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Beading - Blog Posts
Long time no update. The second half of 2023 really ran me over until I was completely flat and all of my blood was gone. But I’m back babey! This is everything I finished in January 2024. Three embroidered hoops, three embroidered pins, and two collages. This doesn’t include the sketching and tie dyeing for future projects. Don’t know what kinda manic wave I’m riding but we’re gonna ride it till it crashes!
The Stunning Astronomical Beadwork of Native Artist Margaret Nazon
Margaret Nazon has spent the past decade building intricate beadwork depictions of outer space. The colorful artworks balance representational and stylized aesthetics set on black fabric backgrounds to depict galaxies, planets, nebulae, and other astronomical phenomena.
Initially inspired by Hubble space telescope images, Nazon’s celestial renderings are part of a lifelong interest in beading. In an interview with Glenbow, the artist shared that she began beading at age 10, but found the density of traditional beadwork to be tedious.
The abstract nature of celestial images allows Nazon to be more interpretive and incorporate different materials like caribou bones and willow seeds that have location-specific or cultural significance. Nazon is Tsiigehtchic, part of the Gwich’in community in what is now the Northwest Territories of Canada. The artist explained that because she is retired, she is able to dedicate significant time to beading, and often rises at 4:30am to begin working. Nazon plans to continue experimenting, including merging her abstract beadwork with her seamstress skills to create artfully embellished apparel.
Nazon’s artwork was most recently exhibited at Glenbow in a group show, Cosmos, and A Beaded Universe at Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre. You can read more about her in the Glenbow interview, and explore Nazon’s portfolio on her website.
source article: X
keep making eyes. what colour should I do next
crab!! :)
(pattern from: http://poochnavi.com/beads/recipe/kani/rec01_e.html)
tiny tiger! pattern from http://poochnavi.com/beads/recipe/tora/rec01_e.html plus a little keychain loop :)
(it’s a little wonky because the beads i used werent all the same size and it skewed a little)
Making another necklass with the second house design because I love the way it looks and as I do i....I remember how much I hated doing this design in the first place....
It take forever and it's boring....its just fucking herringbonestitch and i hate herringbone stitch .....but if I don't finish it now I never will....and it will be cute when its not my problem.....its the judith duterous of beading patterns...and I need to get it done because I want to work on the 7th house some more....
And I've decided again that I hate the ribbon I got for the 5th house because it's not quite saturated enough of a brown and I'm poorly and hate everything....and by that, I do mean that I'm having issues getting my meds again.....
So here are pictures of the troublemakers
Honestly my real problem with the fith is that I don't know how to sew the cord well
One of the crazy things about getting good at a craft, in my case beading, is the ability to look at something and understand how it was constructed.
I can look at a necklace and start breaking down the stitches.
And my mind will reconstruct the technique.
I imagine that this phenomenon happens to painters, sculptures, embroideries, writers, comics builders, taylors and smiths..
Buts it's kind of amazing to understand how art gets made
One of the crazy things about getting good at a craft, in my case beading, is the ability to look at something and understand how it was constructed.
I can look at a necklace and start breaking down the stitches.
And my mind will reconstruct the technique.
I imagine that this phenomenon happens to painters, sculptures, embroideries, writers, comics builders, taylors and smiths..
Buts it's kind of amazing to understand how art gets made
Last night, after work I ran downstairs with my 8ft of strung beads, 7 silver rings, medium weight cord and a box of safety pins to try and figure out the proportions of the 7th house lung necklace.
And I created a monstrosities that would have turned off any shabari enthusiast and horrified any punk.
But after an hour of fiddling, I created this.
Which allowed me to create this
The first colum is the label for each strand so I don't get confused. The second colum is the number of beads in each stand. As measured by a single strand of size 11 seed beads. And the third colum is that length in centimeters. It turned out that there are 20 size 11 sead beads in 5 centimeters so the math was easy.
I also created the strand with a 5, 10, and 20 could pattern so they would be easy to count.
Anyways, I did some math the sum of one side of lung is 259.75cm so the whole thing will be 519.5cm or a little over 5 meters....
I'm very excited!
This morning, I want to work on my project, but I also do not want to leave my nice warm bed and more importantly, I do not want to spill seed beads in my sheets again
As an update, I figure how do this lung without math!
I am going to make a mockup with the heavier thread I use with kumihimo.
And since I am now the pround owner of half a kilo of wisteria lined crystal, that's the color I'm uses. I used a grayish mauve and a bronze as a pattern so I can easily eye out 5, 10, 15, and twenty bead lengths.
I cal also take the raw materials and make turn then into necklaces with kumihimo
So the two hours of bead spinning was really for good use and my chose to drape instead of using math is compleatly normal
First I love being on my ADHD meds
Second, fuck the FDA and the state I live in fir making all ADHD drugs so hard to get. I do relize that they can be abused by nuritypicals ....but there has got to be a better solution then this.
Anyways on to better news.
My medicated ass.had an idea this moring....for the 7th,
I was always going to do a big drape lacy flowery daisy chain neckas for the 7th, but I just realized that instead of a simple.drape pattern I could use chain to make lungs
Here is my breif concept drawing....
The large rings in the drawing are the large hammered silver(plated) rings. The black lines forming the lungs will be out of the silver and green modified daisy chain.
The dotted lines will be out of fine silver chain. I'll have to purchase that
Here is the rough draft for the back and sides all out of silver chain. I don't think I will be able to get the efect of inflated lungs unless I create a secondary anchor chain around the back like a harness.
So now I need to plot out the mesuments for the lungs.....
These lovely pictures give me an approximate location and a size ratio I can measure on myself.
I may have to lie down on the floor and have my sister use a heavy cord to map put the shape....or better yet I could do that on her.
The other option is to use all those years of math to map out the archs I want on the images I found, to get actual measurements
Jeasus christ.....I just realized I'm trying to reinvent hanahaki
Oh well....I like it, it's going g to be so much work.
And not at all I my colors....
I'm so excited
First I love being on my ADHD meds
Second, fuck the FDA and the state I live in fir making all ADHD drugs so hard to get. I do relize that they can be abused by nuritypicals ....but there has got to be a better solution then this.
Anyways on to better news.
My medicated ass.had an idea this moring....for the 7th,
I was always going to do a big drape lacy flowery daisy chain neckas for the 7th, but I just realized that instead of a simple.drape pattern I could use chain to make lungs
Here is my breif concept drawing....
The large rings in the drawing are the large hammered silver(plated) rings. The black lines forming the lungs will be out of the silver and green modified daisy chain.
The dotted lines will be out of fine silver chain. I'll have to purchase that
Here is the rough draft for the back and sides all out of silver chain. I don't think I will be able to get the efect of inflated lungs unless I create a secondary anchor chain around the back like a harness.
So now I need to plot out the mesuments for the lungs.....
These lovely pictures give me an approximate location and a size ratio I can measure on myself.
I may have to lie down on the floor and have my sister use a heavy cord to map put the shape....or better yet I could do that on her.
The other option is to use all those years of math to map out the archs I want on the images I found, to get actual measurements
Jeasus christ.....I just realized I'm trying to reinvent hanahaki
Oh well....I like it, it's going g to be so much work.
And not at all I my colors....
I'm so excited
After two rounds of ordering many many tiny 8g viles of number 11 wisteria lined crystal toho sead beads, I gave up and looked for bulk.
So for about $77 or about 15.5 cents a gram,
I am now the proud owner if half a kilo of these beeds
Behold! The riches of the third house!
And please ignore the state of my rug
It's been a while since I had some medication issues but here is how the third is comming along.
It's a big scroll.
Each safety pin reperests a new 8g tube of beads
Please also note that what I should be doing in order of least importance to most
Figuring out a plan for the 6th house that incorporates the elements I want
Starting the 7th house necklace
Figuring out if the size 6 trans Rainbow white beads should be used for the 1st house.
Continuing the tests for the 8th house figure out how many beads I need and the best beading configuration for the tenticals
Continuing the focal element of the ninth house which will be a 3d peyote stich thing, that I can't explain with words yet
Keep working on the 3rd housr
Clean my room/figure out where the dirty clothes smell is coming from in the pile of laundry
Deep clean the kitchen
My ADHD is so bad today that i cant consintrate on my main project.
So I'm trying to make a tennis bracelet.
Which is odd because I hate both tennis and bracelets
My ADHD is so bad today that i cant consintrate on my main project.
So I'm trying to make a tennis bracelet.
Which is odd because I hate both tennis and bracelets
Stoll working on the third house scarf necklace. But I've been thinking of the other houses,
I still don't have all the material. I'm missing
Large Silver ring ringing for the 6th and the 7th house, which I have already ordered.
Size 6 frosted clear toho beads and size 6 opaque white matte sead beads for the base of the 8ths tenticals
Bone beads for the 9th
More size 11 wisteria lined crystal toho beads for the 3rd.
But I have the third and the first house with plenty of materials for now.
Also I think I finally decided on an idea for the ninth. Harrow and I are both nuroatypical. Harrow is autistic and I am adhd so we are not the same type of nuroatypical but one of the common overlaps between the two is STIMing and I think that's what I want to do for the ninth house. A necklace of mismatched materials and textures that allows the wearer to fight with it. Some of the beads will be carved bone. Other will be 3d peyote stitch. Some others will be metal. I want someone that feels scavenged by an adhd gremlin from other necklaces. I want it to be a Comfort under stress
For me it was the single beading needle that's I've been using for a month, in My bead, which I was planning to sleep in. Panic was appropriate
LOST SEWING NEEDLE INCIDENT NOBODY MOVE
I now have a problem. As you may have noticed the 9x9 alternating direction diagonal lines squares create a very pretty wave pattern. But my original plan was to do a checker board pattern. I started it and imidiatly things started warping.
I now have to decide if I want to do stripes instead. Or if I should undo everything I've done to make a much smaller checkerboard.
The one benefit of the second option is that I think that the 20gm of old beads I started with were slightly smaller than the new beads I ordered so the lengths of the two sides are slightly uneven. I may just work on the seventh or six a while while I contemplate this
This is the start of my third house "necklace"
Its technically going to be a triangular scarf mare than a traditional necklace. I wanted the most extra thing possible and since cloath of gold was outside the brief, I settled on cloath of glass.
It also sort of reminds me of ancient Egyptian bead garments.
It's really southing to make
Sadly I ran out of beads. Luckily they are relatively cheap seed beads but it will be days till more arive.
Finished my first row of this project. It's about a yard long. I need to figure out where to buy size 11 wisteria lined crystal beads in bulk. Because 100 grams isn't going to get me more than a few rows deep. I'll try to post a picture buts about 3 feet long
This is the start of my third house "necklace"
Its technically going to be a triangular scarf mare than a traditional necklace. I wanted the most extra thing possible and since cloath of gold was outside the brief, I settled on cloath of glass.
It also sort of reminds me of ancient Egyptian bead garments.
It's really southing to make
Sadly I ran out of beads. Luckily they are relatively cheap seed beads but it will be days till more arive.
All the beads I ordered are finaly here so I spent a few hours with my bed covered with containers of sead beads like a dragon on her hord.
Beads make me very happy.
The teeny tiny roman numeral charms have arived!
And it's perfect! I'm about to mess up a perfectly good necklace by adding these little fandom flourishes.
I'm so excited
Edit: I just dropped it on the floor. I should have done this on the floor . But to be fair this is not the first time the second has had some trouble on a table
My regularly scheduled bullshit it still techicly on hole till all of thr new stuff starts coming in but I did get some new needles (since I was down to my last and its sort of curved at this point) and some new 8lb line.
Last time I bought line, I bought it from an outdoors store in Oregon. But this time I bought it from Amazon.
And I discovered a strange thing.
Both are 125yd but the one from amazon that has "beadsmith" on it is much larger.
This feels like a waste of plastic...and I'm now worried that I may have paid more for a logo and extra plastic. May have to find a new local fishing store...
Test patch for the 7th that I turned into a necklace. Still waiting for the sea green beads. I think I may need to modify it so it's smoother
My regularly scheduled bullshit will be on hold till new supplies arrives in a few days
A moment of silence for design that didn't work out. Here is a failed 3rd and failed 6 design
2nd house preview/ materials/instructions
Two for discipline, headless of trial.
Time: 6-8 hours
Difficultly: medium
Material cost: <$12
Real world inspiration. Sundance catolog.
Materials
8 gm TOHO Beads Round 11/0 Matte Opaque Pepper Red
8 gm TOHO beads Round 11/0 semi Glazed Dark Red*
10 lb smoke colored fireline
2 gold finding rings**
1 gold bar from a funding clasp that will fit in the finding rings
Tulip or other brand size 11 beading needle
*I have lost the lable so this is my best guess
**I have also lost the recipe and never really new the size to begin with but please refer to the picture below.
Pictures of material for reference.
Instructions (sort of)
This necklass is made of two ply herringbone stitch. If you do not know how to do herringbone stich for beading. Then GTS because apparently I can't post outside links to tumblr. But it is very easy and thier are some very good tutorials out there
When you need to attach the rings add 7 more rows of beads. Then bend the work around finding ring and use herringbone stich to sew the work back onto itself in a loop.
For sizing
Figure out your desired length and double that for the total length.
Add the first ring then add the second ring a quarter of the length. Bead till the finished length then add the bar.
Here is a picture of the proportion of mine
If you have any questions please let me know I'm happy to clarify. I've never tied to make instructions before.