Beaded Bicone Bead

beadwork about_com Bicone Bead

Finally a beaded bead again ;-)

I like this one very much, the shape is more dynamic than the one of the easy Peyote beads that I presented at the paper beads.

I haven’t tried them yet (of course!) but I will one day ;-)


Links:
Beaded Bicone Bead

Peyote Bead (Beaded Bead)

Here at unikatissima:
Making Paper beads
Entries with the tag ‘beaded beads’

Beaded Spiral Button

beadwork about_com Spiral Button

While surfing I found a beautiful spiral button.
I have to give it a try ;-)

If I don’t like it, I can still come back to my own spiral beads ;-)
Or to the folded spirals.
Or the crochet spiral ;-)))


Links:
Spiral Button Free Bead Pattern

Here at unikatissima:
Beaded Spiral Beads
Folded Spirals
Crochet Spiral

Skinner Blend Beads Necklace


unikatissima Skinner Blend Necklace

I made some nice necklaces from very narrow polymer clay beads where the bead colours are blended – and I wanted to present them now.

 

That’s what you do:

 
unikatissima Skinner Blend Necklace
First make a Skinner Blend (a ploymer clay slab with a colour blend).
I blended it from light green to blue.
Cut the slab in stripes and wrap them around one or more kebab skewers – not too firm or you get problems taking them off, later.
Join the edges thoroughly and with care so that the beads won’t fall apart later.
At the top of the photo you see a piece of light green polymer clay, that will become contrasting beads.

By the way: If you don’t have a pasta machine for the Skinner Blend (never use a pasta machine used for polymer clay for food again!) you can find hints on how you can manage without it via the links below.

 

unikatissima Skinner Blend Necklace
Cut the wrapped slab with a small knife down to the skewer at regular intervals, I made my future beads about 3 mm wide.

 

unikatissima Skinner Blend Necklace
Bake the polymer clay following the instructions and get the beads off the skewer(s) carefully.
On this photo you see my light green contrasting bead that I put between the others to make it look more interesting and you see a silver bead where I don’t remember how I coloured it.
I think that I used silver coloured metallic powder that I bought for some Mica shift projects.

 

unikatissima Skinner Blend Necklace
I threaded my beads on a self-dyed violet silk cord and made the clasp from a black braided band and a big, round light green bead.

 

unikatissima Skinner Blend Necklace
And that is a red necklace with Skinner Blend beads that I gave away – I’m sorry for the poor quality of the picture, when I took the photo at that time I didn’t know how to make good photos.
On both sides of the black central bead I let the colour blend go from light to dark red and loosened it up with narrow black beads.
The earrings are simply cones that I rounded at the top and that I carved slightly horizontally to make them match the necklace.

 


Links:
Skinner Blend

Don’t have a pasta machine?
Making A Jellyroll Cane Without A Pasta Machine
via: Glass Attic – Pasta machines – click on ‘No pasta machine?–other ways …guide rails’

Pasta Free Skinner Blend (Video)

Here at unikatissima:
Polymer Clay Mica Shift

Taking Photos from Jewelry
Poor Man Side Flash

St.Petersburg Necklace

Cut Out + Keep St Petersburg Necklace

I found a beading tutorial for a beautiful necklace, the St. Petersburg necklace.

Doesn’t only look wonderful but seems to be easy to make, but I have to try this yet ;-)


Links:
St.Petersburg Necklace

Additionally I found (but unfortunately I can’t remember how) a PDF-file with this tutorial: Stitch a St. Petersburg to make a lariat or necklace designed by Hatsumi Oshitani (PDF – ca 600 KB)

Making Paper Beads

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads

After I’ve made my paper beads roller that I presented yesterday I played around with paper beads a little more.

I prefer the tube beads anyway (marginally ;-)) and after having seen the paper bead designer I thought: ‘Yes, a little bit of colour is enough, you can’t see the rest anyway.’

So I quickly made me some doodle paper beads ;-)

And that’s what you do:

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
First I took two sheets of plain printer paper and simply doodled at one side with a blue ballpoint pen.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
Then I cut the sheets in strips of the same width…

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
… and rolled my paper strips with my nifty paper bead roller in a wonderful short time.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
Of course the hole of the bead is split into two holes, too, because my bead roller consists of two halves.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
I ‘stirred’ the hole again with a toothpick so that only one big hole remained.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
Somehow I didn’t want to use the glue excess as varnish for the beads, so I used a simple glue stick and covered the beads afterwards with medium gel. Here you can see them drying.
My potted palm got special leave on my balcony for it ;-)

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
Although I find my doodled paper beads beautiful I thought that I would look boring if I string only them, therefore I made some additional easy Peyote beads.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
Looks good, doesn’t it? ;-)
I wasn’t sure yet what I would do with my beads on this photo.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
It became a bracelet in the end. I simply strung the beads on an elastic and hid the knot in a bead.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
And here an ‘action shot’ ;-)
It’s not so easy to take a good photo of your own arm ;-))

 

After I had finished with my doodled paper beads I thought, that this was a great way to make a lot of matching paper beads from advertising flyers.

 

unikatissima Magazine Paper Beads
So I picked an ad with a photo of bed sheets where I liked the clour scheme.

 

unikatissima Magazine Paper Beads
Then I measured the circumference of my doodled paper beads with a string and cut strips from the ad a little broader than necessary.

 

unikatissima Magazine Paper Beads
I glued the strips from the ad at one side of a plain printer paper sheet and cut the resulting papers in (in this case) 1 cm broad strips, because I wanted to have little beads.

 

unikatissima Magazine Paper Beads
I glued some patches from the rest of my ad on details that I didn’t like, they won’t to be seen on the bead.

 

unikatissima Magazine Paper Beads
Here my beads are drying on a wire because I cut about 80 paper strips and I don’t have enough toothpicks or plants for the drying process ;-)
This time I used a water-based craft glue that glues fast but dries slowly.
This is great because I could varnish my beads easily with the excess of the glue which made them shine and when my fingers eventually got sticky I could wash the glue easily away with water.

 

unikatissima Magazine Paper Beads
I have not yet finished, but I find my paper beads beautiful, a little bit like made from Jade.
We will see what they will become :)

 


Links:
Paper Bead Designer

Peyote Bead (Beaded Bead)

Here at unikatissima:
Paper Beads Roller
Entries containing the words ‘paper’ and ‘bead’

French Flower Beading

craftster French Beaded Flower Jewelry

Recently I’ve seen these fantastic beaded flowers at craftster.
Usually I’m not one for beaded flowers but I find these so beautiful.
The thread is no tutorial and it seems that she hasn’t written one yet (I’d say that she don’t want to) but somewhere in the comments they mention a basic tutorial for French flower beading that I found great at first sight.

Perhaps soon;-)


Links:
At craftster:
French Flower Beading
Other threads of the same author, some of them show French flower beading, too

French Flower Beading – Basic Technique

Beaded Freeform Wire Crochet

sqbr Freeform Wire Crochet

I really love freeform and freeform crochet and therefore I found of course the instruction on how to crochet a freeform necklace with wire and beads instruction on how to crochet a freeform necklace with wire and beadsinteresting.
I haven’t tried it yet because I (still) have no jewelry wire and she wrote that her wire has since gone all rusty – it doesn’t have to come to this.
I will make the necklace one day!


Links:
How to make a beaded freeform wire crochet necklace
The original site doesn’t exist any more and is now available through webarchive:
How to make a beaded freeform wire crochet necklace
Thanks, Louise, for telling me! :)

Here at unikatissima:
Entries with the tag ‘freeform’
Entries containing ‘freeform’ and ‘crochet’

Weave Wrapped Bead Buttons

unikatissima Embroidered Bead Buttons

Once I found an instruction on making buttons by weave wrapping wooden beads and tried it immediatley with different weave patterns: It is great!
I really like the weave wrapping of the buttons and find that the results are too beautiful to be used as buttons, I like them more as beads ;-)


Links:
Weave Wrapped Bead Buttons – scroll down to ‘To construct this type of button,…’

Here at unikatissima: Entries with the tag ‘button’

Beaded Tubular Net

unikatissima TubularNet Necklaces

For a certain time I worked tubular nets, e.g. to make necklaces like the ones on the photo.
I find them beautiful and that a simply eye catcher like the beaded freeform bead is enough. Additionally they are wonderful soft because the tubular net is so elastic.

 

unikatissima TubularNet Glass Tubes detail You can use tubular netting as well to bead glass tubes like at the bead and wire wall vase or to bead little bottles.

 


Links:
TubularNet
Netz-Ketten (German) (short description, scroll down to ‘Netz-Ketten’)

Net technique (German) (not tubular)

Here at unikatissima:
Bead and Wire Wall Vase
Beaded Bottle

Entries with the tag ‘vase’