Dodecahedral Balloon Box

I finally finished a work of beaded art that I had been meaning to get to for a while. It's a dodecahedral version of my Balloon Box design.

The colors are from Margie Deeb's The Beader's Color Palette, specifically palette #48, "Persian Pottery." At over an inch and a half in diameter, it's too big to incorporate into jewelry, but it would be very appropriate for an ornament. I think it would look really nice in red and gold, or perhaps dark blue and silver. 

The structure is hollow and solid like the original Balloon Box. The overlay of seed beads in this piece uses the same bead count and sizes as the original, but if I make this dodecahedral variation again I'll probably change this up. As it is now, a little bit of thread shows between the seed beads in the overlay, which can happen when using the same technique for different polyhedra. It shouldn't be too difficult to fix though. 

What's your favorite type of variation? Size, shape, color, or all of the above?

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!