New Kits: Crystal Helix Beaded Beads

New kits are now available for the Crystal Helix Beaded Bead design. The first uses blue zircon Swarovski crystals with the AB2X finish in a color palette that reminds me of a tropical ocean:

Crystal Helix Beaded Bead Kit - Ocean Breeze Colorway

The next colorway uses the crystal silver night shade of Swarovski crystal, and ends up looking a lot like hematite. I paired a collection of very similar beaded beads with actual hematite in this necklace a while back.

Crystal Helix Beaded Bead Kit - Hematite Colorway

Finally, kits for the peacock colorway are back in stock.

Crystal Helix Beaded Bead Kit - Peacock Colorway

All three kits are available at beadorigami.com, and make two small (~10 mm) and one large (~ 17 mm) beaded beads. The kits include all the beads needed, a beading needle, plenty of thread, the Crystal Helix pattern (automatically delivered after checkout as a PDF download), and shipping is included in the kit price! They can be incorporated into an easy earring and pendant set, or into a more elaborate necklace!

Fiberoptic Duo Necklace

Do you remember the first time that you walked into a bead store? Or the first time you attended a bead show? The first bead show that I went to was back in 2006, when I worked for my friend Sandy of Fireweed Beads. She's since moved on from the bead-selling world, but she has the best sense of color and shape when it comes to Czech glass beads, especially with natural tones such as bronze, patina, and moss green. So when I was working with these colors while writing my new Fiberoptic Duo beaded bead pattern with SuperDuo beads, I naturally thought of a pair of strands of Czech glass beads that I bought from Sandy several years ago. It turns out that they complement these beaded beads perfectly!

Necklace with Fiberoptic Duo Beaded Beads

This necklace features both Fiberoptic Duo beaded beads: two cube versions and three octahedron versions. I wanted to predominantly feature these beaded beads in this necklace, so I strung them relatively simply with prairie green Czech glass fire polish beads, 6° Czech seed beads, smoky quartz round beads, and a couple of Swarovski bicone crystals just surrounding the beaded beads. I was tempted to use additional shapes and colors of Czech glass beads, but anything more complicated would have detracted from the beaded beads, so I went with the "less is more" approach and I'm happy with how it turned out.

Necklace with Fiberoptic Duo Beaded Beads

The Fiberoptic Duo Beaded Beads pattern is available exclusively at beadorigami.com if you'd like to make your own versions of these beaded beads.

Is there a particular color palette that reminds you of a friend? Drop me a line in the comments!

New Pattern: Fiberoptic Duo Beaded Beads

My newest pattern, the Fiberoptic Duo beaded beads, is now available at beadorigami.com.

Fiberoptic Cube Beaded Bead

Why the name Fiberoptic Duo? Well, the "duo" part comes from 1) the two colors of SuperDuo beads that are used in this design, and 2) the two different beaded beads that are are described in this pattern; the Fiberoptic Cube, and the Fiberoptic Octahedron. The "fiberoptic" part came about because I like the way the word sounds.

Fiberoptic Cube (left) and Octahedron (right) Beaded Beads

These beaded beads came about from a long line of beady experiments that I did last year with the aim of incorporating two-hole beads into new beading projects. The first result of these experiments was the Squareflake Earrings, a project that works with both twin and SuperDuo beads:

Squareflake Earrings

The next result was the Snowflakes bracelet, which appeared in the Dec/Jan 2012/13 issue of Beadwork Magazine. It's related to the Squareflake Earrings with a couple of changes; the snowflakes have six-fold symmetry, like real snowflakes, and I substituted the Swarovski crystal rivoli pendants with the less-sharp 3mm magatamas, so that the resulting bracelet would be softer on the skin.

Snowflakes Bracelet

Then there's the project that I'm really excited about, the Cosmic Nocturne Pendant. This pendant is hollow, holds its shape well, and has a nice combination of crystals and several shaped seed beads. I'll be teaching this project at the Bead and Button Show this June (B130661 - Fri. June 7 • 1:00pm-4:00pm)

Cosmic Nocturne Pendant

The Fiberoptic Duo beaded beads use a simpler combination of beads for sleeker design; two different colors of SuperDuo beads, and round Japanese seed beads. I haven't had much luck using twin seed beads in this design, since it requires the two-hole beads to be very uniform. The SuperDuo beads do this quite nicely.

Fiberoptic Octahedron Beaded Bead

I like how both beaded beads use the exact same number and proportions of these seed and SuperDuo beads. They're similar in construction in some ways, but different in other ways as I detail in the pattern.

Fiberoptic Cube (left) and Octahedron (right) Beaded Beads

Which one do you like better? The cube is a little easier to weave, but I'm partial to all beaded octahedra. It tends to look more round than octahedron-shaped in this design though.

Fiberoptic Octahedron Beaded Bead

The Fiberoptic Duo Beaded Beads pattern is available exclusively at beadorigami.com. I'll be putting some kits together for this design in the next couple of weeks!

Do you have a favorite twin or SuperDuo design that you'd like to share? Drop me a line in the comments below!

Bead Society of San Diego - Talk and Workshops in April

In this coming April, I'll have the pleasure of being the speaker at the monthly meeting of the Bead Society of San Diego. My talk will be be an updated version of the talk I gave to the Bead Society of Northern California, on the influences of mathematics and science in geometric beadwork.

In addition, I'll be teaching two workshops the day after this meeting. In the first workshop, students will learn how to weave the Circle Starburst beaded bead. I wove up two new colorways for this beaded bead for kits for this class; one in a dark teal green and bronze combination, and another in a more silvery steel blue:

The second workshop will be on the Tila Garden Pendant. Here it is in a white picket fence color combo:

The Bead Society of San Diego meets on the third Saturday of every month at 10 AM at the Mingei International Museum in Balboa Park, San Diego. The workshops will take place on April 21 starting at 10 AM in nearby Lemon Grove. Contact the bead society at sdbeadsociety@gmail.com for more information about these two workshops, and follow their blog for information about other upcoming talks and workshops.

New Kits: Teardrop Bubbles Beaded Beads

Kits are now available for the Teardrop Bubbles beaded bead design. First up is this kit in lavender glow, which was previously sold out:

The other Teardrop Bubbles kit is in a color palette I like to call Juicy Berry, as it uses lots of juicy, dark purple beads:

Both kits are available at beadorigami.com, and include a needle, plenty of thread, and all the beads needed to make a finished beaded bead. They make great solo pendants, or focal beads in more elaborate necklace.

Beaded Beads with SuperDuos

Have you tried the new two-hole SuperDuo beads? I've been trying out several design ideas with these and the two-hole twin beads, and I came up with some cute beaded beads:

This particular design requires the uniformity of the SuperDuo beads and doesn't work well with twin beads, but other than that, it offers tons of design possibilities. With a change in geometry during the beading process, it switches from a cube to an octahedron:

Pattern coming soon!

Origami Interlude: Flower Cube

Sometimes I need to take a brief detour from beads to remind myself that I can still do origami.

This piece is the Flower Cube with Finish A, from "Origami Inspirations" by Meenakshi Mukerji. I really like Meenakshi's approach to modular origami; she's not afraid to use non-square sheets of paper like pentagons to achieve some truly gorgeous dodecahedral designs (that I really need to try someday), and I like her symmetrical approach to the distribution of color over the whole piece (it's actually the same approach that I use in my Candy Dodecahedron beaded bead pattern). Her website is an absolute goldmine of modular origami eye candy...

This particular piece uses six flower modules. It uses lots of pre-creases and a couple of harrowing spread squashes that were a little tricky to fold, but overall it folds up quite nicely. Here's one by itself:

Here are three joined together, from the inside view of the finished cube:

The individual modules are joined together without any glue, thread, or other adhesives.

It holds its shape quite well! I wouldn't start kicking it around like a soccer ball, but you can handle it pretty thoroughly without it falling apart. I like how you can see straight through it:

I used two sheets each of three different colors of a pretty typical weight of origami paper. I think that this model would work with a slightly heavier paper too, such as washi, but I wouldn't try folding it from anything heavier than that.

You think this design could translate into beads?