Caffeine Molecule Prototypes

I often don't show the numerous prototypes to my beading designs, mainly because they're usually, well, ugly. My prototypes are often missing several beads, contain loose threads, and look little like the final piece. However, I usually keep them around in a big jar, because sometimes I will come up with an idea but not get it to work, only to revisit it at a later time. I like having my previous attempts around so I can see and feel how the design didn't work as I had envisioned. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my caffeine beaded molecule was one of these ideas.

Beaded Caffeine Prototypes, Circa 2007

During a recent studio re-organization, I found some of the first caffeine molecules that I had ever beaded! These date back to sometime in 2007, before I started writing beading patterns.

As you can see, I had played around with the idea of using round beads to stabilize the rings of the molecule. The atoms were represented by an 8° seed bead, with the bonds represented by smaller seed beads. However, even with the round "core" beads, these were too floppy for my taste, and rather, well, inelegant.

(I was also into blue colorways, big time)

Snowflake-Style Caffeine Prototype

The key to the finished beaded caffeine molecule was realizing that it needed multiple, redundant thread paths, and multiple layers of beadwork. My snowflakes design was what led me to this idea, as I blogged about last December.

Using the snowflakes design as a guide, I whipped up this prototype using the geometry of a caffeine molecule:

As you can see, it looks much more like the final design, but with some snowflakes elements such as the 15° seed beads in the centers of the rings. Each atom branching off of the rings is slightly different, as I was experimenting with different ways of beading these branched atoms each time. By the time I finished the last branch, I came to a conclusion about the style that I wanted to use.

Finished Coffee Molecules

The finished design is a bit more streamlined, and works with several different kinds of flat molecules, not just caffeine!

The caveat to this style is that most molecules are much more dimensional, and therefore much more challenging to render accurately in beadwork. However, that's a subject for another day...

Do you keep the prototypes to your beading designs? Have you ever found a beading design many years later? Drop me a line in the comments and let me know!

Chocolate Molecules

What's better than beaded molecules from coffee and tea? How about one from chocolate?

Beaded Theobromine Molecule Pendant - Dark Chocolate

Theobromine

Caffeine is just one of a class of molecules called xanthines, which also includes a compound called theobromine. It actually doesn't contain any bromine at all, but it rather gets its name from the plant name Theobroma, from the greek roots "Theo" (God) and "broma" (food), meaning "food of the Gods." And really, is there any better way to describe the tree that gives us chocolate?

Theobromine is the primary alkaloid found in chocolate and cocoa powder, though it's also found in lesser amounts in coffee, tea, and yerba mate. It has a similar but more subtle effect on the nervous system compared to caffeine. Chocolate also contains hundreds of other compounds, including caffeine, a third xanthine called theophylline, and phenethylamine, the so-called "chocolate love chemical."

Caffeine vs. Theobromine

From a structural chemistry point of view, theobromine and caffeine differ in just one way: caffeine has a methyl group where theobromine only has a hydrogen atom at the N1 position. I've circled this difference in their chemical structures below:

So, if we want to make a beaded version of theobromine, all we need to do is weave the structure of caffeine, and leave off that extra methyl group. Can you see where the methyl group sits in this green tea caffeine pendant?

Beaded Caffeine Molecule Pendant - "Matcha" - Green Tea

Chocolate-Themed Theobromine Pendants

I tried this variation with chocolate-themed seed beads, and got so carried away with myself that I wove three different theobromine pendants. The first is in carmel chocolate flavors:

Beaded Theobromine Molecule Pendant - Caramel Chocolate

The next is a milk chocolate:

Beaded Theobromine Molecule Pendant - Milk Chocolate

And finally, the last is in my favorite of all chocolates, a delicious dark chocolate:

Beaded Theobromine Molecule Pendant - Dark Chocolate

All three pendants are available in my Etsy shop!

Coffee and Tea Caffeine Pendants

I wove three new Caffeine Molecule Pendants and listed them in my Etsy shop. Two are in coffee-themed colors, while another is in a nice green tea! Click on the links below each photo to learn more about each pendant:

Beaded Caffeine Molecule Pendant - French Roast - Sold Out!

Beaded Caffeine Molecule Pendant - Blonde Roast

Beaded Caffeine Molecule Pendant - "Matcha" - Green Tea

If you'd like to bead your own caffeine pendant, a pattern for the Morning Coffee Molecules is available at my website!

New Beaded Caffeine Molecule Pendants in the Shop

Three new beaded caffeine molecule pendants are now available for purchase in my Etsy shop. You can read more information about each pendant by clicking on the images below. First up is this green tea-esque version:

Next up is this pendant in mocha:

And finally this one in carmel:

All three pendants are available for purchase in my Etsy shop, and come with a 16" or 18" sterling silver chain. Of course, if you'd like to bead your own, a pattern for this design is available at my website.

New Kits: Morning Coffee Molecules

Kits are now available for the Morning Coffee Molecules so you can weave up some beaded chemistry. I've been experimenting with different colors of seed beads on a base of silver-plated seed beads, and came up with this colorway that reminds me of an iced coffee:

I also remembered how black and silver goes with everything, so I beaded up this colorway for a no-frills black coffee that remains elegant and stylish:

Finally, I included this colorway in latté flavors.

All three kits are available at beadorigami.com, and include a needle, plenty of thread, and all the beads needed to make the finished molecules. They can then be strung on a jump ring and through a chain for pendants, or through a thin beading wire for a very chemical necklace.

New Pattern: Morning Coffee Molecules

My newest pattern, the Morning Coffee Molecules, is now available on my website.

The pattern is easily the longest one I've written, clocking in at 30 pages and 85 photos and illustrations. It describes how to render, in beadwork, the skeletal chemical structures of just three of the over 1000 compounds present in your morning cup of coffee; caffeine, caffeic acid, and trigonelline (right-to-left in the photo above). As I mentioned previously, skeletal structures are a shorthand way of drawing a chemical compound. Here are the skeletal structures of the three beaded molecules above:

In writing this pattern, I first chose to describe how to weave the structure of caffeine, because, let's face it, it's just so cool:

For the other two structures in the pattern, I picked compounds that are both present in coffee and mostly aromatic like caffeine, which makes them flat and therefore more accurately-represented with this technique of beadweaving as compared to a more dimensional molecule. I also chose molecules considered unrelated to caffeine for some variety in this trio of beaded compounds. The second structure is caffeic acid, which, unlike its name, indeed looks quite different than caffeine:

For the third structure, I chose trigonelline, a smaller compound which is a relative of vitamin B3:

All three compounds have a connecting seed bead that can be strung through a beading wire, or through a jump ring as shown in this pendant:

The Morning Coffee Molecules pattern is available exclusively at beadorigami.com, and I should have kits for this design ready in the coming weeks. What's your favorite coffee flavor?

More Coffee Molecules

After beading the molecular structure of caffeine in a couple of different color combinations, I wanted to try to see if this technique would work on other molecular structures. Since there are thousands of molecules to pick from, I decided to narrow my choices for the time being to molecules that are both flat and caffeine-sized. Sticking with the theme of compounds found in coffee, I started with trigonelline, a molecule slightly smaller than caffeine, that has just one aromatic ring. Here's the beaded result along with the skeletal structure of the molecule:

The trigonelline beadwork actually ended up flatter than caffeine, which is awesome because both molecules are (mostly) planar in real life!

I also beaded caffeic acid, which contrary to its name is not-so-closely-related in structure to caffeine, though it is a significant part of coffee and is present at some amount in all plants. It has just one ring instead of two, and it has a branched chain with three carbons and two oxygens. I chose to bead it over other compounds in coffee because I wanted to see if the beadwork would remain stiff with this branched chain.

The result? It mostly works, though I've found on repeated attempts that the thread path used will greatly affect how flexible the beadwork ends up.

For reference, here's the original beaded caffeine molecule, in the same "latte" color scheme:

I think they make quite a nice set!

More Caffeine Molecules

I've been having a lot of fun beading more caffeine molecules. I pulled out all my oft-neglected coffee-colored seed beads to put these ones together. Here's a nice french roast:

This one's more of a latte. As you can see in the photo, it hangs at a slight angle when worn as a pendant.

It keeps its form when pressed flat:

But it's also somewhat flexible:

Actually, depending on the beads used, some of these will lie completely flat when pressed, but some still have a slight curve. I think I may be able to get a more uniform result with a change in thread path, so I need to tinker with that a bit more.

This one has more of a carmel flavor, don't you think?

Beaded Caffeine Molecule Pendants

As a trained chemist, I've long been a fan of Raven's silver molecule jewelry over at Made with Molecules. I like the idea so much that over the years I've made several attempts at creating beaded versions of these fascinating compounds, but all of my attempts up until now never got anywhere close to what I was aiming for. Gwen's recent work with 3D molecules beaded with CSRAW prompted me to try again. I started with the caffeine molecule.

For the uninitiated, it has a couple of notable features: first, it's flat, due to a property of molecular orbital theory of which I'll spare you the details. Next, each point or intersection on this skeletal structure represents a carbon atom, so it has a total of eight carbon, four nitrogen, and two oxygen atoms. It also has several hydrogen atoms, but since the principles of organic chemistry dictate where these hydrogen atoms go in a given skeletal structure, us chemists usually don't draw them in unless they're particularly out of the ordinary. So I'll be ignoring them in my attempts.

My previous attempts went quite awry because I kept trying to use a round bead for each atom, but I couldn't connect them together in this structure because several of the atoms need to connect to (i.e. bond with) two more atoms. To do this in beadwork, while keeping the whole piece flat, is very challenging without bezeling around the round bead. When I did this, the resulting beadwork would be both floppy and too big for jewelry.

So I asked myself, how can I bead a structure that's both small, flat, and self-supporting? Well, fortunately one such structure was sitting on my bead tray:

I realized that the key to keeping these snowflakes flat and self-supporting is multiple layers of beadwork and redundant threadpaths that help reinforce the structure. You'll find this principle at work in my Crystal Ball and Peanut Gallery beaded beads as well as in the work of several other bead artists. With this in mind, I put together a prototype that looked a lot like these snowflakes but without the SuperDuo and drop beads. It was still awkward, but it was definitely an improvement. My next attempt ditched the inner size 15° seed beads and stuck with mostly 11°s and some 8°s. Now I finally have something:

The atoms are color-coded: red luster for carbon, duracoat eggplant for nitrogen, and metallic bronze for oxygen. It measures about an inch and a half tall by two inches wide. The piece is somewhat flexible, but retains its shape if you fold it or press it flat.

To make sure that it worked with other beads, I also made one in coffee flavors. It threw me for a bit of a loop, because at first it wouldn't lay flat at all - it would curve upwards like a bowl. But after substituting several of the 11° seed beads on the back for size 15° beads, it settled down into a flat structure. Ah, the joys of differences in different colors and lots of beads...

In this version, the carbons are silver, the nitrogens are copper, and the oxygens are gold.

Most molecules in organic chemistry aren't flat, so this technique won't work for every compound. But there are several other interesting molecules that are both flat and of a similar size, and I'm excited to try this technique out on those molecules too! I think I will do so with the assistance of this beaded caffeine, alongside a beverage containing the real thing.