful.

This tutorial includes an illustrated discussion of Prismatic Right Angle Weave and how it relates to CRAW. I provide detailed instructions for how to bead PRAW for this design. In the process, you can learn how to read charts like the like those found on my blog at http://gwenbeads.blogspot.com/2014/04/notation-for-cubic-right-angle-weave.html. 

Materials lists and photo galleries are included for all 5 pairs of earrings shown.

The tutorial is 14 pages, including about 100 illustrations and photographs. 

The tutorial is a PDF file that gives photos, illustrations, and charts to make the beaded earrings shown. If you would like to have a pair of these earrings without actually making them, check out the Earrings Section in my Etsy shop.  I put a few of these pairs in there today.

 Thanks for looking!

More Trefoil Triangle Earrings Beaded with Herringbone Stitch

Last time, I showed you my new tutorial for Trefoil Triangle Earrings. After making a handful of Trefoil Triangles, I wanted to add some crystals for a touch of sparkle. So I came up with this variation, which I included at the end of the pattern.

The tutorial is 12 colorful pages, with over 65 illustrations and photographs.

Thanks for looking!

New Tutorial - Trefoil Triangle Earrings Beaded Celtic Knots

This tutorial explains how to make Trefoil Triangles in three designs, in two sizes, and in mirror images. You only need a few pinches of each bead color, making this a good choice to use up your leftover seed beads from other projects. No fancy shapes required!

These earring are quick and easy to make. This pattern is suitable for advanced beginning bead weavers. If you have tried bead weaving once or twice before, you are probably ready to try this. The technique is herringbone and square stitch. The main projects are shown in the first photo, and the second photo shows you a variation with tiny bicone crystals that is explained at the end of the tutorial.

The tutorial is 12 colorful pages, with over 65 illustrations and photographs.

New Tutorial - Delta Queen Necklace with Beaded Pendant and Toggle Clasp

I just released my newest tutorial, and I admit I'm quite pleased with it.  It's one of the most involved tutorials I've ever written.  This tutorial explains how to weave the Delta Queen Necklace with beads and thread.

A dramatic pendant hangs from a thick cable of beads.

The necklace is finished with a beaded toggle clasp, a new clasp design created just for this necklace. Everything is woven with honeycomb weave (with a bit of herringbone weave), including the Daisy Chain Cable. Honeycomb weave like right angle weave (RAW), but with other angles. You don’t need to know RAW to follow this tutorial, but you do need to know how to weave the Daisy Chain Cable, shown below. If you don’t know the Daisy Chain Cable, you can find it in my Etsy shop here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/225147305/

To the best of my knowledge, honeycomb weave was first introduced in my paper, Using tiling theory to generate angle weaves with beads on page 21 as an example of a 2-across-edge angle weave.  In particular, honeycomb weave uses the tiling by regular hexagons, and the hexagons are very visible at the top of the pendant.  It's always been one of my favorite weaves in that paper, but it's taken me until now to design something with it.  I'm sure it won't be my last use of this weave.

This Delta Queen Necklace tutorial is a long project, suitable for intermediate to advanced bead weavers who are already very comfortable with the Daisy Chain Cable. The tutorial is a PDF file with 31 pages, including over 160 photos and illustrations. That's a lot of steps, but I think it's a fun project because you're not doing a billion repeats of the same thing (except the necklace cable.  That has a lot of repeats).  There are lots of different elements, and that gives you the chance to make lots of different coordinating components that all assemble into a single finished necklace.  Also, you don't need any fancy bead shapes, so you can really play with color rather than wasting time trying to track down that one weird bead shape in just the right color.

Can I tell you?  I'm really happy it's finally done... Although part of me wants to make another one of these necklaces, I'm also ready to move on to the next project because I've got a bunch more ideas for flat weaves that I'm really itching to try.

Thanks for looking!

New Tutorial Slugs in Love Earrings and Pendants

Meet my slugs.

Slugs in Love.

These beaded, sparkling, spiraling slugs are very twisted and sensuous. It's hard to capture their beauty in a single photo.

You see?

What could be more romantic than two slugs in love?

How about three slugs in love?  See the three slugs on the left in gold, orange and red?  I call this one Slug Fest with a little slug earring for the dangle.

I was inspired by the colors of lava.  To me, it looks like frozen flame.  All of the variations shown above are patterned and explained in my newest beading tutorial, Slugs in Love.  I even give a recipe for a five (5) Slug Fest in the tutorial, if you are so adventurous to try it.   I haven't made one yet.  It's a lot of beads. 

These beaded slugs are super fun to make, to watch them spiral a little more, as you make each stitch.  I really hope someone makes the five slug version, just so I can see a photo of it.

If you're wondering why I call this Slugs in Love, you should watch this video on the mating behavior of slugs. 

 And this one with snails.  It's totally worth two minutes.

Or this one, which I laughed all the way through.

For some reason, my friends keep sending me links to terrestrial gastropod mollusc porn.  

Anyway... The technique I use for my beaded slugs isn't original.  I learned about it after Pamm Horbit showed me some of her pieces including, "Max's Not a Knot," here.  This piece is actually a lidded box - the lid comes off.  It placed 2nd in the accessories and objects division of Bead Dreams 2012.

You see, last Fall, I spoke to the Northwest Bead Society in Washington State, and Pamm attended my lecture and took my classes.  She had a big box of these twisted balls, cubes, and other highly symmetric pieces of beadwork that she made, using all sorts of different point group symmetries, especially chiral ones. They ranged in size from tennis balls to softballs.  Each one was more spectacular than the next, all twisting and sinuous.  Pamm had found a basic beaded unit in photos on line, and from there, she figured out how she could make lots of repeats and assemble them in lots and LOTS of different ways.  Her collection was quite diverse and impressive.
  
I could scarcely see out how she did it.  But she was patient with me as I tried to figure out what I was holding in my hand as it glistened under the lights.  She explained the essence of the idea, and even was kind enough to give me a couple of triangles that are beaded with this technique.  It turns out it's based on the peyote stitched triangles (google it!), but the ones Pamm gave me used different sizes of beads to make them spiral, like the Celline spiral, made popular by Susan Golden, when she published the Cellini spiral bracelet in the Art and Elegance of Beadweaving in 2003.  Here's the Cellini spiral I made in 2005 with Golden's directions.  I never finished it.  It's a half bracelet, unwearable, but I like that you can see inside the spiral.

What Pamm showed me is that you can apply this same technique to beaded triangles.  So I beaded this green triangle using the samples Pamm gave me. 

But, I didn't finish the back correctly.  What can I say?  It was my first one, and by the time I finished it, there was nobody there to tell me how to do it.

I played around with the idea by changing the symmetry, and came up with these earrings.

I made a pair for myself in purple, and I fell in love with this photo and the earrings.  They are so tiny and dainty.  Just a splash of color dripping from the ears. 

I named them Archimedes' Teardrops because of it's relationship with the Archimedian spiral.  To skip the math, please jump to the next paragraph now.  An Archimedian (or arithmetic) spiral is the locus of points corresponding to the locations over time of a point moving away from a fixed point with a constant speed along a line which rotates with constant angular velocity.  The relationship with the beadwork is that you end up with a constant set of beads that is constantly repeated as you rotate around the fixed, central axis.  I think that works.  Anyway, I had to name it.

Then I made this piece that I didn't know what to do with.  It's not a really beaded bead because it doesn't have an obvious hole.  It's just a beaded thing, and a bit slug-like.

So I posed it with Batman.  Behold the power of the BEADS!

Then, I illustrated, and wrote a complete tutorial for my little Teardrop earrings, and as I was releasing it, another bead designer pointed me to June Huber's website, where she had a pattern for the same earrings.  The only difference are that Huber used Delicas where I used size 15° seed beads and her hanging method is different.  I even took this photo before I saw Huber's photo of nearly the same design in her earring tutorial.  Hmm.

I surfed around Huber's website, and found that she did a lot with the technique of peyote stitch with herringbone increases, like this Arabesque cube.  (Seriously, click on that, it's gorgeous).  Shortly thereafter, I noticed that Cath Thomas also wrote a tutorial for the same earring and her variations: Pepper Fork and Yukka Flower.

That all happened last Fall. I made up something new that wasn't new at all.  I was a little sad because I put so much work into it, but I knew I couldn't release a tutorial that someone else had written before me.  It didn't matter that I made it up by myself.  I hadn't made it up first.  It wasn't mine to distribute.  

But I really loved these spirals, and I wanted to design with the technique.  So, I didn't toss out the tutorial completely.  I just shelved it.  I chalked it up to a learning experience.  Since then, I've been trying to design a new variation, something that is different enough and new enough that it wouldn't be copies of what the great beaders before me had already done.  

So I reconsidered the symmetry.  Where Huber, Horbit and Thomas all ADDED symmetry to their designs, Slugs in Love took it away. 

I found a different unit of repeats, and then made it have a lot of different beads, big fat slugs instead of tiny, dainty ones.

If you're so inclined, you could take one of the basic units I patterned in Slugs in Love, make copies of it, and try to recreate Arabesque cubes, and other polyhedra and flowers, but bigger, much bigger.  Warning: That's a lot of beads!  And please, Please, PLEASE, I really can't stress this enough... Send me a photo if you try it! Thanks for looking.