ZigZag BeadWorks

A lot more work goes into getting ready to sell beadworks than I thought (I'd already thought of a lot, too). I finally got the correct size packing materials, & more chains for the keychains. Funds for shipping is also a must have & hard to aquire before you can make funds. "You got to spend money to make money" comes to mind.

Aside from that, I've been making more mini animals for keychains.
I'll be making a sale post in the next couple days for mini cat/dog keychains, so stay tuned!

📣**** Announcement ****📣
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After overcoming my reluctance due to the overwhelming nature of it all, I am starting the next steps towards selling my beadworks.

I am going to try and spend the next few days to a week researching, through other beadwork-selling help groups on facebook, facebook marketplace, etsy, and others.

There are a lot of details to hammer out, such as pricing, shipping/local drop off, make-to-order vs custom orders, payment methods, and probably more that I can't think of right now.

I may try to post a poll or two here, to gain some insights of your preferences regarding things like reasonable price ranges, prefered shipping/payment methods, and what kind of listings you'd want to see most.

I will try to post any major updates here when they arise.

Reindeer
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Took a while to make this one. I followed a pattern I got for the most part, but I lucked out with finding a stone bead that looked enough like a deer tail. I decided to finally break out the bone-colored picasso beads for the antlers.

Since I use cylindrical rochelle beads instead of faceted bicone beads, I could not just make a single string of them for each leg like the pattern calls for, so I had to come up with my own way to make the legs, which I think turned out nicely.

Link to where I got the pattern below ↓↓
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Height: 1.9"/4.8cm
Length: 1.3"/3.2cm
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Materials:
• 3mm & 4mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 4mm Agate Sphere Beads
• 4mm Acrylic Sphere Beads
• White stone tail bead
• 0.25mm nylon wire
• 0.006" Crystal Fireline
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Link to Pattern: https://tinyurl.com/c7jabrfc

Orange Tabby
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I had been posting every Monday, but I missed it this week. I was in a rut, but I think things are getting better.

I finally got a beaded cat pattern book I've been eyeing for a long while. It has cats in a lot of different poses, so I'm hoping to make them periodically throughout other posts. This one is curving to turn around.

Link to where I got the pattern below ↓↓
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Height: 1.5"/3.8cm
Length: 1.9"/4.8cm
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Materials:
• 3mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 4mm Acrylic Sphere Beads
• 0.25mm nylon wire
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Link to Pattern: https://tinyurl.com/3r8t9ahm

Axolotl
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This was fun to make. I had to use steel craft wire to shape the feet & help it stand properly. I deviated from the template with the gills and used my own design, though they did turn out a little big lol.

Link to where I got the pattern below ↓↓
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Height: 1"/2.5cm
Length: 2.25"/5.72cm
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Materials:
• 3mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 4mm Acrylic Sphere Beads
• 0.25mm Nylon Wire
• 28 Gauge Steel Craft Wire
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Link to Pattern: https://tinyurl.com/mr3mvyu7

Brown/Orange/Gray Tabby Cats
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I decided to post these three together since they are so small and are kind of like a set. I modified a blank cat template to make the tabby pattern. Each one comprised of only 90 beads.

Link to where I got the pattern below ↓↓
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Height: 0.75"/1.91cm
Length: 1.38"/3.51cm
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Materials:
• 3mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 4 mm Acrylic Sphere Beads
• 0.25mm nylon wire
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Link to Pattern: https://tinyurl.com/3yruvah4

German Shepherd (3)
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The third little dog I decided to make. This one was a breeze. The more of them I do, the more efficient I can make them.

I'm planning to (hopefully) do a series of cats too, I've been putting in a lot of work to modifing a good template/set of instructions I've found.

Let me know what you think!

Link to where I got the pattern down below.
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Height: 1.13"/2.87cm
Length: 1.13"/2.87cm
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Materials:
• 3mm & 4mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 4mm Acrylic sphere beads
• 0.25mm nylon wire
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Link to pattern: https://tinyurl.com/4dd5bscw

Siberian Husky (2)
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Second chibi dog. I had to get creative here. I decided to make a husky with heterochromia, & I wanted to use brown & blue cats eye beads. Once I finished it, it kept falling flat on its face....

Turns out, semi-precious stones are a lot heavier than acrylic beads! I basically had to sew a few counterbalance beads inside the back & add an extra bead to the front legs for support. Frustrating, but happy with the result. Let me know what you think!

Link to where I got the pattern down below.
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Height: 0.75"/1.87cm
Length: 1.13"/2.87cm
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Materials:
• 3mm & 4mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 4mm cats-eye stone sphere beads
• 0.25mm nylon wire
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Link to pattern: https://tinyurl.com/3zrwr3mj

Golden Retriever (1)
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Made this as a first a series of "chibi" dogs I'm making. Instead of bicone beads, I use 3mm rochelle (round) beads. They only come out to be around 1 inch tall & long! Let me know what you think!

Link to where I got the pattern down below.
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Height: 0.75"/1.87cm
Length: 1"/2.5cm
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Materials:
• 3mm & 4mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 0.25mm nylon wire
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Link to pattern: https://tinyurl.com/yvy8m5vj

Rabbit
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I realized I hadn't made any animals in the small mammal category (aside from cats/dogs), so I made this one based of a pattern I downloaded. I had to get a little creative since I didn't have certain shaped beads, so I used 4mm instead for the mouth, paws, and tail.
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Height: 1.13"/2.87cm
Length: 1.13"/2.87cm
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Materials:
• 3mm & 4mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 4 mm Agate Sphere Beads
• 0.25mm nylon wire
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Sunrise Heart | Firewheel | Green Lotus
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I'm in between animal projects, so I thought I'd take some charms I made in the past, and make them into more 3-strand loose chokers.

The first (left) I tried to make it look like the sky when the sun first starts appearing on the horizon at the start of the day. The center is made after one of my favorite flowers out there, the firewheel. The last one (right) I made the colors of a lotus pond.

I'm also going to try and incorporate my watermark in both my past and future posts.
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Length: 17"/43.18cm
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Materials:
• 3mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 3.5mm Metallic Sphere Beads
• 4-6mm Metallic Spacer Beads
• 0.25mm nylon wire
• 0.005"-0.006" Crystal Fireline
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Anaconda
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I tried to base this one off of the southern green anaconda. This is what I've been working on since my last post. It ended up being almost a foot long and took several hundreds of beads and feet of string. I decided to put large twisty ties in it, which both rounded out the snake and made it poseable :) .

From what I've looked up, the average length of a snake is 1-2ft, while the average length of a female anaconda is 15.5ft, being able to grow up to 20ft long. The more you know. 🌠
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Length: 10.94"/27.79cm
Width: 0.56"/1.42cm
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Materials:
• 3mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 0.005" Smoke Fireline
• Twisty-ties

Multi-strand Flower Loose Chokers
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I make necklaces every now and then, but recently I've
been dabbling in multi-strand necklaces with different
style flowers and color gradients, at a shorter length.
I'm hoping to get into more intricate netted chokers, for
when I need breaks in-between/during making beaded
animals. I made these for my mom, myself, and sister,
respectively.
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Length: 17"/43.18cm
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Materials:
• 3mm & 4mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 3-4 mm Agate Sphere Beads
• 0.5 mm Waxed Nylon Cord

Lovebird
Made my very first bird! I had a lot of fun making this one, with all the different colors, and having to use stiff wire so the bird can stand up on its own.
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Height: 1.19"/3.02cm
Length: 1.49"/3.79cm
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Materials:
• 3mm & 4mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 0.25mm nylon wire
• 30GA Steel Wire
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Sea Turtle
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Since I got 3 votes (out of 4 total) for Snake/Turtle/etc, I decided to make this cute sea turtle!
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Height: 0.5"/1.25cm
Length: 1.06"/2.69cm
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Materials:
• 3mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 0.25mm nylon wire

Short-hair Yorkshire Terrier
Making this dog had some ups & downs. I followed a template for the head & body, but since the template called for bicone beads, & I use rochelle instead, I had to go off-script with making the ears, muzzle, legs, & tail. It was definitely good practice for transitioning from following set instructions to freeforming it, using techniques I've learned to make a style of my own.
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Height: 1.5"/3.81cm
Length: 1.25"/3.18cm
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Materials:
• 3mm & 4mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 0.25mm nylon wire
• 0.12mm crystal fireline

Calico Cat
Went and used a template with a somewhat different style this time. I'm happy I finally got to use some of my cats-eye gemstone beads :)
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Height: 1.5"/3.81cm
Length: 1.75"/4.45cm
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Materials:
• 3mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• 4mm Spherical Glass Beads
• 4mm Spherical Cat's Eye Gemstone Beads
• 0.25mm nylon wire
• 0.12mm crystal fireline

Cream/Brown Shih-Tzu
This one went very well, definitely getting the hang of this.
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Height: 2.13"/5.41cm
Length: 2.25"/5.71cm
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Materials:
• 3 & 4mm Rochelle Seed Beads
• .25mm nylon wire

Grey/White Schnauzer

I decided to go for making a schnauzer since its a more advanced pattern using the same looping technique as the Chihuahua. Aside from a few bumps, it went pretty well :)

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Height: 2.13"/5.41cm

Length: 2.25"/5.71cm
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Materials:

• 3 & 4mm Rochelle Seed Beads

• .25mm nylon wire

Well it's been a good bit of time, but after 4-5 different attempts (a different type of stitching than what I've been used to), I finally made a chihuahua. I'm going to try and make a series of small dogs for a while to get well acquainted with this looping-style stitch.

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Height: 1.31"/3.5cm

Length: .75"/2cm
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Materials:

• 3 & 4mm Rochelle Seed Beads

• 3mm spherical electroplated beads

• .25mm nylon wire

• Crystal Fireline

I was almost done with the bat last week, but at the last minute I decided to completely change the ears & re-shape the wings. It took a while to suspend the bat in the air properly in order to take good pics of it, but I definitely think it was worth the extra time/work.

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Measurements:

• Length: 2¼"

• Wingspan: 4⅛"

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Materials:

• 3 mm Rochelle Seed Beads

• 4 mm Agate Spherical Beads

• 21-Strand Black Soft-Flex Wire

• Crystal & Smoke Fireline

Abstract Autumn 🍁🍂