Annual Holiday Wreath, 2020 Edition

Every year I decorate a large wreath with a collection of beaded beads and pendants. I like to start by putting them in a big pile.

Sometimes I like to organize them by design or style. This year I loosely organized them by color.

Seeing all of these pieces together is a nice reminder of what I've done over the past few years. A couple of seed beads in a small piece doesn't always feel like a big accomplishment, but when you do that over and over again over a long period of time, the results really add up!

If you'd like to decorate your own wreath, make sure to exclude any piece that contains sterling-silver plated seed beads, as the silver will tarnish more quickly if it sits on a fresh wreath. Or do as I do, and decorate your wreath, take a picture, and then remove those pieces immediately afterward.

I hope that you and your loved ones have a peaceful and safe holiday season. 

Thanks for looking!

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Molecular Holiday Beading

Presenting a beaded alpha-pinene molecule, the chemical responsible for the scent of Christmas trees:

Happy Holidays everyone!

New Pattern: Poinsettia Bracelet

After a long, hot summer I've been quite ready for Christmas, so I wholeheartedly dived into holiday beading right after Thanksgiving. Dragon Scale beads in particular have previously spoken "flower petals" to me in other designs, but I've recently found them particularly suited to poinsettias.

Miniature Beaded Poinsettias

The Poinsettia Bracelet features miniature beaded Poinsettias joined together in a delicate a bracelet. I chose the reddest Dragon Scale beads that I had in my stash for the poinsettia flower, but I didn't have any that were green enough for the leaves. So, I used bugle beads instead to mimic the angular, pointed shape of the poinsettia leaf. A handful of tiny 15° seed beads and some stabilizing Half Tila beads complete each flower.

Red and White Poinsettias

I had so much fun making the red poinsettia bracelet that I had to make one depicting white poinsettias too.

I used crystal AB Dragon Scale beads for the white poinsettias. These beads are so shiny!

Matching Earrings

Since this is a component-based design, the individual poinsettia flowers are easily adapted into matching earrings. I used gold seed beads in the center of each flower in this pair, which more accurately mimics the poinsettia flower.

Holiday Beading Pattern

The pattern for this design is now available on my website at beadorigami.com, and it describes how to make the beaded poinsettia component and how to weave several components together to make this bracelet. The circular peyote stitch is used to weave most of each component, and a variation on the cubic right angle weave (CRAW) technique is used to finish each flower. The pattern is in the PDF format, and clocks in at 12 pages of step-by-step instructions with 32 full-color illustrations and photographs.

Thanks for looking and Happy Holidays!

Snow White Snowflakes

After beading so many snowflake earrings in not-so-snowflake colors, I decided to weave a pair with actual snow white beads. I couldn't resist adding in silver beads too:

This pair matches the bracelet that you might have seen in the pattern in Beadwork Magazine. The two pieces have a subtle difference: the earrings use SuperDuo beads, while the bracelet uses Twin beads. I've found that these two types of two-hole beads are not always interchangeable, but in this case both of them work in the same design.

This last pair isn't in snow white colors, but I think that they're still rather festive in purple, bronze, and a hint of shiny copper:

Each item above is available for purchase in my Etsy shop. Click on the images above for more information about each one.

Snowflake Earrings for the Holiday Season

I wove several pairs of earrings based on the snowflakes featured in my Snowflakes Bracelet. Not quite in traditional snowflake colors though. Here's one in bronze, copper, and gold:

And another in dark violet, gold and pearl white:

 This one uses the same color pattern as above, only with metallic blues and less gold:

I love the combination of garnet, dark metallic purple, and silver:

Finally, this purple and silver pair reminds me of snowflakes at night:

Each pair of earrings is available for purchase in my Etsy shop. Click on the images above for more information about each pair.

Snowflakes Bracelets in Beadwork Magazine

Are you getting ready for the holidays? I'm getting ready by creating some Snowflakes Bracelets, fresh out of my newest pattern in Beadwork Magazine:

These bracelets feature the new 2-hole Czech twin beads, and they also work well with SuperDuo beads too. They're related to my Squareflake Earrings pattern, but instead of using the 4-fold symmetry seen in the earrings, they use the 6-fold symmetry seen in real snowflakes. These bracelets also use drop-shaped seed beads (either 3 mm magatamas or 2.8 mm drop beads) instead of rivoli crystals, as the sharp rivoli crystals can get caught on sleeves quite easily when used in a bracelet.

Several other design possibilities are achievable from this bracelet design. The individual snowflakes make a great pair of easy earrings, and I think they'd look great in a choker-style necklace too. 

The Snowflakes Bracelet pattern can be found in the December/January 2012/2013 issue of Beadwork Magazine.

What kinds of beadwork designs are you working on this holiday season?

Christmas Lights Necklace

I finished this piece a little while back, using a relatively simple beaded bead design based off of a truncated dodecahedron structure; a regular polyhedron with faces of triangles and pentagons, with 90 edges for 8° seed beads to lie on. The twist with this design is that it's color-symmetric; the five seed bead colors used in the beaded beads are distributed symmetrically, and no two beads of the same color lie next to each other.

I thought about what kinds of repeating patterns use the same amount of several different colors, and immediately thought of strings of Christmas lights. So I used bright colors of silver-lined seed beads to mimic the shimmer of these tiny lights.

Christmas tree-green fire polished Czech glass beads complement the colorful Christmas light beaded beads.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Jewelry for the Craft Show: Old and New Designs

Between weaving beaded beads, forming a few dozen pairs of earwires, and folding origami gift boxes, I'm almost ready for the craft show tomorrow. I took the time to re-create a few popular pieces which sold out from my Etsy shop a while ago, such as this Light Clusters beaded bead earring and pendant set:

I also decided that I could part with this springtime-themed necklace that I created this past year, featuring a Balloon Box beaded bead and two smaller Double Bubble Jacks beaded beads:

Finally, I made earrings out of the extra Pagoda Charms that I made for my Ice Queen Necklace. I've also made a few new Pagoda Charm earrings that I haven't had the chance to photograph, and I think I'll bring the materials to make more at the show if anyone is interested in a demonstration. 

 

The knit-one-one holiday craft sale is on Saturday, December 11, from 10 AM to 4 PM at the knit-one-one studio in Berkeley, CA. Check out the knit-one-one blog for more information about all the artists participating in this show. I hope to see you there!

Christmas Berries Set

I've added two new pieces to my Artfire and Etsy shops. This pendant is woven in my Bubble Box beaded bead design, and features gorgeous green freshwater pearls and metallic Japanese seed beads:

I used the same materials to create matching earrings, in my Double Bubble Jacks design:

Both of these pieces will be available for sale this weekend at the knit-one-one holiday craft sale on Saturday, December 11, from 10 AM to 4 PM at the knit-one-one studio in Berkeley, CA. Check out the knit-one-one blog for more information about all the artists participating in this show. I'd love to see you there!

Craft Show on December 11

I'm participating in a craft show at the knit-one-one studio again this holiday season. The show is on Saturday, December 11, from 10 AM to 4 PM at the knit-one-one studio in Berkeley, CA. I really dig this little show; it's an intimate gathering of about 12 local artists featuring everything from textiles to jewelry, papercrafts, ceramics, and even chocolate! Check out the knit-one-one blog for more information about all the artists participating in this show. I can personally vouch for the ceramics from KoideStudio - I have two of her kitty mugs and they are the cutest mugs ever :)

Here's a sampling of some of the items that I'll have for sale: 

If you're in the area, I'd love to see you there!

Wintery Mini Ionic Polyhedra

Earlier this year I purchased the Instant Holiday Glam: Color Palettes of Splendor PDF from Margie Deeb, which is full of many interesting and unique combinations of colors for the holiday season. I found some of the color combinations in this eBook quite nontraditional, but on the whole it really got me thinking about new ways to play with color in my beadwork this holiday season.


When I experiment with new color palettes, I like to try them out on a small beaded bead before moving on to the rest of the piece or a larger project. In this case, I wanted to weave a beaded bead with 30 edges, so I made one with 12 edges first to test out the colors. I chose one of Margie's holiday color palettes consisting of silver as the base color, dark rainbow blue as the secondary color, with gold as the accent color. I started by trying it out in this Mini Ionic Octahedron (à la Gwen Fisher of beAd Infinitum):

Unfortunately there's just too much blue in this beaded bead to match the desired color palette, so I made an adjustment to add more silver:

I liked this one better, but I still thought that its silver-to-blue ratio was not quite right. So I switched the structure of the beaded bead from a Mini Ionic Octahedron to its dual, the Mini Ionic Cube:

This accomplished much of what I was going for. The more open structure of the Mini Ionic Cube shows off the round silver beads more than the Mini Ionic Octahedron. 

Satisfied with my color palette, I moved on to the 30-edge structure. There are two regular polyhedra with 30 edges, the dodecahedron and the icosahedron. I felt that the dodecahedron would result in a more open structure, thus showing off the round silver beads more compared to the icosahedron, so I chose that polyhedron and made a Mini Ionic Dodecahedron:

Neat huh? I found it quite satisfying to weave.

 Though hollow, it's remarkably sturdy:

This beaded bead is going to make a nice little Christmas ornament. I think I'll pair it with its cube cousin to make it a stacked ornament. 

The Ionic Polyhedra pattern is available at beAd Infinitum, and it explains in great detail how to weave the Mini Ionic Octahedron and Cube and about a dozen other polyhedra. The Mini Ionic Dodecahedron is one of many variations to this pattern, and should be pretty straightforward to weave for anyone familiar with other dodecahedron beaded beads. 

Merry Christmas Ornament!

I make at least one Christmas ornament for my Mom every year. One year I made her an entire set of origami snowflake ornaments out of fancy textured paper, but lately I've been into making beaded ornaments. Here's this year's ornament:

This ornament features a Squared Circles beaded bead and a Circle Starburst beaded bead, both woven from medium-sized Czech glass lentils and fancy Japanese seed beads. It was hard to get a picture of it on the Christmas tree since the tree casts so many shadows, but I think this one gives an idea of how it looks in tree-context:

A tutorial for the Squared Circles beaded bead is available in my Etsy shop, and I'm currently writing a tutorial for the Circle Starburst beaded bead. I meant to get it done before Christmas, but I've found that the busy holiday season is not conducive to writing!

In the meantime, I hope you have a warm, happy holiday!

Season's Greetings!