Beaded Bead Reflection Photography

I've been playing with photographing some of my beaded beads on a reflective surface.

It's a fun but challenging photography technique and I think it works particularly well for silver beadwork. I used a piece of dark reflective plastic to generate the reflection, which does the job quite nicely however it also picks up every single speck of dust in the light tent. I had to spend a ton of time editing out the dust specks in post-processing to generate these shots.

Here's a shot of a Fairy Triangles beaded bead. I like how the reflection picks up the lower part of the beaded bead as well as the top.

Here's another shot of the silver Half Tila Technocluster beaded bead, which I previously tried to photograph in a previous post.

For reference, here's my previous attempt at photographing this beaded bead. The big difference is in the reflective surface; in the older shot I used a clear piece of plastic to generate the reflection (instead of a dark piece of plastic), but since both the top and bottom sides of the clear plastic show, it makes a double reflection rather than a single reflection.

I like the reflection in the new shot, but the beaded bead is a little overexposed. I prefer the way the beaded bead looks in the older photo.

Finally, I used this same technique to photograph the Diffractions Necklace, which is the project that I'll be teaching at the Beading by the Bay bead retreat in March of 2016.

This necklace features both cube- and dodecahedron-shaped beaded beads that use a unifying set of materials and embellishments, and I'm looking forward to teaching this project because it's a great example of beading with different geometries to make different types and sizes of beaded beads.

Thanks for looking!

New Pattern and Kits: Fairy Triangles Set

My newest beading pattern, the Fairy Triangles Set, is now available at beadorigami.com.

Triangle Components from Triangle Beads

Last week I blogged about making little beaded triangles out of triangle-shaped beads, and how they can be connected together to make bracelets or a large beaded bead. Here are several of the triangles that went into the large beaded bead above:

I liked making this beaded bead so much that I also made two smaller versions. Here's the medium-sized beaded bead, alongside a matching Fairy Triangles component:

This version also uses Tri-beads instead of O beads, just because I wanted to add extra triangles ;).

All three beaded beads are based on the geometries of the deltahedra; the group of 3D shapes made up entirely of equilateral triangles. The pattern for this design includes guidelines on how to join these components together to make all three of the above beaded beads, and these guidelines can be applied to the rest of the deltahedra as well.

An interesting note about this design is that it uses a different strategy than the one I usually use to make a geometric beaded bead; most of my beaded bead designs take an edge-skeleton and face-embellishment approach, as I discussed in my beaded bead webinar. The Fairy Triangles beaded beads, on the other hand, take a face-component and corner-join approach that's a little easier to tackle than my usual methods.

Petite, Quick Earrings

In addition to beaded beads and bracelets, these components also make a quick and easy pair of earrings:

A Solo Pendant

The large beaded bead can also be strung on a silk ribbon for a stunning solo pendant:

Beading kits for this design are available in four colorways, and include all the beads needed to make and connect 30 components together. Many different jewelry combinations can be made from this kit; it makes enough components for one large and one medium beaded bead, or three medium and one small beaded bead, or seven small beaded beads, and many other combinations are possible too. Additionally, you can combine these kits with your own findings to make earrings, bracelets, and necklaces.

New Pattern and Kit Pricing

Last month I made some big changes to the Bead Origami kits page: Bead Origami kits are now "unbundled" from their patterns. The kits are now "à la carte" and still include the listed materials and all shipping costs, but the pattern must be purchased separately (all kit prices have been lowered accordingly, and some of my pattern prices are also slightly lower). 

Under this new pricing method, you can now purchase the pattern and then sort through the beads that you already have before purchasing a kit. Plus you can purchase kits for a specific design in two or more colorways without paying for the same pattern twice. If you wish to order both the pattern and the kit at the same time, simply add both items to your shopping cart before completing your purchase. Finally, if you already have a copy of one of my designs that has been published elsewhere (such as in a magazine) and you want to purchase a kit for that design, you can now do so without purchasing another copy of the pattern.

It's my hope that this method will offer additional purchasing flexibility to my customers, while making the logistics a little easier on my end. I'd be very interested to hear your feedback about this change!

Thanks for looking!

Beaded Triangles

I've been making beaded triangles... Lots of triangles.

What's more, these triangles are made out of other triangles. Two-hole triangle beads, to be exact, plus Rizos, O beads, and Japanese seed beads. Joined together, they make a nice, delicate bracelet.

But they can also make many kinds of beaded beads. Here's one made out of 20 triangles.

It's a pretty big beaded bead, so I think I'll string it as a pendant. What do you think?