October 2019 – The Indecisive Beader

I’ve just published my Cellini Rick Rack Ninja Star (or Ninja Star for short) in my Etsy shop, and I thought you might be interested to hear about how it came about. This is an extract from the tutorial which you can buy here.

On holiday during Easter 2019, I took a set of seed beads in various sizes to work on my Cellini, and another set of delicas to join in with a CGB beadalong. The CGB beadalong explored casting pods and spines, and as I beaded that I was also thinking about previous experiments with Cath’s diagonal Cellini, and pieces I’d made from Gwen Fisher’s tutorials.

*Left to Right – CGB Casting Pod (size 10 delicas), casting an hexagon increase bracelet, casting a Cellini Rick Rack strip from the bracelet.*

It didn’t take long for me to wonder what would happen if I combined the two – so I took the bracelet I was making which had been cast off a CGB casting pod, and started to Cellini a strip with rick rack increases and decreases and corresponding Cellini reversals. It worked, and started making nice shapes which seemed to have potential, so I cast off another from the Cellini strip – this time tubular rather than a strip. That made a pleasing shape which seemed to want to be a star, so I added a second layer, joined the points together, and the Cellini Rick Rack Ninja Star was born. Several versions later I’ve tweaked, un-tweaked and re-tweaked the method and thread path to make it efficient to bead, and here it is.

*Left to Right – a pleasing shape begins to form from the strip, removing a cast a tubular six point from the strip, the first layer of the star takes shape.*

If you’d like to learn more about any of these techniques, and maybe experiment yourselves, then I’d recommend the following:

Jean Power’s book Geometric Beadwork, which covers Rick Racks in detail.

jeanpower.com

Kate McKinnon and the Contemporary Geometric Beadwork movement’s books and blog, which use similar techniques, and will take you through new starting techniques. If you’re already familiar with these you can find alternative start instructions for use with either casting pods or spines in this tutorial.

contemporarygeometricbeadwork

Cath Thomas’s work on Cellini Peyote, especially her Dimensional Cellini series, which also merges Rick Rack and Cellini, and which Cath kindly directed me to whilst I was finishing this design.

https://caththomasdesigns.indiemade.com/

Gwen Fisher’s mathematical Cellini explorations and tutorials.

Gwenbeads

And Cath’s Cellini Peyote Freaks Facebook group, where you’ll find lots of Cellini inspiration, materials and support (I should declare an interest as part of the admin team). Simply search for ‘Cellini Peyote’ on Facebook.

I’ve had a big push this weekend to finish, photograph and list all of the cabochons I have made, to clear space for the next batch.

They’re largely from three pouring sessions – the first working with reds and oranges, and for half of the batch, opaque salmon pink; and the second and third working with a cream base and trying a variety of different colours to complement the cream. These were poured quite recently to make a custom cab for an old school friend’s up-coming wedding. Her piece is under wraps for now, but I’ve begun another bridal piece with cabs from the batch, and you can see cabs from the brighter batch in some of my other finished work, such as my Autumn necklace.

All of the batches are available in my Etsy shop, grouped into listings based on the colours and techniques used. There is one set which is too perfectly matched to break up, and the rest are all available in singles as part of my 5 for 4 discount offer. Click on the images to go straight to the listings on Etsy.