Happy New Year all! Looking back on last year I realise I didn’t manage to post very much beadwork at all – so I’m going to start this year off with a few posts to try and rectify that!

Here’s one of my favourite pieces from those I made last year, a bugle bead icosahedra made from clusters of tetrahedra and pentagonal bipyramids. This is based on a GeoMag version of the shape made by Livio Zucca.

I used what I call polyhedral RAW (PolyRAW?) and nylon monofilament to weave it, and it’s very stable – these larger geometric shapes can be a bit unpredictable when made this way, and some end up collapsing on themselves, but fortunately this one is just as stable in bugle beads as it is in GeoMag.

It’s made up of 12 pentagonal bipyramids (which are Johnson Solid J13) and 60 tetrahedra – with five tetrahedra clustered around each bipyramid. I haven’t been able to find any other references to this shape so far, although I have found a lot of information about pentagonal bipyramids and molecular geometry!