2015 Bead and Button Show Classes

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be teaching four classes at the 2015 Bead & Button Show. Each class that I'm offering this year is three hours long and features a different beading technique.

Cosmic Stardust Pendant 

First up is the Comic Stardust Pendant (generously sponsored by Starman Beads!) which is offered on Wednesday, June 3 from 4 - 7 PM. This intricate, lacy geometric beaded pendant is completely self-supporting and features a variety of crystals, Japanese seed beads, and two-hole beads such as SuperDuos or two-hole triangles. The size and geometry of this pendant can be adjusted to create smaller beaded beads or fancy ornaments!

Brain Chemistry Earrings

Next is the Brain Chemistry Earrings, offered on Friday, June 5 from 8:30 - 11:30 AM. In this class students will learn how to create an accurate, 3D beaded representation of the GABA molecule, and how to incorporate two of these molecules into a pair of earrings. This class is a nice introduction to the world of beaded molecules, and give off tons of sparkle for a fun, fancy way to show off beaded chemistry.

Sakura Bouquet Necklace

Next is the Sakura Bouquet Necklace (also sponsored by Starman Beads), offered on Saturday, June 6 from 9 AM - noon. This piece features four different varieties of the cherry blossom flower, all incorporated into a cascading necklace. The individual beaded charms can be used in a variety of other types and arrangements of jewelry, as I've discussed on this blog before.

This past Christmas I wove several of these charms as earrings and gave them out as gifts!

Rose Blossom Pendant

Finally, the Rose Blossom Pendant (also sponsored by Starman beads) will be offered on Friday, June  5 from 5 - 8 PM. This turbine-like pendant features two different sizes of rose petal bead surrounding a Swarovski rivoli crystal. This design uses a twist on the right angle weave (RAW) technique and works up quickly, so you will want to make more than one.

The 2015 Bead & Button Show will take place in Milwaukee, WI from May 27-June 8, and class registration opens today at noon (CST). It's the biggest bead show in the US and it's a whole lot of fun each year. I'd love to see you there!

A Trio of Rizo Triangles Necklaces

I've finished a new colorway of the petite version of the Rizo Triangles Necklace, this time in copper and bronze, with a touch of purple. I'll be teaching this project at the BABE! Show next weekend.

Here's an earlier version of this necklace in soft purples and golds:

And then here's the original colorway, in purple, green, and silver:

I love all three colorways, but the new bronze and copper colorway is just perfect for the fall, and I've already enjoyed wearing it a couple of times :)

I'll be teaching this class at the BABE! Show on Sunday, November 16. Please visit the BABE! website for more information. Online registration closes on Saturday, so don't delay!

A Trio of Rizo Triangles Necklaces

I'm in full preparation mode for the 2014 Bead and Button Show! The Rizo Triangles Necklace is one of the six classes that I'm teaching at this year's show, and I've finished three different colorways of this very fancy necklace.

For the gold colorway, I used a combination of neutral and purple hues, with accents of gold-plated seed beads, and golden shadow Swarovski crystals.

This colorway uses several shades of bronze with hints of purple and copper accents, all paired with crystal copper Swarovski crystals.

Finally, the original colorway combines purples, greens, and several accents of silver. I love all three colorways, but this one remains my favorite :)

I'll be teaching this advanced project on Tuesday, June 3, starting at 9 AM. More information about Bead & Button class registration, as well as general show information can be found here. I'd love to see you there!

Which colorway is your favorite?

New Pattern and Kits: Water Lily Windows Bracelet and Earrings Set

My latest beading pattern is done! Presenting the Water Lily Windows Bracelet and Earrings Set:

Floating Beaded Water Lilies

This pattern describes how to make three different shapes of Water Lily Windows components, featuring little beaded flowers woven from Rizo beads, floating in a frame of Tila, SuperDuo, and Japanese seed beads. In the pattern, I describe how to connect them together for a twisting bracelet, complete with a matching custom beaded clasp. The pattern also covers how to make two of these components into matching earrings, and how to attach pear-shaped Swarovski crystals, with an unusual method designed to make the crystals face forward.

Tila Bead Frames + Flowers

This pattern is part of a series where I've experimented with surrounding other beads with frames of Tila beads. I used a similar strategy to make the oval-shaped components in the Cosmic Windows Bracelet:

The components in the Water Lily Windows Bracelet are more angular, resulting in square, pentagon, and hexagon-shaped framed flowers. To create this bracelet, I could have connected several square or hexagon-shaped components together in a straight line, or I could have arranged a tiling pattern of pentagon-shaped components. Indeed, several different arrangements are possible!

In the end, I settled on a combination of pentagon- and hexagon-shaped components in a nonlinear arrangement, which resulted in a more unusual, but organic look to the finished bracelet. I also experimented with using two different colors of Rizo beads for the flowers, which you can see in the bracelet below:

Three Kits!

Kits for this design are available in the three colorways shown above, and include all the beads and findings needed to make the bracelet and the matching earrings. It's the perfect design for celebrating the coming springtime!

Thanks for looking!

New Pattern and Kits: O Stars Set

I finished my fourth O bead jewelry pattern, the O Stars Pendant and Earrings Set!

Seeing Stars!

This pattern describes how to weave three different six-pointed star components from Swarovski crystals, round and shaped Japanese seed beads, two-hole SuperDuo beads, and O beads. The pattern starts with the relatively straightforward small component (a close relative to the Lucky O Bracelet component), and gradually works up to the more complicated large O Star component. I've classified this pattern as advanced because each component is engineered to be self-supporting from many rounds of beadwork, and it uses different bead counts and shapes in each round, so it keeps you on your toes towards the end of the pattern. However, each step is described in my usual level of detail with several full-color illustrations and photographs, so intermediate students should be able to complete the small and medium components and then work up to the large component.

A Cascading Pendant

The cornerstone of this pattern is the O Stars Pendant, which features all three stars connected together. A beaded bail and a briolette crystal complete the pendant for a long, cascading design.

A Matching Beaded Chain

I liked the diamond chain with O beads that I used in the Annular O Necklace so much, so I also included instructions on how to make this beaded chain to match the O Stars pendant. It's a fast, easy design that makes a light, delicate chain, and it's not sewn into the pendant, so it can be used for other pendants too! I'll definitely be using it more in the future.

Matching Earrings

Finally, two small components pair with additional briolette crystals for a cute little pair of matching earrings, completing this 3-in-1 pattern set.

Four Kits!

Kits for this design come in the four colorways seen above, and include all the beads and findings needed to make the pendant, earrings, and a beaded chain up to 24 inches long. The components can also be incorporated into many other jewelry designs!

Oscillations Pendants

I finished two additional colorways of my Oscillations Pendant. The first uses dark brown Tila and SuperDuo beads to frame rosy peach Rizo flowers:

The second combines dark green seed beads with a lighter, metallic patina shade for the Tila and SuperDuos, which frame silvery violet Rizo flowers.

Here's the original colorway for comparison. This one is paired with a matching spiral rope, however the pendant can be strung on a variety of materials including a metal chain or a silk ribbon.

I'll be teaching this project at the Bead & Button Show on Wednesday, June 4. You can sign up for the class here. I would love to see you there!

2014 Bead & Button Show Classes

It's my pleasure to announce that I'm teaching seven classes (!) at the 2014 Bead &Button Show next June. The show jury accepted five of my new proposals, and two classes that I taught last year as well. When I was submitting these classes for review, I noticed that these projects fall into three general themes: geometry, botany (with an emphasis on flowers), and chemistry, so I figured that would be a good way to cover them in this post.

Geometry

First up in the geometry category is the Rizo Triangles Necklace. This is an expanded version of the class that I'm currently teaching at The Beading Bar this week. In this 7-hour workshop, you will learn how to create three different beaded triangular components, along with a matching triangular-themed beaded rope. Rizo beads and SuperDuo beads give a ton of dimensionality to these components, which can also be incorporated into any number of matching earrings, bracelets, or pendants. Personally, I love how I feel like royalty when I wear this piece!

Next up is the Oscillations Pendant, which features three different circular beaded components arranged in a cascading pendant, and finished with a teardrop-shaped Swarovski crystal. It's hard to see in the photo, but the components are very dimensional, and give a shadowbox effect to the little flowers nested within. A spiral rope finishes the pendant, however it can be strung on any kind of beaded rope, cord, or chain. It's a fun design to construct and wear, as you get the feeling of looking into a special place in each component.

Botany

In the Botany category, we start off with the Tila Garden Pendant, a class that has sold out at the previous two Bead & Button shows. Above is the newest version with the very colorful rizo beads. It's a challenging design to weave, but my students have told me that they feel so very accomplished when it's complete (that's certainly how I felt the first time I came up with it!)

Next is the Sakura Bouquet Necklace, which I'm also teaching at BABE! this November. This piece features four different varieties of the cherry blossom flower, all incorporated into a cascading necklace. The individual blossoms can be used in a variety of other types and arrangements of jewelry, as I've discussed on this blog before. I'm currently working on other colorways for this project, and I also came up with a fifth beaded sakura variety which I may be able to incorporate into this class too!

Last in the botany category is the Raindrop Flower Necklace, which features a beaded focal pendant and three different kinds of matching beaded beads woven from teardrop-shaped glass beads and seed beads. I like this design because the beaded beads can be adapted into earrings, and the focal can also serve as a solo pendant.

Chemistry

The last two projects utilize the beaded molecule technique that I developed for my Endorphin Necklace. The first of these two projects is the Brain Chemistry Earrings, which feature a molecule called, γ-Aminobutyric acid, or GABA. This molecule is very important to brain function, and has a calming effect on brain cells. This 3-hour class makes for a nice introductory project to the world of beaded molecules, and give off tons of sparkle for a fun, fancy way to show off beaded chemistry!

The last project is the Red Wine Chemistry necklace, which also uses the beaded molecule technique to create several beaded molecules found in red wine. These molecules are connected together with silver jump rings for this fancy necklace, which is decorated with little grape beads for that extra enology touch. In truth, for this project I chose a set of molecules found in most alcoholic beverages, so if you're not into red wine, this piece can be worked up in different colors and styles to represent your favorite cocktail. Both beaded molecules classes include a mini chemistry lesson which will explain how the techniques learned in this class can be applied to an infinite number of molecular structures.

The 2014 Bead & Button Show will take place in Milwaukee, WI from May 28-June 9, and class registration will begin online on January 7. It's the biggest bead show in the country and it's a whole lot of fun each year! I'd love to see you there!

Cosmic Windows Pendant

In my last post about beaded cherry blossoms, I mentioned the idea of using component design to arrange several smaller beaded components into many different types of jewelry. I've continued this concept in my newest piece, this Cosmic Windows Pendant:

A Pendant of Windows

This piece features a total of six Cosmic Windows components, arranged in a tetrahedral geometry with one component on each of the six edges of the tetrahedron. This 3D arrangement gives the pendant a great deal of depth and dimensionality that photos can't entirely capture. Here it is on its edge on a jewelry bust:

The main tetrahedral body of the pendant is about an inch and a half in diameter; on the big side for a beaded bead, but not quite too big for a beaded pendant.

A Variation on a Bracelet

The Cosmic Windows design originally started as a bracelet, featuring six linked components woven with Miyuki tila beads and seed beads, which come together to frame the irregular cosmic Swarovski crystals that give the piece its name. Here's a photo of this bracelet in its original antique colorway:

With a little bit of beaded fringe and a bail for an ear wire, the Cosmic Windows components also make fancy matching earrings:

I used the same silver and blue colorway for this pendant:

Dimension and Symmetry

Each component in the pendant is joined together at the corners of the tetrahedron with additional briolette crystals and Japanese seed beads. It took a few attempts to get it to hold its shape, but I was surprised at how I didn't need that many additional beads to join the components together (it did, however, require many passes of thread!) A beaded bail and a bunch of beaded fringe finish the pendant.

I'm thinking that it would also make a very fancy Christmas ornament too!

The original Cosmic Windows beading pattern and kits are available at www.beadorigami.com. If you're interested in learning how to make this variation from the original pattern, drop me a line!

Golden Rizo Triangles Necklace

I wove another Rizo Triangles Necklace to prepare for my class at The Beading Bar on Friday. This one uses tans, light purples, and just a touch of gold:

It's a new colorway for me, but I quite like it!

I'll be teaching this project at The Beading Bar in the University Heights neighborhood of San Diego on August 16 from 10 AM-3 PM. More information about this class and how to sign up can be found here. I'd love to see you there!

Rizo Triangles Necklace Class

I've been hard at work on a number of new pieces for the classroom and the Bead Origami website. One such piece is this one, the Rizo Triangles Necklace:

This piece features two different kinds of self-supporting, reversible triangular beaded components that show off Rizo and SuperDuo beads, which are joined together for the focal point of this necklace. Its matching beaded rope also features a triangular element woven from Rizo beads and Japanese seed beads, and final triangular component makes for a unifying toggle clasp. Three Swarovski crystals add a nice touch of sparkle.

This is my new favorite necklace and I've been wearing it a bunch when I've been out and about. I like how it goes with everything from blue jeans to a little black dress.

And of course, the smaller triangular components make for an easy pair of matching earrings :)

I'll be teaching this project at The Beading Bar in the University Heights neighborhood of San Diego on August 16 from 10 AM-3 PM. The Beading Bar is a new local bead store to the San Diego area, and they carry a ton of the hottest new beads including Rizos, SuperDuos, Tilas, and Long Magatamas, but they also have a fascinating collection of vintage beads including glass pearls and fancy buttons! I'm stoked to have such a cute and well-stocked local bead store only 10 minutes from my house, and I'm doubly stoked to be teaching there!

More information about this class and how to sign up can be found here. I'd love to see you there!

Do you have a favorite local bead store? Tell me about it in the comments!

A New Beaded Pendant

Last week I blogged about a spiral rope that I was weaving for a matching pendant. I've now finished the pendant!

A Component of Many Shapes

The precursor to this pendant has been sitting on my bead tray for quite a while. It started as an attempt to combine Tila and SuperDuo beads into a frame, which eventually veered off into the design that became the Cosmic Windows Set:

After creating this bracelet and its matching earrings, I returned to the original prototype on my beading tray, which was rounder but empty in the middle. Another crystal bead in the middle didn't seem to fit quite right, but after some tinkering, I found that little flowers made out of rizo beads perfectly filled these frames! And then I found that I could vary the sizes of the components with just a few adjustments, and paired three of them together for this pendant.

Tila Shadowboxes

It's difficult to photograph, but these components actually contain two layers of tila beads, turning them from tila frames into bowl-shaped shadowboxes. The rizo flowers are completely recessed in each shadowbox, and bloom out of the bottom of each component.

I particularly like how this design can show off the rizo beads with special finishes, such as the AB, vitrail, and "magic" finishes. These finishes make for the most gorgeous visual effects, yet they also have a solid color on one side that can make the bead look irregular in the final design. The rizo beads in this design are positioned to minimize this issue.

Finished with a Crystal

A bermuda blue drop Swarovski crystal finishes this pendant. I debated between several shades of crystals for this finishing touch, but I settled on bermuda blue to match the tila beads of the pendant and the petrol pearls of the spiral rope.

It still needs a name though... Any ideas?

A Spiral Rope and Beaded Swatches

I finished something new; a beaded rope!

A Spiral Rope Necklace

This beaded spiral rope is a matching necklace for an unfinished pendant. I'm still waiting on an order to come in so that I can finish the pendant, but fortunately I had all the materials to complete the rope.

I don't often weave beaded ropes for my designs, but the pendant is pretty substantial, and a simple silver chain just won't do it justice. Plus, if you haven't already noticed from my experiments with beaded DNA, I have a special place in my heart for helical beadwork.

Spiral Rope Swatches

It took me several attempts to settle on the exact type of spiral rope that I wanted to weave. Specifically, it took me ten tries, as you can see from all my failed attempts:

I like to think of these false-starts as the beader's version of a knitting swatch; a small sample of the design used to gauge how the finished version will look. When I'm creating a new beading project, I save these beaded swatches to keep track of the design ideas that I've tried, and I keep them to revisit those ideas in the future.

I came up with some interesting variations. In this swatch, I tried including a SuperDuo bead every six or seven stitches:

Unfortunately, the SuperDuo beads stick out a little too much for my liking in this variation, and making the spiral stitches longer to fit them resulted in a thicker rope. I put this idea aside because a thicker rope would not complement the pendant, but I might revisit this idea in the future.

Another idea that I might revisit is combining the spiral rope stitch with right angle weave, which I tried in this swatch:

It makes the spiral tighter and less likely to twist, which has always been a pet peeve of mine. But it adds a little too much engineering for the scope of this project, so I set the idea aside for now.

The Finished Rope

The design I finally settled on was one originally suggested by Marcia DeCoster. It uses 3 mm round petrol pearls every other stitch, which gives it both movement and texture, and makes the rope the perfect thickness for the pendant.

I used the same beaded toggle clasp design that I used in my Cosmic Windows bracelet. I also doubled its loop to give the rope two slightly different lengths. It's nice to know that this toggle is adaptable to necklaces as well as bracelets.

It's quite a nice beaded rope... I think I may even wear it without the pendant!

Do you ever weave swatches for your beading designs? Do you save them? Do you revisit them in the future?