Making sure any instructions I'm involved with are easy to understand has always been a big priority for me, even down to spending 5 days on a graphic design course to explore the subject.

When I began beading and crafting I attended many classes where you were just given a handout which was badly photocopied from someone else's book, or no handouts at all.

I hated picking up a project a few months after the class and having no idea where to even begin. So, when I started writing up my own projects, I did so with the aim that everything I knew about that project would be included and they'd be written so anyone picking them up years after a class, or without having seen the item in person, could hopefully understand them.

Over the years I've written up hundreds of my own projects and through 4 years as a beading magazine editor, and through writing 5 books with projects from other people in, I've had the opportunity to work on hundreds more projects. I've also taught hundreds of classes with many students who all learn in different ways so I'm always looking out for new ways to describe techniques or increase understanding and make my instructions better.

Who knows how many steps I've written, photos I've taken and diagrams I've drawn in that time!

I'm not naturally good with technology but thankfully Mr Jean Power (I promise this is his preferred moniker) is and so he did my first diagrams for me all those years ago, before teaching me how to to do them myself.

But it seemed time for a revamp and so over the past month I've spent a lot of time sitting and drawing beads, diagrams, thread-paths etc all to better learn the software and try to make my diagrams nicer looking, easier to understand and easier to draw. I've been studying sizes & dimensions and even how the light hits beads to try and make them more realistic looking

It's all still a work in progress but keep an eye out for the new diagrams beginning to creep into my patterns as well as the 2 books I'm quietly working away on...