How to Document Your Beading Designs

Keep track of your creative configurations.

As simple a device and decoration as a bead is, the real art in much bead jewelry comes in the complexity and inventiveness of intricate, multi-bead designs. If you design beaded jewelry, especially if you're in the habit of selling your bead work or giving it away, you may be looking for an effective way to document your former bead designs in order to recreate them in the future. Preserve your designs in a detailed paper format with photos, diagrams and notes.

Things You'll Need

• Camera
• Notebook
• Graph paper
• Colored pencils
• Computer scanner
• Word processor

Instructions

1. Take photos of the beading project. If the design is simple to assemble (i.e., including a few large beads rather than many smaller, intricately-assembled or woven beads), you may only need a photo of the finished product, but if you have a complex design, you may wish to take several "work in progress" photos to remember how you assembled the design from start to finish.

2. Write down notes related to making the project. Make a note of any issues or problems you came across while making it and what you did to resolve them. Include notes about materials and tools needed, variations of the design that you think would be worth trying, or any other thoughts or observations you think are relevant and would be useful when recreating this design.

3. Create a grid sketch of the design, if documenting a complex woven pattern. Use graph paper and colored pencils to create a representation of the weave, coloring each square in the paper to represent a single bead in the design using a colored pencil in a similar color.

4. Combine all the notes for each design into a page or two. Type up your notes and scan or digitally upload your photos of the bead designs and the graph. Organize these images and text in a word processor. Either print the document and file it, or save the file to your hard drive. Make a separate file for each design, as saving many pictures in a single file may make it cumbersome to load.

5. Title and date each project and write this information on the file or in the computer file name. This will help you locate designs easily when you want to find them in the future.

References

• "Creative Bead Weaving: A Contemporary Guide To Classic Off-Loom Stitches"; Carol Wilcox Wells; 1998