Right angle weave with Laura Andrews

On Wednesday night, I had the pleasure of meeting Laura Andrews.  Laura is a very talented artist who uses beads and wire to create gorgeous pieces of jewelry.

Evening classes are sometimes tiring.  After beading for six or eight hours previously, sometimes it is hard to even look at a needle and thread.  Laura's cheeriness and sunny personality made it easy to start on her pendant.

Laura's "Do you Dream in Crystal" pendant captured my attention right away.  The sheer number of crystals is enough to make anyone pause.

The pendant is created with cubic right angle weave.  The varying sizes of the beads made it a bit easier, for me at least, to keep my place.

The result is a stunning ring of sparkly goodness.

There were only four of us in the class.  Three of us were familiar with cubic right angle weave and finished our pendants.

The fourth student had never done right angle weave.  Laura sat with her and explained the technique, bead by bead.  By the end, I think she had it.

Laura was also generous enough to give each of us two kits.  I combined the bright pink with the almost transparent green to achieve a bit of a contrast in my pendant.  (You can see the green thread through the pink beads, which also helps bring that softer color through the rest of the pendant.)

Laura noted at the beginning of class that thread color does make a difference.  It's the little tips and tricks that make a class worthwhile.

Laura also offered us a chance to try her Pave Beaded Beads.

These are made using right angle weave, but Laura developed a way to make each row starting with a string of beads, then adding RAW components.  Laura calls it "long right angle weave."

I can't explain exactly how it works, but it works and these suckers bead up in a heartbeat.

When you look at these beads, you would think they were beaded in the traditional RAW method.  The ""long RAW" makes these bead much more quickly, though.

I can see beading a ton of these for my Swarovski challenge.

Thank you, Laura for a wonderful class!