Quick Inspiration: Free Beading Patterns

Photo Credit: iliveforsun

One of the most stunning types of beadwork is the patterned cuff. All those tiny beads, woven together to create an image, just cry out to be worn. Creating patterns for flat bead weaving isn’t always easy. Even when you have the right graph paper, the task of filling in all those little squares to make a unique picture takes a lot of patience.

Luckily, we can turn to some of our favorite designers for help. Last month, Margie Deeb announced that she will be giving away two new PDF beading patterns every month, for bracelets, necklaces and tapestries! Available for brick and peyote stitch, or loom and square stitch, each one is a miniature work of art.

If you want to practice your pattern following skills, or just need to use up your stash of delicas, these patterns will provide plenty of beading pleasure. Visit MargieDeeb.com to see all of the bead patterns available, and subscribe to the newsletter to find out which to patterns will be free each month!

Copyright 2010 Inspirational Beading and Margie Deeb

Underwater Garden Necklace

Photo Credit: takau99

This month, the theme for the Etsy BeadWeavers challenge is “Secret Garden”. This topic was chosen by Ileana of Enchanted Beads, who encouraged participants to create their own real or imaginary garden. It’s a great theme for summer, with absolutely endless possibilities. There are so many ways to interpret the word garden, that choosing just one would be a challenge in itself.

The Inspiration:

Although I adore nature, I’ve never been a green thumb, and landscaping sort of baffles me. So there would be no realistic gardens in my piece. I started thinking about more magical, fantastic gardens. It occurred to me that the most secret of gardens would be one that humans could never reach.

I had already started seeing some possible shapes and designs in my mind’s eye, and I was most drawn to one with flat, six petal flowers. I thought it would be fun to turn all of my oval dyed shells into flower petals, so then an aquatic theme started to emerge. If the city of Atlantis had had a garden, what would it look like now, at the bottom of the sea?

The Beads:

Using the green shells for petals meant that I would have to be careful about choosing the rest of the palette. I wanted to be certain that the flowers would look as such. I finally decided on salmon pink, which is not only a very flowery color, but also reminds me of anemones and starfish, which one might find in an underwater garden.

For the background, I chose transparent cobalt - an excellent deep sea blue. I also selected some pink cat’s eyes, and 15/o seed beads to match the green and chartreuse shell coins.

The Beadwork:

To make the flowers I had imagined take shape, I used wide triangle weave stitches, with each wedge supporting a petal and a bit of the pink center. To fill in the spaces between the shell flowers, I made a few beaded flowers with matching pink centers and green petals.

Atlantis Garden Necklace

Choosing a technique for the necklace straps was a challenge. I wanted them to have body, but not distract from the flowery bib. Eventually I took the simple approach and created several strands of cobalt blue with assorted accents, including some blue and green pressed glass clam shells.

Voting for the Etsy BeadWeavers July challenge opens today. Stop by the EBW Team blog to see all of the amazing entries, and vote for your favorite! The challenge closes on July 15th.

Copyright 2010 Inspirational Beading and The Sage's Cupboard

Poster Sketch: Bead Soups

There is something so exciting and liberating about working with a mish-mash of bead sizes, shapes or colors. When you’re working freeform, you really do feel free. Even if you’re a bit afraid to take big risks, a little whimsy goes a long way.

Today’s Treasury East collection features some amazing jewelry and art made with mixtures of assorted beads. The playful, organic quality of bead soup creations always has instant appeal. To learn more about the designs featured here, visit Swimming in Beads.

Copyright 2010 Inspirational Beading and Etsy.com

Bead Spotlight: Bugle Beads

One of the most interesting members of the seed bead family is the bugle bead. They’re unique and beautiful, and have a tendency to sit, unused, in our bead stash. Because bugles beads tend to have sharp edges, they can easily cut through most beading threads, causing a beautiful design to collapse. Using high quality bugles and a sturdy thread like Fireline does help, and allows them to take on a wonderful variety of beadwork shapes.

I find that bugles are really best when the thread moves straight through, and doesn’t cross over the edges. Some of the best stitches and techniques for these little tubes are netting, fringe, and embroidery, especially when seed beads are added as bumpers on either side. Adding bugles to a design can add an extra layer of sparkle. Their length also creates a unique texture that cannot be achieved with regular seed beads of equal measure.

Safety Pin Bracelet with Bugles
by Sugarberry Delights

Due to their size and shape, bugles are a bit more prone to breakage than other seed beads. Often a hank or vial will contain at least a few pieces with rough edges or burrs. These can sometimes be removed or polished away with an emery board, restoring the bugles’ straight edges.

Bugles come in a variety of sizes and finishes. The most common bugle is the 6mm length, but they also come in 9, 12 and cute little 3 mm sizes. Some manufacturers also create twisted bugles, with a textured surface.

If you have an lot of bugles in your collection and want to use them up, a simple multi-strand necklace is an easy way to go. For supple texture, place a seed bead between each bugle, which will smooth out the strands. Some other great projects with bugle safe stitching include:

Bugle Clusters Bracelet by Silvana Terry and Bead & Button
Cute Couple Cuffs by Shelley Nybakke and Beading Daily

If you’re up to the challenge, these excellent tutorials pair bugle beads with a variety of stitches:

Elegant Netted Bracelet by Deborah Meyer and Beading Daily
Twisted Bugle Earrings by Beaded Jewelry
Beaded Cupcakes by MythrilAngel
Structural Cube Bracelet by Lynno Soto and Bead & Button

And for anyone who loves to play with polymer clay, a Mobius Bead can help put some of those larger bugles to good use!

Have fun!

Copyright 2010 Inspirational Beading

Stash-o-rama!

When I sat down to do my taxes this past spring, it occurred to me that my bookkeeping systems needs a lot of work. One of the things that needs the most improvement is my materials inventory, which is inaccurate at best. I know that if I want to fix things, I’m going to need to start by taking stock of my entire bead stash from top to bottom. The concept is horrifying!

Before I can even fathom such a task, I will need to clear out a lot of older beads, particularly those that I’ve had since long before beading became more of a business than a hobby. My ultimate goal is to have only items in my stash that also have invoices to go with them. This could take awhile.

I have a lot of good reasons for never using all these beads that I’ve been carrying around. Some of them only have tiny quantities; there aren’t enough to commit to a project, so they wait until they can be used as the occasional accent color.

Others just keep getting passed over, and I tell myself “I’ll probably need them some day”. This is, of course, ridiculous. I don’t worry about saving beads that I really, really like, because I love using them. And if I’m ever in need of a certain bead color, I have no trouble ordering them. There is no reason to hang on to these beads until the end of time.

The Inspiration:

I am starting my big destash project by using up all of my old Czech seed beads. The first thing I did was pull out all of my bead boxes and removed everything that I haven’t used in months. I sorted the seeds by color, then created an assortment of bead soups. They instantly became ten times more appealing.

The Beads:

The first bead mixture that I wanted to use was a combination of all my pinks and purples. I liked the sweetness of the colors, and I wanted to put it to good use. I grabbed some more must-go beads - a 4/o mixture of magenta and baby blue. With the dash of blue thrown in, the bead soup was now the color of cotton candy.

The Beadwork:

The most exciting thing about a bead soup that absolutely must be used up is that there are no rules or boundaries. You can make any design, any size! It’s been awhile since I made a clasp free chain necklace, so I decided to make loops of right angle weave until I ran out of beads.

Cotton Candy Swirl Necklace

I created a pattern of accent beads in groups of four: magenta, pink, blue, pink. To make it a little more interesting, I alternated which side of the chain the accent beads were on, but in groups of three. At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be a pattern at all, but there is a lack of chaos that sort of soothes the eye.

I wish I had staggered the pattern a little more, because I ran out of pale pink accents long before everything else. Still, the necklace turned out to be a whopping 70 inches. I think this is the longest necklace I’ve ever made. I’m going to enjoy this destash mission.

Copyright 2010 Inspirational Beading and The Sage's Cupboard