…compilation of tutorials
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
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:
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.
Cut the wrapped slab with a small knife down to the skewer at regular intervals, I made my future beads about 3 mm wide.
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.
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.
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
Now comes the time where it gets (hopefully) warm.
You sometimes need a cooling then and I find the ice jewelry perfect for this: ice cube stars with ‘pickled’ petals.
They could be used as earrings, too!?
Brrr! ;-)
Links:
Ice Jewelry (cool jewels)
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:
First I took two sheets of plain printer paper and simply doodled at one side with a blue ballpoint pen.
Then I cut the sheets in strips of the same width…
… and rolled my paper strips with my nifty paper bead roller in a wonderful short time.
Of course the hole of the bead is split into two holes, too, because my bead roller consists of two halves.
I ‘stirred’ the hole again with a toothpick so that only one big hole remained.
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 ;-)
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.
Looks good, doesn’t it? ;-)
I wasn’t sure yet what I would do with my beads on this photo.
It became a bracelet in the end. I simply strung the beads on an elastic and hid the knot in a bead.
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.
So I picked an ad with a photo of bed sheets where I liked the clour scheme.
Then I measured the circumference of my doodled paper beads with a string and cut strips from the ad a little broader than necessary.
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.
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.
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.
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
Here at unikatissima:
Paper Beads Roller
Entries containing the words ‘paper’ and ‘bead’
I saw the instruction about how to make wire wrapped marble earrings and found it great.
But 1. I’d find real marbles too heavy in my ears and 2. I didn’t have any ;-)
So I took a pebble and wrapped it with the same technique with common anodised garden wire.
I think that it is suitable as jewelry only to a limited extent, because I think that the wire does not give a comfortable feeling on the skin. But on the other hand I can say that I can really recommend the instruction ;-))
Links:
Wire Wrapped Marble Earrings (Tutorial Wire wrap alla Kitica) – simply click the thumbnail
Here at unikatissima:
Entries concerning wire wrapping and/or marbles:
Wire Wrapped Ring – a wire ring
Wire Wrapped Hardware – a lot of stuff wrapped with wire
Bead Wrapping Technique – something similar to this
Fried Marbles – make marbles much more interesting
Glass Pebble Ring – a wire ring with an inserted glass pebble
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
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’
I find those polymer clay beads so beautiful and there is a great tutorial on how to make them ;-)
Have fun swirling :)
Links:
Lentil Swirled Beads
There remained some leftovers from our cut plastic bottle, from which we already made a knitting loom and a plastic box and we can use them to make some beads.
In the instruction on how to make plastic bottle beads they roll up the plastic strip and melt it together with a heat gun.
I don’t have no heat gun and I’m a little afraid of possibly developing fumes, therefore I did it in a different way:
I brought water to the boil in my craft pan (which I don’t use for food preparation anymore!).
Then I cut a stripe from the plastic bottle and rolled tightly using some tweezers.
Look out, it always try to uncoil!
I hold the rolled ‘bead’ with my craft wooden pliers (also not used for food preparation anymore) into the simmering water and in seconds the bead was finished.
I don’t know if I could have coloured the bead with permanent markers, I’ve forgotten to test this.
Besides the end doesn’t fuse with the bead, but it doesn’t open neither.
Because it always wanted to uncoil I hold it quite firm with my wooden pliers and the bead became a little flat.
Pressing it in the other direction and dipping into the simmering water again didn’t make the bead round.
But 1. I like the shape and 2. I think it’s only a matter of practice.
Links:
Plastic Bottle Beads
I’ve often seen bowls made from old vinyl records, but I find the bracelets from vinyl records nevertheless special.
Even so I won’t make none because I won’t be able to ‘batter’ the vinyl records like that ;-)
Links:
At craftster: Vinyl Record Bracelets
