SO. I started making @nosnexus's orange bead curtain because it was extremely whimsical and fun and I was charmed by it as soon as I saw it. I knew absolutely nothing about beading going in, so I did a bit of sleuthing through nexus' blog and also the general internet to find information, including a cherry bead curtain tutorial which talked about some useful information such as:
gluing the tips of your string and then cutting them at an angle to make threading the beads easier (the string is stiffened by the glue)
general length of hanging rod
what the hell crimping beads are and where to put them
Further sleuthing for types of knots and other info as needed.
First, I copied nexus' pixel art into a pattern on libre office calc (excel alternative). I actually started with google sheets, but the conditional formatting was sloooooow and libre office is free, so. Once I actually stop making notes and tweaks I'll throw the file up somewhere so I can share it. Here are some screenshots though.
Making the pattern in Calc took about a week. Then I ordered some beads and string, which arrived last weekend, and started doing some experiments with painting the beads.
Most painful part? Counting all the beads first to separate them for each color. I do it a bit at a time while watching tv. Niche skill of estimating how many beads I should grab at a time is increasing really fast, I can reliably take 20 or 30 almost exactly now.
Painted them following nexus' advice, once again. I clean my container with paper towels between uses before washing it out to reduce microplastic waste down the sink. Also it means I can reuse the container.
Interestingly enough, the cheapo craft paint (turquoise) I bought coated much better than the acrylic I already had lying around (primary blue) which... is also cheap to be fair... Anyway, it seems like the amount of water you add is much more important than amount of paint as long as there is a reasonable amount of paint. Adding too much water means there's too much color and the beads get all globby and stick together a lot.
You can see below that I had to do multiple layers for the darker blue paint mix. Left is after 3 coatings (where I finally found the right amount of paint/water ratio to use). Right is after 2 coatings, with patchy color.
Process is now: only paint about 200-300 beads at a time with less paint, roll out onto a paper plate in 50-bead-ish batches, and blow dry as you roll them around. Seems to work pretty well, although beads can run away if the hairdryer gets too close / is too strong lol.
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