Playing with my beads...various pattern samples and experiments

I still have five more Lucy bracelets to show you but I thought I'd squeeze in something different today to break up the monotony. Today's post is about four different patterns that I've been experimenting with lately.

I blogged about my Crossroads Variation experiments once before HERE and you can read where this design came from in that post. I mentioned that I was frustrated that I couldn't seem to get the scallops to come out smooth and rounded. I think I've found a pretty good solution and it also provides a way to add some color accents. Instead of trying to coerce the seed beads into shape, I found that 2mm fire polished beads with 15/0 seed beads on either side of them do the trick. They're starting to come out with a lot of pretty colors in 2mm fire polished beads lately and I've got a several in my bead stash.

Below is a sample that I made before I came up with the fire polished bead idea. I used all nickel silver beads for a totally metallic look. Although the scallops aren't rounded, they do look relatively neat this time. I can always use a silver bracelet so I will probably make one of these for myself. Here's the sample:

• 15/0 seed beads Toho "Antique Silver/Nickel" (711)
• 11/0 seed beads Toho "Antique Silver/Nickel" (711)
• 8/0 seed beads Toho "Antique Silver/Nickel" (711)
• Half Tila beads "Nickel Plated" (HT-190)

I don't know what the pink reflection on the beads is coming from. I certainly wasn't wearing anything pink when I took the photo. I can only guess that it must be the reflection of my face in the Half Tilas.

Here are three more samples that all have 2mm fire polished beads:

• 15/0 seed beads Miyuki "Metallic Chocolate" (461)
• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Metallic Chocolate" (461)
• 8/0 seed beads  Miyuki "Metallic Chocolate" (461)
• Half Tila beads "Tarnished Berry Bronze" (HT-457B)
• 2mm fire polished beads "Opaque Rose Gold Topaz Luster"

• 15/0 seed beads Toho "Antique Silver/Nickel" (711)
• 11/0 seed beads Toho "Antique Silver/Nickel" (711)
• 8/0 seed beads Toho "Antique Silver/Nickel" (711)
• Half Tila beads "Purple Gray Rainbow Luster" (HT-1898)
• 2mm fire polished beads "Oxidized Bronze"

I think this one is my favorite. I had no idea how many "rainbow" colors were in these Half Tilas until I took my photos with the sun shining brightly on them. They're colorful but the colors are softly muted. I see yellow, pink, blue, peach and purple and the colors change depending on how the light hit the beads. The overall color tone is a sort of rosy mauve. By the way, you can get all of these colors of Half Tila beads at Red Panda HERE. I don't know of any other bead site that has all of the colors that they come in.

• 15/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457)
• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457)
• 8/0 seed beads  Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457)
• Half Tila beads "Dark Bronze" (HT-457)
• 2mm fire polished beads "Luster Iris Opaque Light Amethyst"

This next sample is a variation of Carole Ohl's "Presa Bracelet" design. You can buy Carole's pattern on Etsy HERE. I decided that I wanted the Silky beads to be upright and I liked the idea of having the motifs be horizontal rather than vertical so that's what I've done. I really like the result but I don't have enough of those bronze Pinch beads to make a whole bracelet. After much searching online for that color, I finally found and ordered some from Aria Design Studio on Wednesday. I'm not particularly fond of Pinch beads but I love how Carole used them in this design. Great idea, Carole. I also ordered some in another metallic color so I'll be able to make two of these bracelets for myself. I'll have to wait and see what the "Chrome Antique Gold" ones look like in person before I decide what color Silky beads to use with them. I do like these rose colored Silkies with the bronze Pinch beads.

• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457)
• Silky beads "Alabaster Red Luster"
• Pinch beads "Bronze"

The next sample is also one of Carole Ohl's designs called "Papillon Bracelet". The pattern is featured in the current issue of Beadwork Magazine (Feb/Mar 2016) on page 64. Although Carole is selling kits for this bracelet in her Etsy shop, the pattern itself is not for sale there. I happen to have some 1.5mm cube beads kicking around in my bead stash and never used them so I gave the pattern a go. Because my cube beads are a dusty rose color, I used the same color SuperDuo beads. I went with Metallic Chocolate seed beads and the Silky beads are about the same dark copper color as the seed beads. The pattern is super easy to make and I think I will make this bracelet for myself since I haven't seen any other patterns for using the tiny cubes or at least not patterns this pretty. The clasp loops that I made were my own idea. Carole uses a 2-hole clasp on hers.

• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Metallic Chocolate" (461)
• 8/0 seed beads  Miyuki "Metallic Chocolate" (461)
• Silky beads "Jet Bronze Full"
• SuperDuo beads "Rose Gold Topaz Luster"
• 1.5mm Toho cube beads "Hybrid Opaque Rose Gold Topaz Luster" (Y184)

I bought the cube beads from Artbeads.com HERE.

And last, but certainly not least, I've been playing with Puca's "Rani" motif for the past few days. It's a design that I've admired every time it popped up on Pinterest. I finally got the pattern recently as well as the necessary O beads. I actually tried a couple of other kinds of beads in place of them and nothing else worked right. You really do need O beads to make this pattern.

Puca has given me permission to post this pattern for download on my blog. Click HERE to download her free "Rani Bracelet" pattern.

If you spend any time at all on the beading Pinterest boards, you've probably seen Puca's photos of this design a million times. Here is her photo:

After making several samples of the motif, I've learned that the design is very fussy about the beads that you use. I got lucky with my first sample because it came out perfect as you can see:

• 15/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457)
• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457)
• 11/0 seed beads Toho "Hybrid Oxidized Bronze Clay" (Y864)
• SuperDuo beads "Metallic Suede Gold"
• O beads "Crystal Full Amber"
• 2mm bicones "Taupe" (Chinese)

It was downhill from that point with some samples coming out so-so and others that were a mess. It's such a beautiful motif though so I'm determined to find a reliable way to make it that works with just about any kind of beads. I have found a way to make the initial center part of the motif so that the motif is more stable. The small change that I make allows the use of 3mm fire polished beads or round beads such as druks or pearls instead of bicones. With Puca's method, only bicones will work and they only work if they're exactly a certain size which is actually closer to 2mm than 3mm. The pattern calls for 3mm bicones but the Chinese ones that I have are a mish-mash of sizes that are somewhere around 3mm, give or take a millimeter. Just for comparison, I used some Swarovski 3mm bicones to make one motif and those did work pretty well. Swarovski's 3mm bicones are really 2mm in length and so were some Chinese bicones that also worked pretty well.

Following Puca's tutorial, you add pairs of SuperDuos between the seed beads of the inner circle of bicones. That makes the SuperDuos sit on top of the bicones. I changed it so that the SuperDuos are added between the bicones (or fire polished beads, etc.) instead. Doing so gives the SuperDuos a little indentation to sit in instead of forcing them to sit neatly against the crystals, which they really don't seem to want to do. My way does make for a larger hole in the center but I think it looks just fine that way. It doesn't affect the size or look of the motif in any other way and it keeps the SuperDuos from shifting around.

I also changed one other thing with the design. If you look closely at Puca's close-up photo, note where she adds three blue seed beads on the sides of each motif and how she adds a bronze seed bead in the center of each trio of blue beads. I thought that the bronze bead needed something to help position it better next to the other three beads so I added a 15/0 seed bead on either side of the center 11/0 bead. I think that softens the look of those beads and adds a pretty touch. I still need to work out how to use those side beads to connect the motifs together to make a bracelet. Those decorative side beads are kind of loose (in my version as well as Puca's) and I don't think they'll make a secure enough connection in a bracelet. Also, if there is any tugging between the motifs, the motifs sometimes fold inward because the stitching there is a little weak.

I also need to work on other parts of the motif to find a way to keep the seed beads from causing the whole motif to warp and cup too much with certain beads. I will post an update once I've come up with something that works reliably. I did make a few more samples last night that came out very well using my tweak. I've also come to the conclusion that it's VERY important when making this pattern that you DO NOT pull the thread tight at any point except in the very beginning when you make the inner ring of beads. It will be tempting to snug up some of the beads but resist the temptation and you'll get a flatter motif. Reinforcing the beads later will help firm up the stitching. I'll post an update later when I've taken photos of the samples that I made last night. They came out very well.

Below are a few more samples of the "Rani" motif. Disregard the connection between those two motifs in the photo. I was just testing to see how secure the connection would be and the connection that I made is too wide. The motifs should really be much closer together like Puca did with hers.

If you look closely at those two motifs, you'll see that both of them have 3mm fire polished beads in the center instead of bicones. The one on the left was made Puca's way with the SuperDuos sitting against the crystals. The one on the right was done my way with the SuperDuos sitting between the crystals. The result is a larger hole in the center of the inner ring of beads but I think that looks just fine. I like my method because then I don't have to use expensive Swarovski bicones whenever I want to make this pattern. The bottom sample in the photo has 3mm druks and those worked quite well too with my method. I was finding it a bit frustrating trying to come up with color combinations when I had to use bicones. I have only a few 2mm-3mm colors that are small enough to work with this pattern and even fewer that go well with my SuperDuo beads and accent seed beads. I like having more color options.

CENTER SAMPLES:

• 15/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457)
• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457)
• 11/0 seed beads Toho "Permanent Finish Matte Galvanized Mauve" (556PFF)
• SuperDuo beads "Polychrome Copper Rose"
• O beads "Crystal Full Amber"
• 3mm fire polished beads "Alexandrite Celsian"

BOTTOM SAMPLE:

• 15/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457)
• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457)
• 11/0 seed beads Toho "Permanent Finish Matte Galvanized Mauve" (556PFF)
• SuperDuo beads "Polychrome Copper Rose"
• O beads "Crystal Full Amber"
• 3mm druks "Metallic Amethyst Matte Luster"

Of course you can't tell just by looking at the photo below, but these three samples are either very cupped or the motifs have no structure. The one with the tiny Montana Blue bicones came out pretty well though because I used Swarovski 3mm bicones in that one. As I mentioned above, those bicones are really 2mm in length and are very tiny compared to Chinese 3mm bicones.

UPDATE: I wanted to mention that Czech bicones are about the same size as the Chinese ones which means that they are really 3mm in length unlike Swarovski's bicones. I compared some Czech Preciosa brand 3mm bicones with some Swarovski "3mm" bicones and the Swarovski bicones are about half the size and ridiculously tiny. I won't waste my money on them anymore.

TOP SAMPLE:

• 15/0 seed beads Miyuki "Light Bronze" (457L)
• 11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Light Bronze" (457L)
• 11/0 seed beads Toho "Permanent Finish Matte Galvanized Rose Gold" (557PFF)
• SuperDuo beads "Opaque White Full Apricot"
• O beads "Crystal Full Amber"
• 3mm bicones "Bittersweet AB" (Chinese)

BOTTOM LEFT SAMPLE:

• 15/0 seed beads Toho "Antique Bronze" (223)
• 11/0 seed beads Toho "Antique Bronze" (223)
• 11/0 seed beads Toho "Hybrid Opaque Matte Grey Bronze Vega" (Y0862F)
• SuperDuo beads "Polychrome Orchid Aqua"
• O beads "Crystal Full Amber"
• 3mm bicones "Purple AB" (Chinese)

BOTTOM RIGHT SAMPLE:

• 15/0 seed beads Toho "Antique Bronze" (223)
• 11/0 seed beads Toho "Antique Bronze" (223)
• 11/0 seed beads Toho "Hybrid Opaque Matte Grey Bronze Vega" (Y0862F)
• SuperDuo beads "Polychrome Orchid Aqua"
• O beads "Crystal Full Amber"
• 3mm bicones Swarovski "Montana Sapphire"