Beginner Beadwork: Create Your Own Custom Beaded Ring | Lys Santamaria | Skillshare
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Beginner Beadwork: Create Your Own Custom Beaded Ring

teacher avatar Lys Santamaria, Visual Artist @lys.artist

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Welcome

      2:08

    • 2.

      Tools and Materials

      9:26

    • 3.

      Getting Started

      5:02

    • 4.

      Peyote Stitch

      16:52

    • 5.

      Intuitive Design

      9:31

    • 6.

      Adding Thread

      9:29

    • 7.

      Paper Based Design

      24:54

    • 8.

      Sizing Your Ring

      16:17

    • 9.

      Thank you

      0:54

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About This Class

Welcome! In this beadwork class, you will learn how to weave tiny beads into beautiful beaded rings that you can wear or gift to friends and loved ones. This beaded jewelry class is perfect for beginners!

If you've ever wanted to create your own jewelry or want to spend a fun evening experimenting with this meditative craft, this class is for you! These rings make great gifts for birthdays and holidays too.

In this class you will learn:

- About the best materials to use and alternate materials if you are on a budget

- How to start the bead weaving stitch and add thread

- How to intuitively design a ring

- How to design a specific idea on paper and translate it to beads

- How to size a ring so it fits perfectly on yourself or a friend

You’ll be creating:

  • A customized ring made entirely of small glass beads

Materials: 

  • All of my favorite materials are listed in a downloadable PDF document under the "Projects and Resources" tab of this class.  You can also purchase an entire kit that will have all the supplies you need to easily get started.

Meet Your Instructor:

Lys Santamaria is a visual artist and has spent over 10 years creating jewelry, art, and sculpture - all out of tiny glass beads and mosaic glass. Her work is sold at one of the Smithsonian museums, is part of the Mexic-Arte permanent collection, and is currently on display at the Austin International Airport. She has been featured on Good Morning America and in a Legal Zoom commercial.  Lys loves to teach and is so happy to be here on Skillshare to share her gifts with the world. 

You can also find Lys here:

Website: http://www.lyssantamaria.com

Shop Beadwork Kits

Instagram @lys.artist

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Lys Santamaria

Visual Artist @lys.artist

Teacher

Hello! I'm Lys Santamaria and I am best known for my labor-intensive portraits that transform thousands of tiny beads into expressive and colorful portraits and jewelry. I am a full-time Latina artist with a passion for creating artwork that is healing and inspirational. I am motivated to highlight stories that are often underrepresented in popular culture. My work is rooted in the belief that beauty can act as an antidote to the tough realities of life and representation matters. Art heals and I want to empower others with my art.  

 

My work was recently featured on Good Morning America, a national LegalZoom commercial, published in Austin Monthly magazine and I have taught... See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Welcome: Hello and welcome. My name is Lys, and I will be your instructor for this wonderful class. As you can tell, I'm so excited that you're here. Thank you so much for registering for this class. We are going to be making beautiful beaded rings. And I can't wait to see what you create. First, we are going to cover materials. So you may have received a beadwork kit. If you did, you'll have everything you need. If not, even if you did, it's great to look at the materials section so you can dive a little bit deeper on why these materials are so important. Next we are going to be covering technique. So we're going to dive right in and learn the basic stitch technique. After that, once we've gotten a little bit comfortable with the technique, we are going to move into intuitive design. So this is my favorite way to design because it allows you to just feel the movements and really enjoy the process. Next, after that, we are going to cover paper-based design. This type of design is really cool because if you have a specific vision, if you have a pattern that you want or a motif that you want to show, you can create that using this technique. Once we're done with that, we're going to cover how to size your ring, either for yourself or how to surprise a friend or a partner or a loved one with a custom ring. So after that, we will wrap up and I can't wait to see what comes from your intuition or from your paper-based design. So thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for giving yourself this really beautiful gift of beadwork, of enjoyment and fun. So I will see you in the next lesson. 2. Tools and Materials: Lesson One materials. Okay, So the first material that you'll need is a beading mat. Now, this is my fancy beading mat, and I'll have this linked in the materials printout that you'll receive with this class. But it's a really great beading mat. It's got some cushion to it. It has this lip on the side where you can stick your needle on. And it also prevents beads from flying everywhere in case you do bump it or anything. It's a great, great beading mat I highly recommend it if you think you might continue to bead in the future. But if you're just beginning, there are some great alternatives that work just as well. And some DIY advice that I can also give. So you can go for just a plain piece of fabric. Any fabric will do. However I recommend a fabric that has a little more weight to it. So something like a felt or a fleece, fleece is the best if you're just going to use fabric because it's got a little more weight to it. And it's got a bit of thickness to it and you'll easily be able to pick up beads. Your beads will have some friction so they won't just roll away. Now, I have seen some people use a plain table for their beads and they pick up beads that way. I don't really recommend that because your beads tend to fly away. They tend to roll away. There's a risk of accidents all over the place. And clean up is a lot harder, so I recommend something. Some people I actually have seen use a bowl or little, just a little containers where they can put their beads into and pick them up with the needle. However, I recommend fabric. I really love it. I think it's simple and easy. And if you do want a lip to yours and you only have something like fleece or fabric. You can also cut that fleece or fabric to fit into a box that you've cut to a lower lip. You can put that fabric into a cookie sheet. There's all different kinds of ways to make something like this and make it really work for you. Next will be needing a pair of scissors. This is my favorite pair of scissors, but you don't need something like this necessarily. You just want something that has a sharp end to it so it can really clip up close to the beads. If you don't have something like that, that's okay. Because you can use a pair of nail clippers. Those will work perfectly, just fine. It's actually perfect. They're just sharp enough to get right in there. Next, you'll need a beading needles. So this is a Japanese beading needle. And I do recommend that you buy a specialized beading needle because beading needles are really unique in that they are the same thickness all the way down throughout the entire needle. Most embroidery needles or sewing needles, they tend to be thinner here, but then once they get up to this area, they get thicker. And the problem with that is that once you start running your needle through the beads, this thread will take up space and you won't be able to run your needle through multiple times. This allows you to go easily through those tiny little beads in those tiny little holes multiple times and really makes sure that you get the result that you want. Really, I think a beading needle is a must. This one is a size 13, I believe. But I'll leave the exact beading needle needle in the Materials page. You can get these at a lot of different crafts stores. They're really easy to find. This specific one I got from a store in Canada. But they do sell online. And I do recommend this one. It's super long, It's long-lasting. It's just the best beading needle I've ever used. Next, we will need some thread. I really recommend this thread. It is called fire line, and it is a micro fused braided beat thread. So it's especially made thread. And there's a little fishy here, I think because this is very similar to fishing line. It is specially made for beads, but it has that same texture. And this one is a 6 pound thread in the crystal color, which is a white thread. And this is a one-twenty-five yard spool. There are a lot smaller spools. I think it's they come in 15 yards as well. But yeah, this is my favorite type of thread to use four rings because it won't fray. When you are wearing a ring, it's going to fit just very snug. So when you take it on and off, it's going to have a lot of friction. And so this will prevent any of anything from popping off any tears. A regular thread won't hold up to what you'll need for a ring. Next, we'll want to cover beads. So what you'll want for this project is size 11. Delica beads. Delica beads are really special in that they are cylinders. You can see up close that these are all kind of cylinders, tiny little cylinders with sharp edges on each side. They're rounded on the whole side and then on each side and almost looks like it's a square. I will show you what a regular seed bead looks like. You can use a regular seed bead, rounded seed bead, but I don't recommend it. It won't come out as clean. Regular seed bead, this is a regular seed bead. And so for your project, this regular seed beads won't line up very well. You won't get this nice, crisp edge here. It'll give a different effect and you might like it. So if all you have are seed beads, try that out. But I really do recommend that you invest in the delica beads. I'll also show you kind of up-close. I'll pick these up with my needle and kinda show you compare the two types of beads. You'll probably be able to tell the difference. It is a very slight difference. But in beadwork, these slight differences can create a mountain of difference. So these here, the blue ones are the delicas. And these ones here are the rounded seed beads. Next, you'll want a stopper bead. Okay, what is the stopper bead? It's basically just a bigger bead. Any bead will do. I bought this jar from Joanne's. I believe. It's just like a cheap cheap, cheap jar of beads. And let me get this tighten up. And you'll see this bead compared to our delicate bead is very big. So you'll just need a bead that is bigger and preferably a different color. This is just going to, this is just a tool. We're not going to actually use this for anything. This will just help to. It's kind of like not a knot at the end of your thread. It will help the beads not to slide off basically, but if you don't want to go and buy a whole tube of beads, you can use a piece of masking tape that you tape at the end of your thread. And so once you slide your beads down, that will hold it. Alright, yay, we have now covered all of our materials and why they're so important. We've learned all about beads, needle, thread. Scissors are stopper bead and are beading mat. So you're ready to finally get started? Let's learn how to start our beaded rings. In the next lesson, I'll see you there. 3. Getting Started: The first thing we need to do is measure out our thread. So we've got our fire line and we need to clip about, well actually the length will depend on your your body. I usually take this thread, the end of the thread in my fingers and I run it all the way along my arm until I reach my shoulder. Once I've reached my shoulder and I have that length, I will just cut it. And the reason why you want to cut it to your specific arm length, because that's really how that's what you'll be able to handle. If you cut twice as long, you won't be able to pull the thread through very easily. This is just the most comfortable length for you personally. So next, we will be threading the needle. Now, this is a step where a lot of my students get a little frustrated. So be patient, take your time, you'll get better at it. I'm going to show you a little technique that I like to use. So the first thing that I do is I grab my thread, put it between my two fingers and my non-dominant hand. I just run my nail through it to flatten that tip a little bit. Next, I'll just, I'll have a little end. So the technique is that you don't want to push the thread into the needle. It'll make it a lot harder. If you instead push your needle into this thread so you're moving your needle. Just line up the eye and the thread and push your needle through just like that. I think that is going to make it a lot harder to thread your needle if you're having a hard time, is if you are, if you leave a long and out and you're trying to thread it like this. So just make sure that you slide that thread down. You only have a little bit of thread showing. Then you pass your needle onto this thread like so What you wanna do is leave about a six inch tail on your, on your, on one side. This is the tail here. And then the rest of your thread is all along. Now we're going to add our stopper bead. This here is our stopper bead. And remember it is a bigger bead that is just going to serve as a way for our beadwork not to slide off the thread will be removing this later is just a tool for us to use. You can also use a piece of masking tape or any tape that you have laying around. Alright. So we are going to pick up our bead. Like so. We're going to slide the bead all the way down to the end of our thread. There's the end. Leave a little bit of a tail, maybe three inches or so, or maybe even actually a little bit more, five inches or so. So this is where, this is where are we We just passed our needle through this way. My needle is attached to this part of this thread here. So we're just gonna do a little circle and come back up through that bead like so. Slide your needle all the way through. Hold your bead down because it will slide around. So just hold the bead down and pull your needle so that the thread just does a circle all the way around and it should look like that. If you really want to secure it, you can actually go around another time. So same exact thing. I'm just I'm holding this red here just securely. I'm holding the bead with my two fingers here so it doesn't slide away. And I'm going to pass my needle through again. So let me show you what this looks like. So you'll just have some threads going through this. If you pull this bead now, it shouldn't go anywhere. It's pretty tight. If it isn't, just pull both ends. And that should provide a really, really stable foundation for you to slide your beads on and not have to worry about them going all the way through, running away and having to start all over again. That was a lot of prep work, but are you so excited? The next lesson, I'll be teaching you how to do the peyote stitch and we'll start really constructing our ring. See you there. 4. Peyote Stitch: Welcome back. We are now ready to start learning. Our stitch. Stitch is called peyote stitch. And it basically, it's kinda looks like stacking bricks together. The first thing that you wanna do is pick a color. It doesn't matter what colors, since we're just learning right now. And you'll pick up. It depends on how thick you want your piece to be. For this project, we are going to be making one that is eight beads So you'll pick up eight beads, 12345678. And you just want to count them just to be sure. So yeah, I've got eight and slide them all the way down. Here, you're going to see the benefit of having your stopper bead is that it won't let the beads go down and you'll need this extra bit of spread in the end. So this just keeps it nice and tight there without damaging the thread or knotting up the thread that we'll then need later. Okay, so now that you have your eight beads, you'll wrap. Okay, So and placements. So you'll want to grab the end, the bead, the b's right here. Just kinda wrap the string around your finger. You can hold it down. This is going to take some time for you to be able to stabilize these beads, but you'll get the hang of it. Okay, Let's do a little zoom in so that you can really see what I'm doing here. Here we go. Alright, so I'm going to be picking up one more B. Actually, I am going to do an opposite color so that you can really see what I'm doing here. I'm gonna go for gold bead and my next step. So here's the tail, here's the end of my spreaders, my bead stopper. And this part of the thread is where my needle is coming out from. So I'm going to go back down the opposite way and skip some not going through this one. I'm going to skip my first bead and go in through my second we'd like so and pull your needle all the way out until something like that happens. If you did not get something like this, maybe you've got something like that. Or it looks a little wonky. Just pull a little, play with your beads a little bit. Just kind of move them around and they should sit on top of each other like so. I'll show you what I have here. It looks like a T on the top. Okay, so next step is let's take another gold beads. So all I'm going to encourage you to take two different colors here so you can really see what's going on if you're using just one color. This might be very difficult. Alright, so my thread is coming out of this bead here. And we're gonna do the same thing. So we're going to skip this bead and we're gonna go down through that next bead. Happens. Sometimes. Pull all the way through. Sometimes you will have to play around with it a little bit to get it to really get in there and don't be afraid to pull on your thread so that all your beads align. You don't want any loose thread in there. It's okay if your beads are loose here, it's actually better if they are a little loose here that you have some wiggle room. But up here you really want a nice strong base for your ring. Alright, so we're going to pick up one more gold bead. And you guessed it. Same thing. We're going to skip this bead and go into this second bead. Keep poking myself. But that's okay. It just comes with the territory. Alright, So that one didn't quite go in. So I'm pulling a little bit harder, playing around with it, pulling the thread, just making sure they line up really nicely. Alright, so we still have two more beads. So our last bead is going to be another cold B. Again, skip one, put it through the last bead. Pull, really pull that thread really tight. Just make sure everything is nice and aligned. Okay, Perfect. So this is now your foundation for peyote stitch. Congratulations, this is the first step and this is really the hardest part about this whole process. If you need to review, feel free to pause here and go back and try again. You will get this, but it just takes a little bit of practice and patience. Next step is building the length of our ring. We've got the thickness here. And let me just put this up to my fingers so that you can kinda see six, this is going to be a pretty thick ring, but it's a nice size. I really enjoy this eight bead reading. Alright, so I've added a third color, this really beautiful cream color. And the reason why I'm adding a third color is not because I be only because I want you to be able to see how this grows. Okay, so we've got our foundation here and we're going to pick up one of the cream beans, just one. And our threads are, okay, So this is where our stopper bead thread is and this is where our needles red is. Just grab the needle thread, pull it a little. If you've got some slack there and you're going to put your needle through. So you'll see that these gold beads created a bit of a bump. Like there's a space in-between each of the gold beads, even the end one here. So what we're going to do is we're going to put our needles through each of those cylinder beads that is sticking out. The beads are really in a way talking to us. They're telling us, okay, everything, every bead that is sticking out, That's where you want to put your needle through. So we're going to put our needles through this one. Great pull. Okay, now pick up another one of your third color. Run it through. Another one. Another bead, run it through that. That's sticking out there. So they should really just pop into place if they don't just wiggle them around and pull your thread tight. Picking up one more bead to complete my row here. And I'm putting my needle through that last gold bead that is sticking out. Okay. This is really exciting. It's actually looking really cool. And I really love this color combo. Okay, so we're going to go back down. So really what we're doing is we're just going back and forth and back and forth. And we're gonna continue like this until we've reached the end of our project. So I'm going to keep working and feel free to continue with me or you can skip on to the next step. I'm going to provide some nice working music that you can really get into it. But keep following along if you have any problems, just press pause and go back. Or just keep watching my technique and see how I do it. Okay, So by now you should be a little more comfortable with the Peyote stitch technique. However, check-in with yourself. How are you feeling? If you need a little more practice, continue on with our pattern. If not, let's dive right into the intuitive based design. This is my favorite way of designing because it is magical. It's surprising and it allows you to let go of any plans and just let the design create itself. How amazing is that? Okay. If you are not so into intuitive base design and want to move on to something more planned or paper-based design. That is okay. However, a word of caution. This is a more advanced technique. It's advanced because you need to pay attention to you where you are in your pattern. You need to pay attention to your technique and also to your bead color choice. So I highly, highly, highly recommend, starting with the intuitive based design, see how you like it. And if not, then move on to paper-based design. You can do both. Alright, so choose your own adventure, and I will see you in the next lesson. 5. Intuitive Design: Okay, we are now onto design. So we're going to tackle intuitive design first. What intuitive design means is simply it just means having fun and doing whatever you want. Just an example of something that I've made intuitively is all of my Montana, the oro rings that are on my website. They're all made intuitively just like all these different shapes. And I just started seeing that they started looking like mountains and Montana De Oro in Spanish means golden mountain. So that's why I named these rings that because all of the shapes kinda looked like mountains under a starry sky. So let's just see what happens. Okay, So usually I take a deep breath. We're just learning there's no pressure for this to be anything. Okay. I'm going to start with teal just because I feel like putting a teal be down. Okay. Now I'm thinking, and you just basically go for whatever strikes you, whatever color palette you have, just go for it. Just putting want to be down at a time, committing to one bead. So I am actually going to go for the cream now. I am going to continue with cream. And actually let me zoom in a tiny bit here so you can see a little closer. Alright. So we're going to continue with the cream for some reason I feel like going for cream and I'm going to continue with cream, going back down and going one more with cream. And now I'm feeling like I needed a little change. So I'm gonna go for teal. Okay. So far I haven't put any gold beads down in my intuitive design. I'm going to keep going with teal. Now I feel like doing gold. So I just got kinda like something said, Okay, go for gold. So let's do gold. Here. Go for it teal now. What do I want next? Cream. I'm not even looking at the design at all. I'm not worrying about the design. I'm simply looking at my beads and seeing which bead. I feel like putting down. Sometimes if I can't get the bead onto my needle, I'll just be like, okay, that bead doesn't want to go on. I'll try a different color, I'll try a different bead. So just go for whatever you feel like in that moment. And when you do this, something magical happens because, because you're just focused on whatever you feel like doing in the moment. There is something magical that happens where you start to kind of get lost in it. You start to really enjoy the movement. You start to really enjoy seeing the beads come together. There's just something that is very grounding and very calming about this exercise. This kind of intuitive design for me has helped me in so many ways. I have reduced my stress, I've reduced my anxiety. It's just been such a great help for me in just getting lost in the process and just being so surprised at what my subconscious can create without me even trying, you know, not everything in life has to be an effort. That's one thing that I'm learning right now too, is like things can come easily. Things can be fun, and be just as worthy and just as beautiful as something that I really, really tried hard for. Because I used to believe that I had to work so hard to accomplish anything. I've just lost my thread from my, my needle and my thread. So I'm going to read thread. But I used to believe that I had to work hard to deserve something beautiful or deserve something that I wanted. And through beadwork I've seen, wow, beautiful things can happen by accident. They can be. They can be easy because I can have fun with it. And it can be something that someone just cherishes or that I cherish so much. So. Don't be afraid. Just continue with the beads. Don't think about it too much. Just keep weaving your beads. Enjoy the process. Take a break if you need to. And enjoy. All right, So we have been intuitively designing for a little while now and look at this amazing results. I never would have come up with this had I not just been following my intuition. This here was just a pattern that we started with. So I think it looks really beautiful. Look at this incredible pattern, all these colors. It just makes such a beautiful result. I really love doing this intuitive design. It's just so magical and beautiful and every single piece different. And that's what makes it special and that's what makes anything that is handmade and just intuitive, so magical. What did your intuition come up with? I am so curious. If you can tag me in a picture on In or send me an email with what you've created. I can't wait to see what comes out of this really magical technique. So by this point, you might actually be running out of thread. So don't worry, in the next lesson, we will cover how to end and add more threads. So see you there. 6. Adding Thread: Adding thread. Alright, so before we do add our thread, we need to finish off what we already have on our needles. So I have about five inches left, but I feel like it's getting a little bit more difficult to work with this little bit of thread. So I am going to basically tuck it, weave it in and tuck it in. Now, one thing that's really important before we start to tuck in our thread is that you need to remember where your thread came out of. So beginning, ending right here. At this point, you can kind of look at your design and you can see there's a little bit of a triangle here. So at the bottom of my triangle, that's where I need to start. Once I add threat, we're gonna first tuck in our thread so we're not going to go forward, which would be forward if we were adding beads, but we're going to go backwards and tuck are spread in backwards without a bead. And we're gonna weave it up a little bit, going back and forth between the beads, pulling tight. And we are going to maybe take a little stop right here to tie a small knot. So how do you tie knot? Well, takes a little bit of work, but you have to just dig your needle in and grab one of those threads that's in-between the beads. So it's taken me a second, but I've grabbed a thread and you can maybe see it here. Grabbed a tiny bit of thread. You can see there. So I'm going to run my needle through it. Not all the way through. A loop is going to form like that. And I'm going to put my needle through that loop and pull really tight. Then once I've done that, I am going to continue weaving my thread in. I'm not going to go all the way to the top. I'm going to come back down. So I'm out through this bead right here. And I'm just gonna go beside that, be down through this gold one here. So I'm doing a little bit of a circle here, coming back up. And you can choose wherever you want to weave it through. There's no formula or set way to do this. I'm just trying to do my best to weave. My thread ends so it doesn't poke back out anywhere. Usually, doing that in circles instead of just going straight across is the best way to go. So I'm almost to my edge here. So I'm gonna go out the edge, Pull tight. Really put some tension on my thread. Grab my scissors and snip and still see a little bit. So I just like to run my nail through it. But the rest of that thread is gone. Adding thread, take your fire line and cut again the length of your arm. So just off camera, I'm just cutting a little snip off. I am going to now thread my needle so same as before. If you need help going or threading your needle, just go back to the threading needle module. Should be fairly easy for you now, but stay patient with it, you'll get it. Okay, so I've created my needle. So remember, we came out, we ended here. So we need to begin here. But I'm not just going to begin there right away. I want to make sure that my thread is really anchored on. So I'm going to do almost the same thing that I did before with ending the thread. So I'm going to go in, takes a little while to get, grab a little piece of thread. Got it. So it's just a tiny bit of thread. I'm going to push my needle through and not all the way through, but I'm going to bring a lot of it through. Okay, so here we have about one inch of thread left on the tail, but we want quite a bit more because we're going to tuck that thread in, leave about five inches of thread and make a knot. So let me just show that to you again. All I did was so all I'm doing here is tying one over the other and pulling tight. Okay, so now that I've done that, I can actually do it one more time just for security. So one over the other. This simple not pull very tight. Then grab your needle again. So we're going to hide it again just the same way we did before. We're going to go down towards where we want to begin. This is, this is the area that we ended our last threads. So we want to go back down. That way. I'm going to pass my needle down through this bead here. Pull the thread. It's going to look a little bit messy. But soon you'll see what's going on here. And you're just going to pull that nice and tight. And then you're going to keep going. Pull tight. Keep going down towards the area, towards the bead where you started. Pull tight and now we are ready to add more beads. But you might be saying, Okay, well I have this tail just hanging out in the middle of my bead work here. You can either do this at the end or right now. We're gonna do it right now because I don't want it to get in the way of all my other work. So I do recommend that you tuck this in right now so you don't have to mess with it later. So that five inches or so that you have hanging out, thread your needle with that. And then you're just going to insert the beads. So this one is coming out from in-between those two beats. So I'm just going to weave it up. And weave it up There's no set direction or way to weave this. Now I'm going to go to the side here because I feel like weaving it in a bit of a circle is good. And I'm gonna kinda go back up and just weave to where you feel like it's good. I feel like this is getting good. I'm just going to go up to the edge so then I can clip my rest of my thread. So I'm going to go up through here. Again. Grab your scissors, pull that thread nice and tight, and click. And now. You've added thread to your beadwork and you can continue your work. All right, So how was probably the hardest or second hardest part of this entire process? So I hope you're still with me and I hope you are having fun. If you're feeling a little frustrated at this point, don't worry. Take a break. Remember, we're just learning how to walk. This is totally brand new and it's okay to have some compassion and patience with yourself. The whole point is to have fun. So why get frustrated? Alright, so in the next lesson, we are going to be covering paper-based design. However, if you're ready to finish your ring, your intuitive design ring, just jump on over to the lesson after that, where we will be sizing and finishing off our rings. But if you want to then try paper-based design, go for it. Doing both is wonderful. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Paper Based Design: On the website you will see a PDF download. And this is a sheet that I made, especially for you for this class. And I hope you find it really helpful. So here we have three different thicknesses of rings that you can make. If you already did the intuitive design. We made an eight bead ring. And basically what a bead ring means is it determines the thickness. So this eight bead ring starts off with 12345678 beats this 16. This one's for, this one is the ring that we created in our intuitive design class or module. And this one is about a centimeter thick or a little less than half of an inch. So if you want something a lot thinner and daintier, go for the four bead ring. If you want something a little bit thicker here, I can put this on and a bit more of a statement. Try the eight bead. For this lesson, I am going to be showing you how to make a six-bead ring. So we'll keep it simple. Right? So the next thing you need to know for this sheet is this column sections. So there's numbers all the way through 39. So this basically determines the length of your ring. So let's say I want to make a size five ring. I will need to stop at the 30 mark. After the 30 mark. If I wanted to make a size 11, then I will go all the way until the end. So for this class, I'd like to make a size five ring. So I know that I need to stop at column 30. So I am going to mark right after column 30. Okay, so once I've marked that this is very important. You don't want to mark going forward, you want to mark going back. So here's what I mean. You're going to mark after the 30, then go to the left. So go backward and up then to the right and up and to the left than up then to the right, up to the left and up, if you were to, for instance, go the other direction. So let's say I wanted to make a size, size ten ring. So I mark the 37. So this is the wrong way to do it. So you would be going forward. See here it went up and backward. And forward. This is the wrong way to go. It won't line up in the end because you have to align these beads up with these thick and all notch together. And you'll see what I mean later on. The important thing is, is that you go back and up and that should give you a perfect designed design ring. Okay. So I usually mark this off because I don't want to make sure that I don't use that part. The next part of this process is the fun part. But a lot of my students get stuck here, so it's choosing your color palette. So if you've got the bead kit, you will have four colors, so it'll be a little easier for you to choose. But once you have a good bead stash, it gets really difficult to choose your colors. But I always like to go simple, especially when I'm learning something new. So for this one, I'm going to choose black and cream. I love this classic color combo and it's great for the fall weather coming up. Okay, so I've got my palette here and I've got my thickness of ring. I've determined where to end my design, and now I'm going to start designing. So there are a number of different ways to do this. My favorite way is to use colored pencils or pencil crayons. Okay, so you can choose whatever colors you want or that match with your beads. So for instance, these would be my matching colors. But really I only need one because the negative space will be where the light beads come. So I just have to really mark where the dark beads are at. So that's one way to do it. So for instance, let's use this. Let's just practice here on the four bead ring. So you can, if I was designing here. You could just color in wherever you feel. Like the beads should go and try and make this a free-flowing process unless you have something specific in mind. But I just kinda like to have a little fun with it and kinda see what comes. Now. It's looking fairly clear as to what shape is going to emerge. I can always add, take. Can't really take away unless you're doing this in pencil. But yeah, that's one way to do it. So we mentioned pencil, the other ways to do it in pencil. If you don't have colored pencils or pencil crayons, you can say, Okay, my black will be x and my cream will be o. So we'll do x, x, x 00. I mean, this, yes, this works. This is really good, but for me, this is a little difficult. I would rather do it if I just had pencil, I would say, Okay, I'm just going to mark where the black ones are. I would just fill in where I wanted my black ones to go. And this is just me. I just feel like I can see the pattern much better than x's and o's. This is my absolute favorite though. So use what you have in your at your disposal. And let's start designing our pattern. Alright, so we are ready to design. Let me grab my beads real quick. And now I am going to begin designing and I'm going to use the pencil method because I think that's what most people will have at home. So I want you to see how it works. Alright. So this will be the beginning of our pattern, and this will be the end of our pattern. And you, if, depending on your design, you may want to be mindful of where your pattern, these two, these two sides are going to notch together. So if you want your pattern to align, you'll want to be mindful of where you begin and where you start. So for instance, you may want to go this way so that the pattern continues. But for me I'm not going to worry about that. I just yeah, I I like to do more free flowing, so I'm going to just play around and see where they line up. And usually it just works out for me. Okay, Let's begin. And you can color in where the numbers are too. Those are also part of your grid. And yours can be completely random. You can do the exact same thing as me. It doesn't have to be a repeating pattern either. It can totally be just unique to whatever you want. I'm just really attracted to the mountains right now. And so I like this kind of mountain range here. Okay, So here, if I wanted to, like I was saying, I could be mindful like this started here, so I may want to end down here, so it would be continuous. So I would just color this last one here. So here these two would connect and all these would connect as well. So if I ended up here, it would be a very sharp, Let's say I colored this and it would be a very sharp drop to this over here. So I'll just leave it like that. And I'm thinking I might add a couple of, just maybe. I'm now thinking I might add some gold in there because I like the idea of there just being little stars in the sky. So actually what I'm gonna do here, instead of coloring that in. I'll make an, make an O. So I know that those are my stars, my gold. Okay, cool. I'll put another one here. Okay, awesome. So we have now finished. So continue on and complete your entire design for your ring size. And then meet back here, makes sure that you've already got all your materials prepped So that means cutting your thread, your needle, adding your stopper bead and laying out all of your beads in your color palette. We're ready to begin our paper-based design ring. So since this is a six-bead ring, we're going to begin with six beads, and we're starting from the bottom here. So we're going to add a black bead, cream, cream, cream, cream, cream. Okay, so let's do that. So I'm grabbing one black and 12345 cream beads to total six beads. Alright, once you've made sure you have the right number of beads, slide them all the way to the bottom by your stopper bead. And we're going to go on to the next row. Alright, so what I like to do is I like to mark exactly the beads that I have already put down. So I've got this one down, this one down, this one down, this one down, and this one down. This one now. Okay, perfect. So this just helps me to keep track. You may not need this, but for me, it's just like a lifesaver. I can't do it without marking this and it may be a little bit cumbersome, but I highly recommend that you do mark off every bead that you've done. Okay, so now the rest is going to be different from that first initial row. This is just our foundational rope, but as you can remember, peyote stitch will have a notch, B will have a notch bead here, will have a notch bead right here, and a notch bead right here, right? Okay, so we've got 123 notches, so we need to create those notches. So our first bead will come in through here. Then we'll skip a beat. At our second bead, skip a bead and add our third bead. So we're going to add a cream, cream black. So just three beads on this row. Okay, So we are going to add that first cream bead here. And we're going to grab our cream bead, skip that first bead, and then put our needle through that second bead like that. Okay, so for our next one we have a cream bead. So let's pick up a cream bead. And we are going to do the same thing, skip a bead and put our needle through that. Next one, ouch. Start looking something like that. And your pattern, of course, is gonna look different. Next, we are going to put in a black bead. Just bear with me. I need to adjust my thread a little bit. Okay, Perfect. Okay, So we've got our first foundational row. Okay, it doesn't look like much yet, but it will start to look like our pattern. Again. Once you've completed a row, make sure you mark that off. And our next one, since our thread is coming out through the bottom here, we're going to move up upwards. So we're going to start down here with our one black bead. Skip a bead. Second bead is going to be black as well, and our third bead is going to be gold. Okay, so let's continue on. So my black bead first, then another gold bead or another black beads, sorry. And then finally a gold bead. Super fun. I love the gold beads. They just add a really nice pop of shine and brightness. Okay, so we've got that done. So you did black Black. As I mark it off, I'm actually looking at my work and seeing, okay, yes, I did black, black, and gold. And I'll know exactly the ones that I've just put on because they are notches here. So all the notches are just the last ones that you've put on. Okay, so now we're going to go back down and we're going to go one cream to cream and three black. Okay, So one cream two cream and three black. Okay, we've done that. So now we're going to mark it off. One cream, two cream and three black. Yes. Okay, so we're going to go back up with one black to green and three cream. So our first bead is a black bead. Our second beat is a cream bead. And our third bead is another green bead. Perfect. I've done black, green, and green. Alright, so now that we've done a few rows together, you should be getting the hang of this. I am going to continue as a fast forward through this. And I'll meet you back at the end. Okay, I am almost done with my pattern. I'm up here, so coming down cream, green, gold, and cream. Last row is so exciting. Black, cream. Alright, and now for the reveal, isn't that amazing? This is, this is a challenging way to design for me. But the rewards are so amazing. This looks so beautiful and it's going to make a really amazing ring. I love that it looks like mountains and the night sky. And it's not as abstract as my, my intuitive design pieces, but it just tells a story and I really loved that. Alright, so let me just show you why we did this here. Actually let me mark these off just because I want to feel like I'm really done. And remember how I told you how the ending and the beginning, it, it has to be this way. The notches have to be this way. That is because if you turn, so I've got the length of my ring and I'm turning it all the way around as if it were a ring like that. Alright, so if yours don't slide into each other, you need to add one more row. So it is an easy fix if you, if you did that part wrong, just add one more row and then turn it around and make sure that that slots in well. So how is your paper-based design ring coming out? Is the pattern surprising you a little bit, or did it come out exactly as planned? I'm so curious. well, if you have tried the intuitive design and the paper-based design, I'm also curious about which one you felt more drawn to, which one you enjoy anymore. We all have a different creative process. Some of us really love to plan and be strategic and others just enjoy a more free flow. And that's the great thing about the artistic process, is it's personal. So, okay, now that we have the length of our ring, we're going to size it and finish it off. This is probably the most satisfying part, is just finishing and putting on your ring. So let's jump over to the next lesson and I'll show you how to do that. 8. Sizing Your Ring: It is now time to size and finish your ring. First, we'll start off with sizing your ring. Now there are a few different methods of doing this. And I'll start off by showing you the easiest. This method really will, will only work if you're making this ring for yourself or if the person you're making it for. If you can have their hand, if you can use their hand to measure. So the way that you do It's very simple. You just lay the ring on the finger that you would like to have the ring on and you grab the ring with the rest of your fingers like so. Flip it over. Yes. Those notches slot together perfectly, just like that. And this is the perfect ring size for me. Now, let's say I wanted it on my middle finger. I'm going to put this finger is the ring on my middle finger and flip it. Now, you see here that it doesn't have to really pull it tight. It doesn't come together on the other side. So if that does happen to you, that's totally okay. All you need to do is take your needle and thread and add another row going down, and then another row going back up, and then you'll be up another size. The reason why you need to add two more rows is because you need them to slot or notched together, like so. Okay, so that's the easiest way to size your ring. You don't need to know your ring size or anything like that. Second way to find your ring size would be using this download that I've added to the bottom of this video. When you print it out, you'll need to measure with a ruler to make sure that from here to here is two inches. Once you've done that, you will pick three different ways of sizing your ring. Now, if you want to try to surprise someone, this is the easiest way. You can sneak and grab one of their rings. Then slide it over each of these circles so that you find the circle that best fits. What I mean by best fits is that the outer black circle here should fit right against the edge of the inside edge of the ring. For me, I'm thinking this is 12. It could also be 12.5, but I'm seeing that some of my circle is hiding is getting blocked in the 12.5. So I'm thinking, yes, this is a size 12 ring. So now I can make using my bead using my beaded ring design guide. I can say, okay, I need a size 12. And so here we don't have size 12, but most likely it will be just one or two beads bigger than this one. You can use this method which is using a string methods. It's not as accurate and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. But this one is actually a really nice one where you can cut out these templates and wrap them around your finger or someone else's finger and get their ring size. So that can work really nicely as well. And this template is provided by fire mountain gem and beads. They're a great store. I get a lot of my supplies from them too, and they are listed in the materials download as well. So thank you to them for this free instruction sheet. So we have found our ring size and now we're ready to move on to finishing our ring. Alright, so we are ready to finish our ring. We found our ring size, we know that this will fit. We've made sure that our when we turn our ring in, like so these notches slide into each other just like so. Once all of that is done, we are going to, we're going to keep our needle threaded onto that last bit and we are going to slip off our stopper bead. Okay, So that is done. And then we are going to turn our ring all the way around. I like to slide it in-between my middle finger and just hold it with my thumb like this. So this is our tail end, our short tail end, and this is our thread, a needle and let me just grab that here. This is our threaded needle end and it's going to get a little bit messy right now, but just stay focused and you will get it. Alright So I'm going to just spread it open a little bit so you can see exactly what I'm doing. Okay So our thread is coming out from this bead here, right? So we want to basically do. It's going to jump back and forth, kind of like a zipper. Okay, so I am putting my needle through this bottom bead here and pulling my needle all the way through. And as I pull this thread here, it's going to bring it altogether. So what I've done here, so you can see it'll slip out if you don't hold both sides there, but can pull there. Okay. So once you have that, you are going to now jump over to the other side. Okay, so you're going to jump over two. Let me pull my tail here. It's getting a little list down there. Okay? So this can be a little bit messy. So we're going to jump to the other side here and put your needle through there. Okay. And now we're going to jump to the other notch here on the other side and put your needle through there. And we're going to jump to the other notch on the other side and put our needle through. As you go, you may need to pull your tail a little bit. And you may need to pull on this string a little bit. It'll just keep wanting to open up, but you just have to be a little bit more mindful here. So we've just come out of this bead here. So we're going to come to the other side here, like so. Then we're going to do our final one here. Well, second two, final one. And that has all notched up. Now, if I do this, you will see where all that string has gone. I don't want that, but I just wanted you to see the zipper. And as you can see, even if your beadwork comes loose, you can always pull on each of the tail ends and get that back to where it needs to be. Okay, so this is where our needle is at with this string. And you're going to want to come back down on the other side. So the one beside there, and this is where our tail is coming out of. So I'm gonna go down this way. And you'll notice that I'm holding the tail right here, kind of out of the way. We are going to continue going back and forth all the way down. I'm just jumping right to left, right to left until I get all the way down. And I am going to just hop either right or left however you want to. I'm going to hop this way. And now I'm just doing what we did when we added thread, is just kind of weaving your thread in wherever you can, wherever you want to. And this one's just really important because it is the and so you really want to tuck that in. I'm going back and forth and in little circles around up and down. And just making, you're making sure that you're adding your needle to a bead adjacent to that thread or to the bead that your thread is coming out of. Just one beat at a time here. Going to go down this gold bead. I feel like it's getting pretty sturdy at this point. So I am going to cut my thread. Actually, no, I am not going to cut my thread. I am going to tie a little not. So just like we did with adding threads, grab a piece of thread right in-between one of those beads. Put your needle through the loop and pull tight. And if you're not ended up up here, just keep pulling. It will eventually go down into that. Then I'm just going to go out a few more. And I'll show you how to cut in the center so you don't have to actually cut. I made a little mistake here, but that's okay. I just need to put my needle back through. Okay, perfect. So I'm gonna grab my scissors. I'm going to cut here in the middle, so I'm not cutting on the edge, and this is just a preference. You can do it either way. So again, pulling this very tight. Then snip. This one is really nice because the middle one is nice because you can just run your fingernail in and the string will just disappear into your work. Now we're going to, we have this, we're almost done. We have this tail end left where we started our beadwork and we left about five inches. We are going to take our needle. So we're going to thread our tail end here. And we're going to go. So our zigzag is right around here, it's right beside this be this is where our zigzag is. So I like to go through that zigzag to reinforce it. So you're going to go, we're going to go to the right of that bead where it's coming out from. And we're doing almost the exact same thing we did earlier. Just running are needle through, few beads going back and forth. Sometimes your needle will not want to go through, don't force it because you could crack a bead. If your needle is just not going through, just go back out or read thread your needle and don't, don't force it to too much because there could just be not enough space for your needle. And I've had beads crack and it's just really disappointing when that happens. Okay, so I'm going back up. And again, this is there's no plan here. You can do it however you want to. Just make sure you have enough thread left. And we're gonna make a little note here. I'm going to grab a little piece of thread in-between the bees, just like we did earlier, pulls through lightly. I lost my thread, my needle, which is okay, that's going to happen at this process. If you don't want that to happen, leave a longer tail here. Okay, so just going to try to grab a little bit here. Okay, Got some and pulls through. You'll have your little loop, put your needle through your loop. You can even do that twice to get an even more secure knot and pull really tight. So my needle just unthreaded and that's okay. That means that my thread is kinda short. If you're finding that your knee, your thread is just way too short and you can't you can't put your needle through the beads anymore. You can always go through the beads first and then write your needle as your needle is already in the beadwork. Like so. You can just do it that way. Alright. It looks like my needle is just a little bit struggling. A little bit. Let's see. Okay, we got it. Okay, Cool. So I am going to cut the end off. Let's see here, Let's see what's going on. Oh my goodness!!! We've got a finished piece now. Let's see if it fits. Oh my goodness, look at that finished ring! Beautiful. This is so amazing. I hope you're feeling this exact same way right now where you're just admiring your ring and finding the best angle that you like. And this is really such. This is really one of the best parts, is just admiring your work and knowing that you made all of this yourself. Okay guys, you have now created your very first beaded ring! I'm so proud of you. Congratulations, you did it. Okay, so I will see you in the next lesson where we will just do a little bit of wrap-up and congrats. You did it. 9. Thank you: Okay, friends, thank you so much for joining me in this class. Thank you for letting me be your guide in this beadwork journey. And I'm so proud of you. You've made something today, you learned that something new. I hope you had so much fun. And I will be teaching more classes in the future, more advanced classes. So I'm glad that you took this class because this will launch you into being ready for my next classes. Alright, thank you so much. Stay in touch. Send me an email anytime you want to with your creations. I would really love to see them. Alright. Thank you again. My name is Lys and thank you for having me.