When Beadie Critter Patterns Don't Work

I've spent a couple of weeks doing a bunch of Valentine patterns that I own from the now-defunct Danette's Beady Buddies. I posted the photos of the ones I made on my Margo's Beadie Critters FaceBook page. They are really cute.

In the process of doing these patterns, I discovered that some of them didn't really work as well as they looked like they would in the drawing of the pattern. A certain amount of this might be due to the materials I use - wee pony beads and plastic lacing - but a lot of it is, I believe, because they drawn without ever being tested. 

If you've got enough experience at making Beadie Critters, you can find ways to modify the patterns so that they work better. Let me show you some examples.

Problem 1: Ear Issues

         

You can see that "Li'l Foxy" has a little issue with the first row of beads on his head being raised up from the second row. This is because the ears are ending with a two-bead row before proceeding to row 2 of the head. The pattern shows the ears resting just fine against the first two rows of the head for all three of the patterns for the critters shown above, but that won't ever actually happen. 

I came up with a couple of solutions to this problem that worked.

In the picture below, I started with 2 beads for the first row of the raccoon's head instead of 4. Then, I strung on 4 beads for the ears. Completion of the ears this way meant that the ears stuck up just a little more than in the drawn pattern, but it avoided that humped look that we got with the completed fox above.

For the tiger, I did the same technique (reduced row 1 of the head by 2 beads), but used only 3 beads for the ears. This is still pretty humped. This was an early attempt to fix the problem, and the racoon was completed later with slightly better results.

The picture below shows another way to do the ears. I added one extra bead, and then went through that extra bead sideways like you would for an arm or other appendage, pulling tight before going on to row 2 of the head.

So, if you have a pattern that shows the ears like the pattern drawings below, you now have a couple of possibilities for making this pattern work.

Can you see the change I made to this elephant beadie to make the ears work?

And on this bunny?

Problem 2: Arm Issues

A lot of the patterns I was using to make Valentine critters had arms that were two beads wide seamlessly working with the rest of the body. Again, this is never going to work.

So for these types of arms, I had two methods I used. One was similar to the second method I used on the ears, adding a bead and going through that single bead before continuing with the body row. See that on the Mickey Mouse and Tiger below.

The other method was to simply make the arms only 1 bead wide instead of 2. I used that method for the Minnie Mouse and Mouse below.

You could choose either one of these methods to make the arms work on a pattern that is written with arms that are two beads per row.

With these two modification methods in your toolbox, there are a whole variety of patterns that you previously would have given up on or not tried because they didn't work as drawn. Now you can do them!

Battle of the Patterns: Arthur (PBS show 1996-2022)

 Have you ever seen the PBS cartoon show, Arthur? My younger kids watched it when it was small, and it was quite popular for a while, with books and toys available in stores. It was actually on PBS until just a couple of years ago, I was surprised to find out.

Since Arthur was popular during the heyday of pony bead creations, I have several different versions of patterns for the main characters. Let's have a little vote to see which ones we like better!

Arthur

I have Arthur patterns from three places, two of which are defunct. The one on the left is from Evelyn's Bead Page (Arthur). The second is from Danette's Beadie Buddies Bonanza, and the third is from some patterns you could order from Making Friends years ago.

What do you think of them? I made the two on either side first. Then when starting on the middle one, I noticed that she was calling for a different color bead for Arthur's skin/fur(?), and decided to look more closely at images of Arthur, and settled on tan rather than the medium brown I'd been using. I completely disagreed with her idea that his skin/fur was "goldenrod."

Which one of these beadies do you like best? Left, middle, or right? Which skin/fur color do you think is best?

DW

I have DW patterns from the same three sources. From Evelyn's site (DW), Beady Buddies Bonanza, and Making Friends.

They are all pretty similar. Which one do you like best?

Please comment below to let me know!

Additional Patterns

Making Friends had a Baby Kate pattern (above). Evelyn's site (Baby Kate) and the Beady Buddies site also had patterns for Arthur's baby sister, but I didn't make them all.

My site has had a pattern for Muffy, one of their friends. The sample above uses a tan color that is no longer available.

Evelyn's site also has a Buster pattern.

The old Beady Buddies site had the most complete collection of Arthur patterns, featuring Arthur's parents, and friends Binky, Buster, Emily, and Sue Ellen, as well as Pal, Bionic Bunny, Nadine, and Mary Moo Cow.

Is the Beady Buddies collection missing anyone that you enjoyed from the show?

See my Pinterest board for some of these patterns!

Product Review: Create Your Own Bead Pets Kit

 Today I am reviewing a product that is available in most Walmart ($9.97)and JoAnn ($11.97) stores as well as online on their websites or apps. Amazon has a similar kit on their website, which has more pony beads, and doesn't have the same bead container as the one I'm reviewing.

I was intrigued by this kit because of the bead guide pictured in the lower right of the first picture above. I thought it would be a very helpful thing, and even started envisioning re-doing some of my patterns so that they could be used in that guide as an alternative to the normal method of bead stringing.

I opened the kit and discovered that the beads were packed in individual little plastic bags by color, or sometimes with a few colors in one bag if they all went to one pattern. This made it very easy to put the beads into the storage container. However, there were not enough divided spaces to put each bag into, so several of the bags ended up in the large area that took up half the storage space.

The stiff waxed string was rolled into a bundle that could be tricky to unwind. The lanyard hooks and keyrings were in their own plastic bags.

The instructions were fairly basic, with cord lengths printed on the instruction sheet rather than on each pattern sheet.

The idea with the pattern guide is that you can take the pattern sheets, and put them under the cover of the storage case. Then you can lay out the beads in the ridged areas of the cover, then work the cords through on each side to make your bead pet. They recommend putting the string on a keyring or lanyard hook, then putting that inside the storage container, with the string coming out of the container through a little slot, as shown below.

Then you put the pattern under the cover, close the cover, and line the beads up between the ridged areas of the cover to match the pattern. Then string the cord through the beads.

Problem 1: All the beads are in the storage container, which you can't open once you've put beads on the cover, without messing up all the beads you've just laid out on the cover. So you need to count out all the beads you'll need for each beadie onto the table, before beginning.

Problem 2: There's nothing really holding these beads in place as you place them on the cover, so I spent a lot of time trying to get them to stand up and not move.

Problem 3: It was tricky to string the cord through the beads and have the beads stay in place, as mentioned above.

After completing 1 bead pet, I decided to just go back to doing beadies the way I usually do, by picking the beads out of the storage container just before I put them on the string.

After completing the 3rd bead pet, I decided I really didn't like the stiff waxed string, and decided to use my trusty clear plastic lacing.

The bead "pets" that this kit makes are pictured below (popsicles and pizza slices aren't really pets, right?).

Overall I wouldn't recommend this kit unless you are trying to get just the amount of beads you need to make several bead pets. I did have a few extra beads at the end, but not many.

Winnie the Pooh from Old Site

This week I was inspired by some old patterns I ran across while organizing my craft stuff.

In the late 90s heyday of beadie critters, MakingFriends was a go-to site for well-designed beadies and lots of other general kids' crafts. Over the years this site has evolved and focused on Girl Scout activities, and the site owner also offers another site for free kids' crafts (FreeKidsCrafts), but most of the beadie critters did not make it onto the new site.

The patterns I found today were for an entire set of characters from the old classic Disney cartoon, Winnie the Pooh. I do have some Winnie the Pooh character patterns on my site, but I'm really not that fond of either of the Winnie the Pooh patterns, and I have never had a pattern for Christopher Robin, Owl, Rabbit, or Eeyore. So it was a fun set to make. I hope you enjoy making them too!