Paper Beads!

 

As alluded to in my last post I have been making paper beads. I should say again as I made hundreds of them a few years ago, I filled a good half dozen of those 36 compartment bead boxes. I tend to go all in when I start something and then drop it and not even look at it again for ages.

 

B&Q leaflet used width-ways, 6 strips glued together.

I’d been using some of my older beads to make jewellery when I got the urge to start making them again. Fortunately I still had a stack of old magazine pages from my previous endeavours.

 

This was a recipe involving king prawns.

They are ridiculously easy to make and it is so relaxing just sitting rolling strips of paper up. I like that you have no idea how they are going to come out until they are finished. I like to give mine a couple of coats of glaze (I use Diamond Glaze) and it completely changes the look of them when they’ve got a gloss coating on.

 

I started taking a photograph of the page before it’s cut up and the finished beads bear no resemblance to the original paper at all. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed in the end results, well not yet anyway.

 

These are mostly magazine pages though there is one set made from a DIY store leaflet and another made from hair dye instructions. The tools I use for rolling are just bamboo cocktail sticks with the pointy ends cut off and a little slit cut into them to hold the end of the paper. It’s a properly cheap set up but the results don’t look cheap and I think you’d be hard pressed to tell that they are made from old magazine pages.

 

Advert for hair dye.

Hair dye instructions.

Bangles!

 

I could feel myself getting an itch to make bangles. I wanted skinny bangles that could be stacked. My preferred method for bangles is to use 16-gauge wire cut straight from the coil, it is usually just the right size. I curl one end into a loop thread the beads on, loop the other end and join with a jump ring, usually with a charm of some kind attached.

Obviously, I got carried away.

I started with beads from kits by ‘Jewelry Made By Me’, which I bought in T.K.Maxx last Halloween. The kits come with beading elastic to make stretch bracelets but I don’t like wearing those, they’re too close fitting for me. So I made bangles with little words on, I made one with my name on because I never find stuff with my name on it.

 

Then I thought I would really like a bangle made using the beads from a random mix I found in a charity shop. Then I thought I wanted one with different pearly beads. Then a black one, a silver one, a brassy one. Then I remembered the strings of marbled beads that I had stashed.

 

 

In all this frenzy of bangle making I also made a couple of pairs of hoopy earrings which I make in the same way I make the bangles but with the wire shaped around something smaller. I tend to use paper beads for these as they weigh next to nothing.

 

Guess who is now on a frenzy of paper bead making?