Edelweiss

This pattern is from Ilde, her blog is Les Tresors d'Ilde. It is called Edelweiss, and is available for purchase download. She also has several nice free patterns on the site. http://www.lestresorsdildes.com/
The stages involved are first, a bezelled 14mm rivoli, then the front petals, then the back petals. It is a great workout on how to do odd count peyote with decreases. It is really lovely, and being aged right now while I figure out a chain.
There are samples of this done on Ile aux Perles, and all seem to use 2 colours. I would like to try a version with additional colours next.

From a German beading blog...

In keeping up with my goal of language acquisition, I have started finding some German bead blogs. Here is a really interesting shaped beaded bead, called "Sakkara".
No infrastructure such as a wooden bead is needed. In the pattern the bead is symmetrical, but I just wanted to try this, so stopped midway and fooled around with a star ending.
The pattern is available for free download at:
http://perlhuehner.blogspot.com/2008/09/anleitung-sakkara-perle-fnfeckperle.html
There is another similar bead but more complicated that I may try next, called Pittaya.

This technique involves increases at regular intervals, and makes stepped up sections. I think this must be how some of Paula Adams patterns for ornaments are done.
Since my German is very limited (like a vocabulary of about 20 words!) I will have to try to figure out some of the common beading words.
Here are some pics of the bead along the way. The star is my creation, I just made half the bead and then played around.

Flower Power

I am absolutely obsessed with the architecture of beads, so when I saw pictures of the Flower Power pattern I was hooked. There have been several examples of this made up on the French bead blogs. The pattern is by Holle Randy, and is available at Bead-Patterns.com.

The technique is basically the same as for beaded rings done in peyote, with a few rows of delicas, then a couple rows of 15's and zipped up at the end. The petals were a challenge, and the number of thread passes in the 15's meant that a small needle was a necessity. But, having said that, the last row when this little petite fleur is zipped up was a real thrill (ok, looks like my thrill quotient is easily reached. )
Right now I have this hanging on my little jewelry form so that I can contemplate what to put it on.