"Pandemic 2020" beaded pysanka

"Pandemic 2020" by Maria Rypan

This beaded pysanka was created for the Toronto Bead Society Spring/ Summer 2020 Palette Challenge. To get members to be creative during the pandemic, beaders needed to create something using colours in the forecast swatches.

Palette, beads, graph paper & coloured pencils

This is my first beaded pysanka ever and a fitting remembrance of how the coronavirus affected our world. My trip to bring an exhibit of North American Pysanky to Ukraine in April 2020 was cancelled. The egg, a symbol of life, is an appropriate background for my story!

Using 3-bead netting I created nurses' caps with Red Crosses to honour the front-line medical workers. A net symbolizes protection. So, the netting technique around the egg invokes safeguarding ourselves from the pandemic.

Red crosses were added on top of the nurses hats before zipping into a tube to slide over the egg.

Colourful homemade masks circling the pysanka are synonymous with caring and sharing protection with family and friends so we can go out safely for necessities.

The red threads were to help with alignment when assembling the beaded sections

The top started with a circle of 7 beads.

Since the repeat pattern worked out to seven nurses hats, that was the magic number for circular netting on top and on the bottom. I found creating motifs helped tremendously in designing the net increases one row at a time. Will it be 3-, 5- or 7-beads to shape the pointy top net or flatter bottom?

White daisy chain being added.

Daisies all around symbolize innocence and purity. These are all the children whose world has turned upside down. 

Another daisy chain to add to the flatter circular net at the bottom.

  14 flowers represent quarantine. As they bloom, they are socially distanced from one another.

Safely pins assist in joining my pysanky sections.

I like how the lilac looks between the daisy chain and the circular net.

The top needed some 3-D embellishing.

Let my beaded pysanka be a reminder of how the whole world stopped still. Going forward, in the NEW normal, let's cherish our freedoms and people more.

Thanks to a COVID blessing, my Rypan Designs website has been updated! There's 25 years worth of inspiration and resources for learning how to bead weave your very own creations.

Be creative and stay safe,
Maria

ABC's of Creativity - N is Netting

Netting is a beadweaving technique used in cultures around the world and for many centuries.

Here is a piece from 680-670 BCE, it uses blue faience beads to make a beaded shroud. The arms of the net are tubular faience beads.

Bead Shroud of Tabakenkhonsu @ Met

The mesh like structure of beads makes it this an easy to identify beading technique. The challenge is to know if it is horizontal or vertical netting. 

diagram of horizontal netting (from about.com)

diagram of vertical netting worked from a base row of beads (from about.com)

This Lemko collar was made by the bride for her wedding. Anna Harhay Kryza used a bead loomwoven band as the base for the vertical lower netting.

from the collection of Diane Melnyk

a selection for vertical netted collars with geometric designs

This vertical netted collar is Maria's version of the traditional Ukrainian netted collars with their geometric patterns, appeared in the Jan/Feb 2006 issue of Step by Step Beads.

Rypan Designs Netted Diamonds Collar

When commissioned by Vesniwka, a renown Ukrainian women's choir in Toronto, to make collars  for the singers she used red, gunmetal and gold.

Vesniwka collar protype

The depth and style of the design reminded many people of the beaded collars from ancient Egypt. So Maria reworked the colors to turquoise and gold.

Rypan Designs Egyptian Collar

This netted collar is not a deep as the Egyptian but the placement of the beads creates a beautiful zigzag pattern. Here Maria has used just simple size 10 seed beads.

Rypan Design Netted ZigZag

Taking the netted zigzag collar, changing some of the seed beads to mini rondelles, hi-lighting the zigzag with silver seed beads and adding large rondelles to some of the picots has changed the traditional collar into a fashion forward design. This design is in the current (Aug/Sep 2013) issue of Beadwork.

Rypan Designs Chic Chevron Collar

Here again in the zigzag pattern, but deeper and some of the seed beads have been replaced with bugle beads. A few rows of netting are worked into matching earrings.

Rosey's Zigzag

These next two netted items are very different from the collar style of beadwork. Here the netting forms a rectangle with is connect to a long netted band with stringers of beads and bugle. The Indigo Kilim appeared in the Jun 2003 issue of Bead & Button.

Rypan Designs Indigo Kilim

The Sedona Kilim below was made for the Toronto Bead Society Bag of Beads challenge 2000. It appears in the gallery in Diane Fitzgerald's book Netted Beadwork.

Sedona Kilim, beaded by M. Rypan

For most of the previous projects the main netting was done with seed beads, here twist bugle for the major part of the netted design. Seed beads are used for the fringing.

Rypan Designs Twig Willow Twist

Netting can also be used for projects other that necklaces. Here are some beaded pysanky. Many different techniques are used for beaded pysanky. The two front eggs are done using netting. Maria's article about bead pysanky appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of A Needle Pulling Thread.

From pysanky,info

I have also used netting to make small circular netted snowflakes. Here seed bead and Swarovski crystals create a sparkly snowflake ornament.

Winter Wonderland Snowflake, designed and beaded by J. Woolverton

I hope that you will try the easy and versatile stitch to create something wonderful.

Happy Beading!

"Pysanky: Then & Now"

There's one more chance to catch to see my multimedia presentation about Ukrainian Easter eggs at St.Vladimir Institute on Mar. 31st. The slides start off with traditional batik-style pysanky; goes on to visiting Pysanky Museums in USA and Ukraine; and ends with a contemporary beaded eggs. 

Maria wearing Nina McDaniel's 'gerdan' with an ostrich egg shell pendant. Photo: Ian Archer

This was first presented at the weeklong Pysanky Event from Feb. 25 to 29th organized by the Ukrainian Catholic Women's League of Canada (UCWLC) Museum of the Toronto Eparchy in conjunction with Canadian Ukrainian Art Foundation at the KUMF Gallery. 

 Beaded 'pysanky' display and Maria and Eugene's 'pysanky'. Photo: Ian Archer  

Maria's article in A Needle Pulling Thread, Spring 2011

Beaded 'pysanky' by artists from Ukraine

There was an exhibit of 'pysanky' by several artists, pysanky-making workshops, and a Sunday afternoon program with my presentation and a performance by a children's choir. I showed the pysanky presentation three more times to school children tours.

Ukrainian School students writing 'pysanky' at a Chromej Family workshop

Maria and Joyce try out electric 'kistky' styluses

Removing wax to reveal an electric 'pysanka'

Children's Choir from St. Mary's Dormition UCC. Photo: Ian Archer

UCWLC Museum Chair Marta Chomyn thanks pysanky artists: Maria Rypan, Parania Sozansky, Cassandra Wojchikowskyj, Maria Steventon, Doris Cherkas, Irene Chromej-Johnston. Photo: Ian Archer. (Lower) Olenka Kleban and Oksana Hawrylak of Kosa Kolekiv conducted pysanky workshops for St. Sophia School

St. Sophia School visit Pysanky Exhibit at KUMF Gallery

Grade 1 students journaling beaded 'pysanky'

Helen Basaraba's 'pysanky' inspire Grade 1 students

Best journal compliment by Grade 1 student

What's new at the Vernissage, Lviv

 Beaded pysanky eggs by Luba Frankevych

It's been a long while since I've shown beadwork, so it's appropriate to follow up the ANPT 'pysanky' article with new sources of beaded eggs. In my short visit to the Vernissage on Aug 26th, I found a lot of fresh new directions for gerdany beadwork. A few craftspeople had beaded pysanky.

I liked Luba Frankevych's display because she meticulously beadweaves intricately-patterned nets around wooden eggs. She's holding the largest egg whose detail can seen in the top left corner above. I purchased the next size down and one more for a keepsake.

Luba shows her largest pysanka

There were several new stands with beadwork. The new trend was three-dimensional florals or mosaic (Peyote) leaves formed into 'kalyna' bunches. The beaded flowers were added onto netted collars, bracelets or used for pendants and brooches. They came in all shapes and sizes with the poppy as the most favorite flower. I purchased the "Kalyna" creation in red on a matte black net in the center of the display board.

Display of Gerdany by Nadia Emelyanova 

Poppy brooches by Valentyna Konkolowskaya

Beaded "Pysanky" Eggs

Article by Maria Rypan, Spring 2011

Hot off the press! In time for Easter! My article about "Beaded "Pysanky Eggs" has just been published in the Canadian needle arts magazine, A Needle Pulling Thread, Spring 2011, pgs. 90-93.

"Pysanky", batik-style Easter eggs, are inherently Ukrainian. Purists shudder at the beaded "pysanka's" very existence. Some artists refer to the traditional motifs and designs for inspiration, but use beads to decorate eggs so the patterns become stylized.

Personally, I think there is a place for beaded eggs in this day and age. They may not have the talismanic powers of the real "pysanky", but they are beautiful and bring joy to the recipients.

This article talks about the different ways of applying beads on eggs in a "pysanka" style. Photos illustrate various methods and give an appreciation of how each and every bead is applied or beadwoven. Since no two eggs are the same, the article gives plenty of guideline for beading your own.

Several artists beaded "pysanky" illustrate the different application (gluing or beeswax) or beadweaving methods. Many photos and tips come from Vira Pavlova Witkovska's work. Vira is holding her butterfly ostrich egg while I show off her trident ("tryzub") egg at my last visit to the Vernisage in Lviv. Ivano Frankivsk teacher Maria Golovan kindly provided me with the step by step beadweaving photos and basket full of "beadwoven" pysanky. There's even a bead embroidered and stuffed one in the basket! There's no end to creativity!

Spring 2011, ISSN 1715-4650

Thank you to editor Carla Comanico for suggesting this article after she receiving my metric carton of beaded "pysanky" card. Get your issue for the maximum appreciation of this art form and other needle art projects.