New Tutorial - Teardrop Bubbles Beaded Beads

This week I finished my third tutorial; my favorite pendant and the subject of my online avatar, the Teardrop Bubbles Beaded Bead

 It was difficult to write this tutorial for a number of reasons. For one, it's complicated to illustrate this design, which resulted in quite a long tutorial! It clocks in at 27 pages and over 80 photos and illustrations! While it may be a bit verbose, when I write my tutorials I try to err on the side of too much detail rather than too little. This tutorial is an advanced design and can be quite tricky to weave, but my hope is that others will be able to reproduce it from my instructions and troubleshooting tips. The other reason why it was so difficult to write this tutorial is that it's one of my favorite designs and it's hard to share something so special to me. But a big part of what I want to do with my work is write tutorials, and I've received plenty of requests for this particular design. Eventually I decided that I'd rather write it up than keep it entirely for myself. Anyway, I've experimented with color patterns for this design a number of times. In addition to the pieces available in my Etsy shop, I also made some additional pieces. I like how the finishes of the seed beads give this beaded bead a different texture:
I love working in this color scheme. I don't wear a lot of gold but I love how it complements the blue in this piece. The smaller beads are also beaded beads, of a yet-unpublished design:
I've shown this one before, but I just had to mention it again because of how the Teardrop Bubbles beaded bead complements the Double Bubble Jacks Beaded Beads
 You can see more images of these and other designs in the gallery of my website. As always, if you use this tutorial, I'd love to see what you create!

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Another Weekend, More Treasuries

Here are some treasuries for your Friday! Jojo was kind enough to include me in this refreshing Summer Blues treasury among a number of talented artists from the SATeam. Make sure to check out Jojo's shop; among other pretty pieces she has a complete collection of beaded Tetris pendants which I find incredibly cool.

I also managed to snag a treasury for the weekend. This treasury features some beautiful pendants of the beaded, lampworked, and wireworked varieties. Check it out!

Weekend Treasury

I'm in a treasury this weekend! Thanks so much to Heather of Studio DTQ Designs for including my earrings in this lovely pink treasury!

Treasuries and Inspirations

A pair of earrings featuring my Double Bubble Jacks beaded beads is in this treasury by Noahsarkcollection. She makes some great treasuries and frequently features members of the Starving Jewelry Artists community and our associated Etsy team, plus she has some very cute animal charms in her own shop, so make sure to check it out!

Speaking of the SJA, we have a number of very talented seed bead artists, one of whom is Cynthia Newcomer Daniel of Jewelry Tales. If you are not familiar with her work I highly recommend that you check out her website; her styles range from simple and elegant to complicated and breathtaking, and everything in between.

Anyway, she was the first person to take interest in my Double Bubble Jacks beaded bead tutorial, and in the space of a week she made a dozen variations on this design and, along with her own Lagoon design, wove them into a beautiful necklace entitled Rock Pool:

Needless to say, I'm blown away by this piece and fascinated by her variations on my design. While it's been a few years since I started developing my own beaded designs, I only recently managed to get over the emotional hurdle of not only sharing images of my work, but tutorials of my designs as well (and I wouldn't say that I'm really over this emotional hurdle, nor do I think I will ever be. Putting your work out there to be judged and critiqued is always an emotional challenge). To see someone take one of my patterns and just run with it is an extremely cool experience. I'd love to see what other people come up with too!

New Tutorial - Double Bubble Jacks Beaded Beads

After what feels like forever I've finally finished my second beaded bead tutorial.

This design is a younger sibling of the Teardrop Bubbles beaded bead, and it reminds me of a little toy jack with bubbles sticking out of it. While it uses the same technique as the Teardrop Bubbles bead, it's much easier to weave together (and to write up as a tutorial!). This tutorial is currently available at my Etsy shop.

I made a number of pieces using this beaded bead design and I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. They make a very cute pair of earrings:

And I also made this bracelet:

Finally, I paired two of these beaded beads with a Teardrop Bubbles beaded bead for this garden-themed necklace. I didn't originally plan on stringing it with Russian amazonite and green aventurine, but after using beads of these gemstones in a test-string of this necklace, I just fell in love with how they complement the beaded beads.

You can see more detailed images of these and other designs in the gallery of my website. If you decide to use this tutorial in your designs, I'd love to see pictures of what you come up with!

Splendid Vintage

Thanks to everyone who downloaded my first tutorial from Jewelrylessons.com! I've been very happy with the positive response and encouraging comments. It's now on Etsy as well and last Sunday it was also my very first Etsy sale! I'm working on my next beaded bead tutorial, but like my first one it's also taking forever...

In the meantime, I updated my website with some pictures of a necklace I made a while ago. It's loosely based on a bracelet design Beki Haley published in Bead Unique back in 2006. This is my go-to necklace for all things wine, from visits to the wine country to volunteering at the annual Zinfandel festival.

News Update and First Tutorial

It's been a busy few weeks and I haven't had much time to post some of my newest beadwork. I haven't had the time because I'm traveling across the country to attend a huge national meeting. No, not that one, although I hope to go there some day. This meeting is related to my doctoral work.

A few weeks ago I posted some images of my light clusters earrings to the Jewelrylessons.com project gallery, and then I received multiple requests for a written tutorial for this project. I had thought about writing tutorials for my work for while, but this time I finally made the plunge and wrote one up. I think it was because I have made this beaded bead hundreds of times since I frequently use the basic octahedron in my beadwork. After lots of research online, tons of pictures, and hours upon hours of tinkering with Illustrator, I submitted my tutorial to Jewelrylessons.com last week. Writing a tutorial for a 3-D beaded object is really tough! It felt like it took forever.

I'm happy to report that this tutorial was accepted and is available at Jewelrylessons.com at this link. I'm very excited, not only because this is my first tutorial, but because it was accepted quickly and without any revisions! So I must be doing something right :)

Now I'm imagining up tutorials for my other beaded beads; I had better get to work!