Back in 2021, yea during the covid era, I bought 11000 Hama Beads in various colors, because you need various colors to work with. I bought a box that already have all the colors but the box got smashed, all the color got mixed up. I spent days separating the beads by the colors using chopstick (what do I have to use tweezer if I have chopstick?). I got traumatized I don't even want to look at the hama beads even today.
But beads look fun right? It's 2026, a new year, time for revisiting the beads, Not hama beads, I chose miyuki beads, or to be precise the cheap version of it, glass beads. I bought 4 books, 3 books use peyote technique while the other one use loom technique. Since Aneka Benang sell the loom, of course the first method that I try is the loom beading technique. It's a bad habit of mine actually, I impulsively buy tools and supplies so I can blame the tools if I failed to learn. It wasn't easy and I wasn't sure I had fun but I think the loom waste a lot of thread. See, I already blamed the tools.
But it is 2026! There are 3D printers! And I couldn't believe myself, instead of using the peyote method, I tried to make the loom by myself using 3D blender. If you know me well, I don't like 3D, my specialty is in 2D. It is not a secret, I am a design teacher, and last year I was the secondary instructor for some 3D class when I know nothing about 3D. Aesthetically, I like 2D and pixel art. I rarely play 3D games with first person view because I get motion sickness. Thanks to the 3D class where I was supposedly the teacher (and of course thanks to the primary instructor who did almost everything), I learn a little bit of 3D.
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| The first prototype which works but I got greedy thinking that I can make it prettier |
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| the third prototype which is not the last |
So I made a loom using blender, the first one looks like a castle wall, it is sturdy and printed cleanly but the sides made it hard to put a finger underneath the beads. But it works and I like the size. So the second version, I tried to improved the experience, by only making the loom on 2 sides, and made the loom a little bit rounded. I was proud about the design but I made the hinge too small LOL. Because I didn't use the right scale. The third one supposedly the final one. I made it perfectly, scaled, measured...Someone even ask to buy it. But... the thread slipped because of the curved edge doesn't have enough grip. one part fell apart. And the size is too small. I intentionally made the size small but it is too small for the project that I want to do. The loom from Aneka Benang is not wide enough, while my loom is not long enough.
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| My Teacher ID card, because I love my job? |
I guess I need to fix my loom prototype again, but 3D print is not that cheap. Meanwhile, as I mentioned early in this post, I am using the cheap glass bead, the glass bead size is not uniformed, it looks okay as an artwork, I mean I like that it looks imperfect, but as a product to sell (not that I want to sell it), I think I need a more uniformed beads. Just like when making amigurumis, I never know how much I like pure cotton yarn before I tried milk cotton. I need to try to do many things with various beads to find out which one is the best for me.
Now I don't know which one I like the most, beading or prototyping the loom?
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