The Beridians tutorial ya'll have been waiting for!

Coming from this post and several after

MATERIALS:

Here's what I use:

IMPORTANT: My beridians are tiny, but you can definitely make bigger ones if you have bigger beads or rocks, but I'd recommend using a thicker wire then.

STEP 1

Choose/design your eridian (type/s of rock, colors, general shape and size of their carapace, etc)

STEP 2

Pick a few rock chip beads that you like or think fit well together.

TIP: One of the things I try to keep in mind when choosing my base rocks is the position of the hole. If the holes connect/are close it is much easier to put together.

I think this picture will come back to haunt me, but I don't know how else to describe it

STEP 3

Play around with the rocks until you have a composition you like. Look at the edges of the beads you chose, the curvature, etc. to guide you.

I'd say the final carapace should be between 2 and 6 chips ideally, more than that and it gets tricky to put them together nicely.

You can string a throwaway piece of wire to help you map things out.

TIP: Once I have a clearer idea, I like to use a little bit of blu tack (or something similar) to simulate the final result. It is not a perfect method but it beats trying to hold all the rocks in place, specially when you have more than two.

STEP 4

Decide where you want your arms/legs to be. For this, you can use the holes in the beads but also the spaces between the rocks you've chosen, the cut the wire you'll need, usually 3 or 4 pieces, depending on where you attach it.

This step goes hand in hand with the last, wether I do them together or separately depends a lot on the eridian I am making and the idea I have in my head. Sometimes I add extra rocks that hold the arms or hide the place where they separate.

STEP 5

Put the two last stepts together and glue everything. While some of my beridians could be done without glue, it helps a lot with stability and looks.

After this step you should be left with a rocky center and 5 wires coming out of it (like a creepy thin legged spider)

STEP 6

Choose the beads you want and threat them on one of the wire legs. I usually do between 5 and 10 beads depending on the size of the seed beads and the height and size of the eridian I am making.

To finish the leg; you have three options: For my tiny babies I use the last bead as a stopper, loop the wire arounf it and then wrap the rest just on top.

You could also use my "regular" stopper which consists on making a couple circles with the wire on the pliers and then wrapping the rest just on top. The circles of wire take the place of the bead in the first method.

Lastly, if you are making bigger beridians, you could bend the wire into a claw shape. I don't have pics of it, but you can check out @colors-echo 's beridians.

STEP 7

Rinse and repeat step 6 for the other 4 legs and you're done!

TIP: If there are any of the legs that I want to start from a specific point but the wire is not behaving how I want, I glue the top bead of the leg to the carapace. But be careful when you do this, because if the glue runs down the leg, it loses mobility.

Lairot is finished and...

CONGRATULATIONS! Now you have your very own beridian!

Thanks for reading this long and convoluted tutorial, I hope it's understandable but let me know if you have any questions. And please tag me if you do make any, I would love to see! (and feel free to use my super duper dumb name #beridians 🤣)