Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Making your own Beads

What a fabulous subject to blog about.  Thank you to the person who posted a query about this and started my mind spinning!

There are loads of different ways to make your own beads.  After all a bead is simply something with a hole in so that it can be threaded.  Beads have been around for millions of years and have been found in excavations of ancient civilisations.  They have always had both a decorative and a practical use.

How to make beads:

Polymer Clay:
Polymer clay beads do not need expensive materials or specialist tools (although tools used with polymer clay should not then be used with food stuffs.  The beads are cooked in conventional ovens at low heat.  This is a really easy eay to make your own simple or more elaborate beads.

These beads have been made by me and the desorative patterns are created from cane slices.

Lampwork beads:

The initial outlay for this type of bead is expensive, but worth investing in if you are going to keep up the hobby.  It need a good ventilated area and space to store gas cylinders, run kilns etc.
Lampwork refers to the torch over which the beads are created.



This is a really stunning example by Fairly Girly


Bead making kits can be purchased from Martin Tuffnell at Tuffnell Glass

Paper beads:



Needle Felted beads

The rising hobby of needle felting can be used to create fantastic beads.

These examples of needle felted beads are by Tanith


Seeds for beads

There are lots of seeds like melons, conkers, acorns etc that can be used to create beads.

You can make this bracelet by following this tutorial

You can get help with all the above methods on The Crafts Forum

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