Cell Phone Bag time!!!

'Football Season' is around the corner,
so I think it is time for me to put
a cell phone bag on my loom, for myself!

As a matter of fact, I am taking the liberty of recreating, not only, my favorite Baltimore Raven, but also the coolest Caricature
drawn by a good friend of ours,
Rick Wright.



I have been working on the bead pattern, for a few days, making sure to get the right color beads, in the right place. There are over 971, 11/0 Delica Colors to choose. This is one reason I love bead weaving with them. Miyuki Delicas offer the largest pallet available, for 11/0 size glass seed beads. I not only have to consider the color, but the finish and how each relate, when woven on a loom.

A Bead Pattern Program was in order this time, but as with all of the commercial programs, they are not full proof. There is no such program that offers; Input picture, transfer to pattern, grab selected bead colors, warp your loom and begin beading. I have talked about this in another blog post, "Create a Bead Program Color Journal". I think it important to talk about it again, as this can be difficult.

While writing my book, to include a chapter on how to handle the problems a 'bead pattern program' causes, I realized there is a trick to getting very close to what works best. My method is not full proof, as you still need to make some color changes in your program, but I am as close as we can get to 'clicking-n-beading' as you can get. More about this will be in my book, so I won't elude to my methods here.

What I do want to suggest to those who use these programs, to be sure and change the values and color hues, offered for each bead finish, in the program. Let me share how much this effects your pattern.

Below is the Caricature by Rick Wright, after I transferred it into the Bead Pattern Program, using my 'pre-program' steps. Notice how my methods create a well colored bead pattern. (I am so excited about realizing everything I need to do to get to this point!)

You can see how perfect the beads colors are relating to the original Caricature. One of the noticeable differences is the background color, no longer shaded with blue. My pre-program methods are good, but some hues and values get washed out. This is a very small price to pay for the ease in creating a bead pattern. Now I make some changes in the 'areas' of color. I don't want to see beads "sprinkled" through out, or patches of just a few beads. No need to purchase grams of beads when only a few are requested, in the pattern. The small number, of color beads, will be removed or merged with similar colors. For these changes, I use the utilities offered by the Bead Pattern Program itself.

Once I was happy with the pattern, and colors, I pulled all 29 Delicas, this pattern selects. It is amazing how 'OFF' the program selected. The bead colors are no where near the same color I see in this pattern mock up! Again, refer to my Blog post about needing to change the color variables in these type of programs.

To help prove the importance of changing the color variables, I decided to select my own color values, from my Delica stash, to match what I am seeing in this pattern, shown above. I plugged those Delica numbers into the pattern. Look at what the pattern turned into, when the right bead colors are chosen, not what the program tells me to choose.

This is the perfect example of how "bead programs" select bead colors that look great, in the transferred pattern, but when you spend good money, for the beads they suggest, your heart falls, from being so poorly mislead. Therefore, it is important to change any color variable or saturation of color, inside the program, to match the exact bead color. As you purchase your beads, go directly to your program and make the necessary changes. Mark the bead # with a small 'x' so you will know, later on, which beads were changed to the correct color value. Other then that, you could buy every bead color offered in the pallet of beads, and select your own colors, like picking up crayons :) (The expensive way to create patterns)

Seriously, it is a difficult thing to make your own patterns work the way a program wants you to think. I suggest never buying a bead looming pattern, unless you are able to see the 'actual' bead colors, based on that pattern. Even a small swatch of beading, in the chosen pattern colors, help to decide if this pattern will be correct or not.

My 'Ray-Ray' cell phone bag will be warped and underway, shortly. I'll be sharing the stages, as I weave, so together we can work out how 'my' bead colors relate, to this pattern.