New Beadweaving Tutorial: Deco Love

Deco Love, a beadweaving tutorial by Sweet Freedom Designs

This pattern started out to be an earring tutorial - I saw a gorgeous bird's-eye view picture of the tower of the Chrysler building, with its luscious Art Deco curves and lines, and was inspired to play with my new Arcos Par Puca 3-hole crescent beads and see if I could recreate those curves and lines!

Chrysler Building, NYC - a stunning example of Art Deco architecture

This tutorial is extremely versatile - you can make the earrings long or short, give them fringe or no fringe, add dangles or no dangles, and put crystals in middle of the pairs of crescents or leave that space open. You can use Swarovski crystals or firepolish beads, or even metal bicones - tons of options!

Just a few of the different earrings in this tutorial.

The pair on the left have crystals inside the crescent pair, while the pair on the right do not.

The final pair of earrings I made were a super-long pair with black Honeycomb beads, black Arcos Par Pucas, and crystal AB Swarovskis, and they are absolutely stunning (though impossible to photograph well.)

Horrible pics, but trust me; these are beautiful!

I draped one of the long black earrings on the back of my hand, admiring it, and thought: Wow, this would make a great bracelet!

So there you have it: Deco Love. In addition to the Arcos Par Pucas, it calls for Honeycombs, 3 and 4 mm crystal bicones or firepolish (in the bracelet, I actually substituted True2 mm firepolish, to make it extra dainty), 15/0s, 11/0s, and optional dangles for the earrings.

It's available here, in my Etsy store!

Two new tutorials! (It's about time, right?)

This brand new beadweaving tutorial, "Lucy in the Sky," features DiamonDuos/GemDuos and 8mm 2-hole Candy Cabochons, plus assorted seed beads and other embellishing beads. Five different colorways are shown, and in one of them I used a mixture of DiamonDuos and GemDuos. While these diamond-shaped beads are from different manufacturers, they are completely interchangeable!

Lucy in the Sky: 5 different colorways

Lucy in the Sky: there's a wide version and a narrow version!

The step-by-step instructions include both the wide and the narrow versions, and is available in my Etsy shop.

My second "new" tutorial is "Peanutty" -- it's not so much new as it's "I forgot to blog about this" - oops!

Peanutty is a double spiral tutorial for peanut beads, and you will never find more clearly written step-by-step instructions for creating a double spiral (you can easily substitute seed beads for the peanuts, so if you have been struggling to figure out the double spiral, this is the pattern for you!.

Peanutty: A Double Spiral Tutorial for Peanuts

3 different colorways are shown, and there is also an earring pattern. Detailed instructions are included for securely attaching the endings as shown in the pics.

Peanutty colorways.

You can find Peanutty here, in my Etsy shop.