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’

Wire Wrapped Pebble Pendant

unikatissima Wire Wrapped Pebble Pendant

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

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’

Making Hollow Tube Beads from Polymer Clay

Polymer Clay Central Hollow Bead

Ok, the title isn’t the best ever made, but the bead does look beautiful, doesn’t it? ;-)
I have it on my have-a-go-at-it-list for a long time already but it keeps being pushed down by other projects.
Now I place it back to the top ;-)


Links:
At Polymer Clay Central: Making Hollow Tube Beads