Come Into My Garden Bracelets
I am taking advantage of my renewed interest with buttons. Here’s bracelet sets to match the paper bead button ring from yesterday. These are little garden creature buttons strung with round paper beads. This is what I call “happy bracelet”. You know how you just want to be a kid again and paint you toe nails different colors? Well, I do feel like that sometimes and if you noticed I paint my nails happy colors. Here’s the ingredients for a well kept garden:
Garden Creatures Buttons
Check out you local craft stores for buttons, they range from whimsical to vintage, just make sure the button has a shank that elastic can go through.
Paper beads are perfect elastic bracelets because they have holes that are big enough to accommodate elastic knot. You just want to make sure to secure the knot with a little dab of clear nail polish.
Idea 1 for the Paper Bead Trade 🙂 You can make whatever you want with the kit I will be sending you, add your own beads if you like, as long as you use the paper beads that comes with the kit which comes from your new found friends.
BTW, I am not putting a limit on the Paper Bead Trade participants, the more the merrier right? As long as you sign up on or before June 30th. I just need you to email me your address so I can send you your kit:)
I just have to share with this guy who lives in my garden, a remembrance in my antiquing days. He is funny and I can’t help but smile when I see him.
I would love it if you would share with me and with everyone your ideas, just email it to me and I will link it to your blog or web site. Let’s get those creative juices flowing 🙂
A Button Ring
This is an impromptu post, I couldn’t wait, just have to share it with you. As I was organizing my beads preparing for the Paper Bead Trade,( by the way you can still email me or sign up, as long as it is on or before June 30th) I rediscovered my button collection. They are very inexpensive and comes in a bag, I think I got this in one of my trips to Michael’s, one of those things that “I just gotta have” 🙂
Flowers in my back yard is an inspiration.
This ring is very simple to make, it took me a whole 30 minutes to do it and if I have time I will do a video. I used really small paper beads. Tip: To make really small paper beads, cut triangles that measure 1/8 of an inch at the base and 8.5 inches long, using magazine or catalog pages. The result are tiny paper beads around 4-5 mm.
I used 24 gauge craft wire and put it through the button holes, strung the small round paper beads, twist the wire to form into a petal until you have 5 or 6 petals.
You finished it off by twisting the two wires together and curl it into a spiral to sit in the center of the ring.
You will then hot glue gun the button into a ring blank and voila!
I have a few people signed up for the Paper Bead Trade, for those of you who already have tons of paper beads 🙂 you can mail them to me so we don’t have to be rushing. Thank you for the nice emails, truly appreciated.
My Paper Beads – Hilde Debruyn
I have created a new category: My Paper Beads to feature paper beads that are made by paper bead enthusiasts from other parts of the world. Hilde Debruyn who is from Belgium, combines her paper beads with unusual beads and finds to achieve that organic look. She carefully describes each one of her creation, the kind of paper and beads she used:
This necklace I made with scrap booking paper pasted on small pieces of cardboard. In stead of scrap booking paper I made some similar necklaces with starched papers too.
Black and White
I started this necklace with a big silver bead (I kept this bead from a broken necklace). I completed it with little silver cube beads and paperbeads. I found the paper for this beads in my letterbox. They are made with promotional leaflets with a white background. On the other side I put a double string with ancient African tradebeads. They are made of glass. I bougth them in an African shop in Brussels.
Silver and African Beads
Here I made a very long necklace (4 times the usual length). It’s very colorful. I made it from magazine papers and I joined a lot of little yellow squares from an old necklace from my mother. I took the picture on a stone in the shape of a heart. The stone is carved. As you can see there are small roses on it.
A Heart Of Stone
This necklace is also made with magazine papers. I chose papers with an orange colour in it, so it could be combined with the silk textile bead. A friend of mine made it for me. I also used a big coral and some small orange-red beads.
With Orange Fabric Bead
This necklace is photographed on a small raffia tablecloth from Congo (a present from my aunt). It’s made of gift wrapping paper (craft paper with stripes) I used a red spherical and some olive wooden beads from Santorini (Greece).
Red and Green
The tubes are made of gift wrapping paper with little colorful figures on it (for a gift for children). I used small wooden beads, and also a very big wooden bead and a red bead (dry vegetable material).
TUBES
We still have room for the Paper Bead Trade, you can sign up by e mailing me your address (Email Me button is on the right hand side).
Thank you Hilde, for sharing your beautiful work. We will be posting ideas and inspiration for the Paper Bead Trade in the next week or so.
Read MoreGolden Shellback’s Cuff
This cuff which I call the Golden Shellback’s Cuff is encrusted with shells and paper beads. I learned about Golden Shellback when my son joined the U.S. Navy. One of the most precious thing he brought home was the Golden Shellback Certificate which I framed and now have a special place in my home. Wikepedia defines Golden Shellback as:
The ceremony of Crossing the Line is an initiation rite in the Royal Navy, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Marine Corps, and other navies that commemorates a sailor’s first crossing of the Equator. Originally, the tradition was created as a test for seasoned sailors to ensure their new shipmates were capable of handling long rough times at sea. Sailors who have already crossed the Equator are nicknamed (Trusty) Shellbacks, often referred to as Sons of Neptune; those who have not are nicknamed (Slimy) Pollywogs.
The Certificate itself is like a work of art, with drawings of Mermaids, King Neptune, crabs and porpoises and other denizens of the sea as what they’re called.
My collection of shells.
And paper beads.
The foundation of this cuff is 140 lb paper that I folded into a round and covered with fleece.
I used hot glue gun to adhere the shells and paper beads into the cuff.
The olive shaped paper beads and the smaller round beads were used to fill in the gaps.
This is such a conversation piece and so easy to do. You can purchase shells and some of them are colored at your local craft store.
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