Yes, there is still summer to enjoy BUT, once Labour Day passes, BeadFX will have an abundance of new classes for you! Mark your calendars now to attend our annual Back to Class event on Saturday, September 7; 11 – 3pm. You’ll be able to see for yourself the wonderful projects being taught and the creative instructors who are presenting them. By we are planning something very special to happen the same day. Click here to find out more!

One of the highlights is visiting instructor Kaska Firor who is presenting six new wirework classes. Kaska’s projects are all beginner/advanced beginner but you wouldn’t know it by looking at them – they are absolutely beautiful!

Help us welcome a new instructor! Joyce Lam is a graduate of the George Brown jewellery program and brings us two beginner level classes that will make you comfortable with sawing and hammering texture. We also welcome back Darija Radic to our roster of metalwork classes and will host more metalwork open sessions!

While Canadian beadwork artist Carolyn Cave is visiting Ontario, she is joining us to present two new seed beading classes fresh from this year’s Bead and Button show. Barbara Colautti and back again to share her love of polymer clay and help you explore how you can include this malleable medium in your own designs!

There is so much more to share about classes with Angela Peace, Iris Rogers Melamed,  Anne Marie Desaulniers, Liz Kennedy, Pamela Kearns, Deborah Beesley and many more! Our September classes are now on-line now and we’re busy getting October, November and December classes up too. Registrations are being accepted for all classes.

A fun little tool from Miyuki to convert your photos to beading patterns

We’ve seen a number of beading-pattern-makers over the years – by and large, they seem to not be much fun to use, and try to do too much.

This, by contrast, does Miyuki Delicas, Peyote or Square stitch. That’s it.

You can also use the Square Stitch option to create patterns for looming.

The software is online, and runs in your browser, so nothing to download – except the pattern afterwards if you want.

They have instructions in English here, but I’m going to run you through a brief intro here too.

First, you will need to click on Peyote or Square to start, depending on which you want the pattern to be.

Next, you will see a screen that asks you to input dimensions

The maximum size is 370 x 370 mm. I had a fairly large image, and so I scaled it down by dividing the size so that it was a lot smaller.

However, if you just playing with it, just enter the 370 in the height and width boxes. Where there is text in a box that is grey, it is a suggestion, not a default value, and you need to enter it yourself.

Number of colours – well, as Miyuki themselves say,

The larger the number of colors used, the more delicate expression will be.

Fair enough, but there does come a point at which, needing to buy 2 beads of a colour is ridiculous, even in my humble opinion.

So you can start with a low number of colours as Miyuki suggests, about 20 or so, and adjust afterwards. One of the things that I like about this software is that you can go back and forth and change things, instead of needing to have it all correct before you start.

Click on import, and navigate to your saved jpg on your computer. Click ok.

From here, you have some options to resize and scale and crop. Click on the blue line to resize, and use the scroll wheel on your mouse, or the zoom icons, to zoom in and out.

And click ok.

Now you get to modify the number of colors, with a preview of what it will look like. You can reduce or add to the number of colours by clicking on the rectangle above or below. Keep selecting a lower number of colours until the quality of the image falls off.

When you think it is ok, click ok and go to the next screen.

It will spin it’s wheels for a bit, and then give you a preview, that you can review or edit.

Pretty awesome, huh?

From here, you can edit the individual beads.

Use the eyedropper icon to pick up colours from beads. Use the paintbrush to apply the colour.

The coloured droplets let you switch to the full Delica colour palette to pick whatever colour you want.

I don’t see anything that looks like a search and replace, however, so to get less complicated colour choices, just go back a step.

I do think that starting with a less complicated image is probably a good idea too. Running your image through a filter an image editing software can make the image less complex. Look for a filter or process called “Posterize”, “Cartoon” or “Simplify” to get a smoother image.

Or, click the back arrow and select a lower number of colours.

When you are done, click ok, and it will ask you if it is ok?

And then pop up the slightly scary warning …

Don’t worry – it will give you the number again on the next page. You can write it down or cut and paste.

You do have the option to download a pdf, which is a good thing, as I haven’t actually seen any of the emailed notifications from them, but maybe they take awhile.

If you use the pattern online, it will actually keep track of rows for you, which I think is a lovely feature.

Here I was playing with a much simpler image – beading a picture of beads is very meta.

Here are the pdf patterns if you’d like to have a closer look. The “shopping list” is at the end, and lists the standard delica number, the quantity and the grams.

And, btw, you are free to go ahead and use these patterns if you want – if you manage to bead up a picture of my wonderful old dog, do send me a pic and let me know! (Because you know I’m never going to get around to it … )

The Dude – (my old German Shepherd) Complex 19031501260367278629

The Dude – (my old German Shepherd) Simplified 19031501474795333579

Black Beads 19031504040304327490

If you get stuck at the “simplify the image” thought and need a hand there – fire me an email and I’ll see if I can’t help you out.

This is a far from comprehensive tutorial, but I don’t think it needs it. The program is fun to use and play with. It’s not like you can do anything wrong, so just click and have fun!