I am fully aware that I’m in a very lucky position as a beader: I get to ‘play’ with some of the new beads before they come to market. So I’ve launched several new bead designs this past couple of weeks and I thought you might like to hear a little more about the design process.
I’ve been working with the Ava Beads that were recently launched by the Potomac Bead Company and also with the new Superduo Duets that the Beadsmith launched earlier this week. So you can read more about my new bead designs below.
New Bead Designs: Behind the Scenes
Every time a new bead hits the market, you can be sure it will have undergone a long and rigourous process. For starters, someone will have created the design for the bead shape and style. Then the manufacturers will have had to find a way to translate that design idea into a mould that can be used. This in itself is much like creating a new bead design from beads: the idea in your head may be great, but when you try the practicalities – creating a mould and using it with the glass in this case – the result may not be quite so good! This leads to modifications until the idea can either be made to work or has to be abandoned.
Next step is colouring. The mould just gives you the basic bead shape, but we all know that the
appeal of beads has a lot to do with their colour. So, in some cases, it is a matter of deciding which existing colour finishes to apply to the first batch. You may have noticed that the colour range is often limited when a new bead first comes to market. Then if the bead is popular, the colour range can be increased. So it’s not a coincidence that you see some of your favourite bead sizes and shapes being given new colours. This is a sign that you’re not the only one who enjoys using them!
At this point, us designers get involved. Once there are enough prototypes to send out, the lucky few (usually hand-selected) designers, receive a sample pack. Part of the idea is to get patterns ready to launch alongside the beads so that the launch becomes a ‘whole package’. If you’ve read enough of my blog posts and Design Corner articles in Bead and Jewellery Magazine, then you will know that not everybody likes to design. You may be fascinated with a new bead shape, but unless you know what to do with it, you’re probably going to simply look and not buy.
I say that part of the designer’s input is about creating an initial wave of patterns to support the bead launch. The other part is about giving feedback. Do the beads actually work ok in practise? Do the colour coatings hold fast or rub off? Are there a lot of blocked holes? Are there any other problems that we discover? All of this is reported back to the company launching the beads. It is always possible that a single designer will encounter a problem that is ‘random’ – a one-off that nobody else finds. So these problems will be logged, but not viewed as major. If a large proportion of the designers report the same or similar problem, then the bead manufacturing process may have to be modified further before it launches. In some rare cases, the bead is never taken to market.
So, let’s put this into context. As a customer, you may or may not be aware, but the competition between manufacturers is enormous. Everyone wants to come up with ‘the new bead’ that takes off in the market. The whole process that I have described has to take place in the utmost secrecy. If you think copyright issues are confined to designers and beading patterns, then think again! Bead companies will sometimes find that after all this investment in development, they have been beaten to market by a similar design. Often that is a coincidence, but sometimes something a little more underhand will have taken place. In order to protect the design, it needs to be trademarked, but as with copyright in the pattern arena, this only works if you are also able to police and defend your trademark. So, who knew that our lovely, friendly beading world was such a cut-throat industry?!
Ava Beads
You may already have seen my blog post about Ava Beads on My World of Beads website. So I’ll refer you back over there if you want to find out a bit more about what these beads are. I want to talk about my new bead designs with them.
Let me start by saying that I get to try a lot of new beads and I’ve found one thing that is common 
to all of them. Some speak to me immediately, some speak to me eventually and some just do not ‘do it’ for me. I’m sure you feel the same. Luckily everyone’s tastes are different, so you can be sure that if a bead hasn’t really ‘spoken’ to me it will have spoken to one of my co-designers. I found that the Ava Beads spoke to me immediately. They really feel so different from any other bead on the market. Now, different is not always a good thing. ‘Different’ for the sake of it quite often does not lend itself to good design potential. In this case, the chevron shape is so lovely to look at and easy to use that I find myself wondering why nobody has done this before!
I suspect the answer is in the manufacturing process. This lovely shape, it turns out, cannot be pressed using a machine. So each bead is hand-pressed. If you’ve looked at buying a pack of Ava beads, you may have noticed the price – I know I’ve had this conversation with a few people now. Well, the reason is the manufacturing process. Naturally it costs rather more to produce hand-pressed beads. But I think the effort is worth it, personally. These were a joy to use.
So, onto my new bead designs. The good news is, that the size and shape of the Ava beads means you don’t have to use hundreds of them to create a great design. Just six makes a lovely snowflake pattern. I used the idea to make earrings, but you could repeat the motif more than once in a bracelet or necklace design. Or you could also use it just the once to create a focal statement in a bracelet or necklace. This would give you several pieces of jewellery from one pack of beads.
Of course, I couldn’t resist making a real chevron pattern with the Ava Beads. That forms the star of my Rosetta Necklace. Even this only takes a couple of packs of beads: as I said, the size and shape means they go a long way!
The last of these new bead designs for the moment, came about as I 
was curious as to whether the diamond shape I made with the Ava beads would sit with DiamonDuos. Good news: it does! So I turned this into a rather lovely bracelet with an incredibly simple thread path.
I still have a few Ava beads left, so now all I need is the time to create some more new bead designs!
Superduo Duets
We may be accustomed to new beads meaning new shapes, but in this case, the Superduo
Duets are a huge innovation in colour. Imagine a single bead with two-tone colouring…there you have the Duets! Again, I wrote a more detailed blog about exactly what these beads are, so you can read that here. The photo probably tells you a lot of what you need to know…in size and shape, these are the Superduos that you all know and love. Look closely and you will see that each bead has two colours, one on the ‘front’ and one on the ‘back’. Now, thinking about it, most patterns use the Superduos so that you are viewing them side on, like the little bead I managed to prop up in the middle of the photo. This means you are looking at both colours at once. Of course you can work out how to use the Duets flat and create a reversible design too.
Now, if I had been sensible when I was thinking about new bead designs with the Duets, I would have just taken all my existing Superduo patterns and made them with the new beads. But, when have I ever been sensible? So, I’ll leave you to try that idea on my behalf. The quickest way for you to find all my Superduo patterns without trawling through everything, is to go to the little search bar in the top of the right hand menu and just type in ‘Superduos’, then pick your favourites.
So, rather than re-make what I have already created, I came up with a couple of brand new bead designs. The first was a bangle that I found very traumatic to make! The idea is simple and effective and you can see in the main image on this post just how much additional impact the Duets give, compared to the ordinary Superduos. The reason for the struggle is that the tension and thread path for this are critical in order to give the bangle the necessary stability. So I had a lot of ‘fun’ beading and un-beading before I got this right. Luckily, you don’t need to go through that process because once I had found the right path, I wrote it up in the pattern, along with all the little tricks I used to get the structure right!
I mentioned earlier on that some beads ‘speak’ to me more than others. I will confess that the 
Duets didn’t sing out as naturally as some at first, so I had a little chat with the lovely Perry Bookstein at Beadsmith and he talked about colour patterning. This gave me a few lightbulb flashes, which led to the geometric necklace design. Each geometric shape is quick and easy to make and uses just Superduos (apart from the final edging row), but look how much impact the Duets give it. Without their colour highlights, this would be pretty uninteresting. The colouring looks fine at first glance – it’s only when you look closely and realise that it comes from the two-tone beads that it becomes something a little more dramatic.
So, as with the Ava beads, I will be creating more new bead designs featuring Duets, but meantime, over to you to enjoy some yourself!
