To boldly bead

Beaded cast: Star Wars V - The Empire Strikes Back by crafty-maika

Beaded cast: Star Trek - Deep Space Nine by crafty-maika

Bead doll: Zelda and the Master Sword (BotW) by crafty-maika

Sorry, but no - I’d like to avoid trouble with the copyright holders, plus I found out when I did my one free R2D2 pattern (which is one of my less complicated figures) that turning my notes and hand-drawn pattern into something other people can make sense of takes forever, so I’d have no more time left for beading...

Part of my beaded cast of Empire Strikes Back set. This one was rather easy to make simply because his entire outfit is very similar to what he's wearing in ANH - it's basically just different colours and a long-sleeved jacket instead of a sleeveless vest. I therefore spent most time working on the hair - my original ANH version has very flat hair, which I was never happy with, so I mostly focused on fixing that. *** Materials: MIYUKI 11° and 15° seed beads, bugle bead, round beads, felting wool, craft wire Size: approx. 3.5 inches/9 centimetres

Part of my beaded cast of Empire Strikes Back set. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a beaded doll of Leia, the trickiest part of this doll was the hair - she's got a braid wrapped all around her head, and I spent who knows how many hours trying to actually braid or somehow twist together seed beads of the smallest size into braids to attach around the doll's head, but everything I tried looked far too clunky because even the tiniest 15° beads were still too big. And then I finally dawned on me that I was going about it completely the wrong way! I eventually ended up using bigger beads in a simple herringbone pattern to mimic the thicker structure of the braid, and I'm actually quite happy with the final result. Sometimes you've just got to try the exact opposite of what you've been doing, I guess. *** Materials: 11° and 15° TOHO and MIYUKI seed beads, bugle bead, round beads, felting wool, craft wire Size: approx. 3.1 inches/8 centimetres

Part of my beaded cast of Empire Strikes Back set. The doll itself is quite simple because there's really not much detail to the grey suit he's wearing for most of the movie, apart from the belt with all the little pockets. What gave me most trouble was finding beads in a colour that at least comes close to the colour of the fabric, which seems to be some kind of unidentifiable greiysh colour with maybe a touch of green? or beige? In any case, for some reason none of my bead suppliers sell beads in "unidentifiable greiysh green beige", so I tested out various options until I found one that at least came close. Part of the problem is that these seed beads are mostly made for jewellery, so you've got great choice when it comes to all kinds of shiny and sparkly finishes, but only very few when you're looking for more "drab" colours. Apparently I'm a niche beader... *** Materials: MIYUKI and TOHO 11° and 15° seed and cylinder beads, round beads, bugle bead, felting wool, craft wire Size: approx. 3.3 inches/8.5 centimetres

Happy Star Wars day! When I came back from my little hiatus in March, I mentioned that I was working on two beaded cast sets, and today in time for May 4th I've got the first part of one them. Last year, I made a beaded cast of A New Hope in honour of Star Wars' 40th anniversary, and now I' getting started on adding a beaded cast of Empire Strikes Back as well. There's no anniversary this time, obviously, but I decided to make another set a few months back after seeing Episode 8 because - well, given how much commotion this movie has caused in fandom already, let's just say I needed to cheer myself up and leave it at that. There will probably be ten figures in all, though that number may still change. And while it says 1-3 in the title, I am actually more than halfway done already because quite a few of the characters (the trickier ones, conveniently - Vader, the droids, Chewbacca) don't actually change (much) between the movies, so I can just use the versions I already made. Yay for efficiency! There's no schedule for when I'll get the rest of the dolls done, so... we'll see Dolls in this set: Luke Skywalker Leia Organa Han Solo

Materials: 8°, 11° and 15° Miyuki seed beads, Swarovski bicone, round beads, crafting wire, felting woolSize: Approximately 8.5 centimetres/3.4 inches 

Size: Approximately 8.5 centimetres/3.4 inches

Beaded cast: Star Wars IV - A New Hope by crafty-maika (40th anniversary project)

Well, that took a few Thursdays more than I'd originally planned, but here's at long last the final doll for my Star Wars 40th anniversary project! I did mention at some point that I was working my way up on the scale of how likely beading a character would give me a headache, and here we've firmly entered migraine territory. Vader was definitely one of my most challenging dolls so far - not only did I have to create a completely new head shape, but the body was rather complicated as well. The key here is layers - for the non-beaders among you, my bead figures and all those beaded animals you can find here or on other beading sides are made of "nets" of bead circles that are stuffed with felting wool. From the humans among my little SW collection, most figures (Luke, Leia, Han, Tarkin) have only a single outer layer (not counting smaller details like belts that are added later) - just one net of bead latticework that makes up their basic body shape and clothing at the same time. My Obi-Wan doll has two layers - one for the basic shape (long robe), and one above that for the cloak, which is more work, but still doable. For my Vader doll, however, I needed three layers - one for the basic body shape (legs and torso), one for the inner cloak, and one for the outer cape. And since you can't just pile the layers on top of each other as you would with fabric because that would end up a thick unwieldy mess, arranging the layers so that everything shows up properly and the outer cape still falls more or less naturally, especially around the shoulders, was quite tricky, but I am quite happy with how it turned out. I'm not sure how well everything shows up in the photo, though - dolls that are almost all black beads or white beads like by Galadriel doll was don't really photograph well because the similar colours and shininess of the beads tends to turn them into monochromatic blobs... I've got one or two minor things to fix with some of the other dolls from this set, but I should have a group picture of all of them up in a couple of days. *** Previous parts: C-3PO R2-D2 Leia Organa Han Solo Luke Skywalker Tarkin Obi-Wan Kenobi Chewbacca *** Materials: Materials: TOHO and MIYUKI 11° and 15° seed beads, oval beads, bugle bead, felting wool, craft wire Size: approx. 3.8 inches/9.5 centimetres

Well, that one is quite late. I'd hoped to only have to skip one week due to my bead supply issues, but it turned out to be two, so sorry for the delay. On the bright side, my bead stash is finally full again This figure of Chewbacca was quite tricky since, due to it being a lot taller than my usual dolls, I had to change pretty much everything apart from the very basic torso shape. The hands and feet had to be bigger, and I found that his arms were too long to attach his bowcaster like I would usually attack a weapon - to the extended arm. The arm kept dropping because the forearm was simply too long to bear the weight (adding wire inside didn't help either, because you can't really anchor it to anything), so I finally decided to bend both arms towards the body and have him keep both hands on the bowcaster, which worked out fine. I'm not really happy with the head shape, on the other hand - it looked better when it was just the hull alone, but the stuffing distorted it a bit more than I had expected. Oh well... Previous parts: C-3PO R2-D2 Leia Organa Han Solo Luke Skywalker Tarkin Obi-Wan Kenobi Just one to go! *** Materials: TOHO and MIYUKI 11° and 15° seed beads, round beads, half-tila beads, felting wool, craft wire Size: approx. 4.1 inches/10.5 centimetres

Like I said last week, I'm slowly working my way up the difficulty scale with the remaining figures for my little anniversary project, and here's where things are slowly starting to get tricky. With this figure of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the most difficult thing for me was probably the beard - beards have always given me trouble whenever I made a doll of a bearded character. At first I tried adding the beard using strands of beads the same way I add hair, but that turned out to be a very bad idea. So I went back to actually adding the beard to the structure for the head like I did for my Dooku doll. I hadn't been happy with how that had worked out back then because it ended up looking like a piece of cloth wrapped around the lower part of his face, but as it turns out the addition of a mouth plus some extra beads worked into the structure of the face to make it look less like latticework make all the difference, and so this is probably the first beard I beaded that I am really happy with. Yay for progress! The lightsaber was a bit tricky as well, because as opposed to Luke's it's not just an even cylinder shape I could bead in one piece, so I actually had to make three individual beaded pieces, two of them very small, and connect them with single beads to get the shape right. Speaking of difficulties - a word of warning, I'm having some bead supply/delivery problems at the moment, so I'm not sure yet whether I'll be able to keep my weekly update schedule or whether the last two dolls will be delayed a bit! *** Previous parts: Tarkin C-3PO R2-D2 Leia Organa Han Solo Luke Skywalker *** Materials: TOHO and MIYUKI 11° and 15° seed and cylinder beads, round beads, bugle bead, felting wool, craft wire Size: approx. 3.3 inches/8.5 centimetres

Another Thursday, and like I said last week, for the remaining four weeks it's all new characters I've never beaded before, so I'm starting with the easiest one and working my way up on the scale of headache-induceiness, which should really be a word. So for this week it's Tarkin, and the doll is a pretty straightforward one without much trickiness, although I did change the head a bit to account for the rather bony look his face has. Funnily, what gave me most trouble with this doll wasn't the actual beading, it was getting my hands on small 15° beads in the right colours for his rank insignia. *** Previous parts: C-3PO R2-D2 Leia Organa Han Solo Luke Skywalker *** Materials: TOHO and MIYUKI 11° and 15° seed beads, round beads, felting wool, craft wire Size: approx. 3.5 inches/9 centimetres

C-3PO R2-D2 So far all of these have been either new versions of characters I'd already beaded before, or in the case of 3PO something I'd been working on for some time before even starting this project. For the remaining four figures, I'm off to new territory... *** Materials: TOHO and MIYUKI 11° and 15° seed and cylinder beads, round beads, bugle bead, felting wool, craft wire Size: approx. 3.3 inches/8.5 centimetres

*** Materials: TOHO and MIYUKI 11° and 15° seed beads, round beads, felting wool, craft wire Size: approx. 3.5 inches/9 centimetres