Pansy Beaded Flower Pattern

For the past few months I have been more and more intrigued by all of the beautiful  beaded flower pattern necklaces on Pinterest.  They are absolutely works of art!  Thanks to those who shared their flower diagrams on Pinterest for free, I finally decided to give it a try.  The first mystery was learning which stitch to use.  I am sure there are multiple options, but I decided to use brick stitch since it’s so easy to add and subtract beads from the rows.  If you are not familiar with brick stitch, check out my tutorial - Hexagon Bracelet - A Lesson in Brick Stitch

Now that I was able to make the basic flowers, I decided to create a beaded flower pattern of my own.  My first ambition would be a pansy.  They are just so cute! I loved pansies as a little girl; my mom planted them in front of our house every year.  Florida is too hot for them, but now that I've moved to south Alabama they are at the top of my planting list!

The first step was to print out a picture (or 2) of pansies.  Then, using a beading program, I sketched out a basic design.  From there, it’s just trial and error.

My first attempt looked like a “Lego Pansy”. A little too much dark blue and too many straight lines.

My second attempt looked like “Scary Pansy”.

I took out even more dark blue, and then I had “Techno Pansy”.

Next came “Owl Pansy”. At least, it was starting to look “cute”, even if it did look more like an owl than a pansy.

I felt like I was making progress, and with each iteration, I was sure it would be perfect.

It just needed a couple more tweaks, even less dark blue on the bottom, I made the back petal 2 petals instead of one and I added seed beads to the center so it didn’t look like a beak.

UPDATE: May 22, 2020

I have released video tutorials that show you exactly how to make the pansy and put it all together!  Check it out!