Floret Earrings and Charms with Modified Prismatic Right Angle Weave PRAW

Learn to make Floret Earrings and Necklace with this original variation on Modified Prismatic Right Angle Weave (MPRAW). This version of MPRAW is like Modified RAW described in Contemporary Geometric Beadwork, and other beading patterns. This tutorial is written for intermediate beaders who want to learn more about right angle weave (RAW). Knowledge of cubic RAW or modified RAW is recommended.

This tutorial includes detailed instructions for making the Floret Earrings and the matching necklace with of tiny pendants with matching beaded beads. Everything uses Japanese seed beads in two different sizes with the addition of other small round, roundel and/or bicone beads. They are a wonderful way to small amounts of leftover seed beads and other small one-hole beads.

Each floret is 11/16 inch wide (12 mm) and almost an inch tall (23 mm). They’re small and light, making them comfortable to wear as earrings.

The tutorial is detailed including 15 colorful pages, with 110 full color illustrations and photographs. The tutorial gives detailed illustrations, photographs, and written instructions to make the Floret Earrings and matching necklace.

 Thanks for looking!

Truncated Icosidodecahedron in Beads Crater Moon Beaded Bead

Meet Crater Moon.

and Crater Moon in White...

Each Crater Moon is composed of nearly 2700 beads.

The American Mathematical Society recently posted a photo of an amazing structure on their Facebook page with no comment of who made it. They called it a rhombicosidodecahedron (3.4.5.4) because that is the name of the polyhedron in the very inside layer, but Susan Goldstine noticed that the outside layer is actually a truncated icosadodecahedron (4.6.10). This object is a multilayered compound of unusual polyhedra.

With help from Susan, I figured out how to weave it with seed beads and thread. Susan built this model below using Zometool, and wrote, "This is what the structure above each triangular face of the rhombicosadodecahedron looks like. I feel better about not being able to make out what's going on from the original photo. The cavity has a triangle, six trapezoids, three pentagons, and the hexagon at the top." Furthermore, "Above each core pentagon is half an icosidodecahedron (3.5.3.5)."

To bead it, I used an edge-and-cover weave with 3 mm bugle beads for the edge beads and size 11° seed beads for the cover beads. (There's one exception, where I used 11° seed beads for the short edge beads under the squares.) In other words, every n-gon has 2n beads, including n edge beads alternated with n cover beads, all sewn in a loop.

Here you can see how I started to weave the inside layer, showing the edge-and-cover weave for (3.4.5.4), also known as the rhombicosadodecahedron as I mentioned above.

This is a photo from Ivona Suchmannova of Spiral Beading, showing the first layer curled into a ball.

This is the complete first layer of Crater Moon with 6 mm bugle beads and 11º seed beads. This piece will finish a lot larger than the others because the bugle beads are longer.

Here is the start of the second layer on Ivona's bead. She stitched loops of triangles around the pentagons, connected by at the bugle beads.

This shows the start of layer 2 with the longer, 6 mm bugles. You can see the 5 triangles around the pentagons and the 3 trapezoids around the triangles. The short edge of the trapezoids is the aqua 8°. All other beads are 11° and 6 mm.

 

Next, the center front is still just one layer, 

but layer 2 is nearly complete.  Layer 2 

consists of 30 little 3D pentahedrons sitting 

on top of the squares in the first layer. Four 

little walls like a camping tent, the four other 

sides of the pentahedrons include two 

triangles and two trapezoids. The short sides 

of the trapezoids are the one place where 

we use an 11° instead of a bugle bead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These show the second layer finished. The seed beads in the center of the Xs (aqua below, burgundy above) are the tops of the tents, the one place I used seed beads for edge beads.

This is the start of the third layer. It's triangles and pentagons. Here are the pentagons.

And here you can see both pentagons and triangles.

You can add the pentagons and triangle in two steps, or you can stitch them together.
Here you see 3 of the 12 rings done.

Four more to go!

 Here all 12 are done.

In the fourth layer, I finished the space under the 30 squares, adding two trapezoid loops per square.

The fifth and final layer requires adding 720 size 15° seed beads to the outer surface.  Only then does the Crater Moon really hold its shape neatly.

You should make one.

It's just 11°, 15°, Toho 3 mm bugles, and Fireline 6lb.

And a whole lot of stitches.

Here you can see how big it is, just 1.75 inches across or 45 mm.

If you would like to have your very own Crater Moon, you can find the white one in my Etsy shop here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/579082293/

The larger Crater Moon is available here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/582628369/

Thanks for looking.

P.S. If you'd like to try weaving beads, but you think that the Crater Moon is a little beyond your skill set, have a look in my Etsy shop for tons of other tutorials for all skill levels.

Octahedral Space Grid Sructure Beaded with Bugle Beads

This large beaded bead is composted of 48 tetrahedron and 36 octahedrons, all arranged into a large octahedral form. It has 8 large triangular holes and is very hollow. The design is based upon the work of J. Francois Gabriel, who wrote about the use of polyhedra in the architecture of high rise buildings.

This beaded object is composed of somewhere between 1300 and 1400 beads.

The beads include sparkling dark bronze bugle beads, and a variety of smaller beads. This beaded art object is very light and a bit fragile, but not so fragile that you can't hold it and play with it. If you drop it on carpet, it should survive the fall unscathed. All of the beads are made from glass. So don't step on it.

It measures about 3 inches across, making it too large for jewelry, but it would make a nice hanging ornament or a piece of jewelry for your computer for you to gaze at while you consider the state of the universe and everything in it.

I started weaving this piece a long while ago, longer than I'd like to admit. It sat half done in a box, for years. Recently, I picked it up, washed it off, and finally finished it. As much as I'm pleased it done, I doubt I will ever make another one without a good reason.

If you would like to have it, you can find it in my Etsy shop. Thanks for looking.

Cellini Asterisk Pendant in Czech Etched Seed Beads

This Cellini Asterisk is a beaded pendant, woven from hundreds of glass seed beads in the colors silver, burgundy, and metallic pink. Many of the beads are the new Czech etched beads that shimmer and twinkle in the light. This ornate cluster is composed somewhere between 1200 and 1500 beads, too many to count. The beadwork is hollow, making it light for its size.

This pendant is 6 cm (2 and 3/8 inches) from point to point and 16 mm thick, suitable for a focal bead on a necklace. The hole is the center is 7 mm wide. It looks a bit like a five-legged spider from the back side.

If you would like to learn how to make your own Cellini Asterisk, I have a tutorial available here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/261775731/tutorial-cellini-asterisk-pendant-beaded.

Thanks for looking.

Cellini Flower made with peyote stitch

Here is the newest piece off of my beading needles, a Cellini Flower made with several different metallic seed beads including the new Czech etched ones that shimmer and twinkle in the light. If you haven't tried the new etched beads, I really recommend them.  I have them in a few colors, and I'm totally in love.

Find this flower here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/552902817/
Find the tutorial here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/255173329/

Beaded 4D Archemedean Polytope Omnitruncated 120-Cell

I beaded a four-dimensional thing that I don't understand very well.

What I do know is that it's a beaded version of a 4-D Archimedean polytope that goes by many names.

It's made of different polyhedra, in the same kind of way that a polyhedron is made up of different polygons. 

I learned about this structure from a book called, "The Symmetry of Things" by Conway, Burgiel, and Goodman-Strauss. You can see the various names it goes by in this photo, which is a page out of that book. This page is the direct inspiration for this beadwork. More so, it's a recipe for how all of the loops fit together.

As a mathematician, I simply beaded this recipe using beaded angle weave. Each n-gon is a loop of n beads. The arrangement of the loops is the same and the arrangement of the polygons in Conway's illustration.  (However, I left out the thread to stitch the 10-gons because by the time I got to them, the beadwork didn't need or want it.)

Now that it's done, I'm pretty sure what I beaded is called an omnitruncated 120-cell on Wikipedia. Fritz Obermeyer created and gifted this image into the public domain. Isn't it pretty?

This beautiful blue thing has 2640 total polyhedra:
       120 4.6.10
       720 4.4.10
     1200 4.4.6
       600 4.6.6

I didn't bead anywhere near that entire mathematical object, but I did bead a little chunk of it. In fact, I only finished one of the 120 of the (4.6.10). The weird thing about beading this object is you can just keep adding more and more loops and more and more polygons. It feels a lot like beading the infinite skew polyhedron faujasite because they share many of the same shapes connected in the same ways. However, faujasite is an infinite 3D structure, and this is a finite 4D structure. And in this thing, the angles don't work correctly in 3D. To see what I mean, look at all of the distortion in that blue image above. Everything in the center is squished, and everything near the outside is all stretched out. So you couldn't bead the whole thing the way I beaded mine here. But we can bead lots of different chunks of it. I definitely could have kept going. The challenge as an artist is to decide where to stop.

I made this beaded sculpture by weaving glass beads together with a needle and thread. It contains nearly 25 grams of chocolate bronze size 11° seed beads, which is more than a full tube. There are usually around 100 size 11° seed beads per gram; so that's about 2500 beads. I'm pretty sure it's the only one like it. This piece is very tactile and fun to turn in your hands to see all of the different views.

Largest diameter is 6 cm (2 and 3/8 inches). You could put a piece of cord through it and wear it as a large pendant, if you were so inclined. If you would like to have it, you can find it here in my Etsy shop.  Thanks for looking.