"A blog dedicated to the art of making paper beads & paper bead jewelry...by Janice Mae"
Christmas Colored African Trade Beads
I love the vibrant “Christmassy” color of these African Trade Beads and how similar they are to the brightly colored olive shaped paper beads made out from magazines and catalogs. They come in 36 inch strand in large and small sizes. They are made of glass in an assortment of bright colors predominantly yellow, green and red. I took out one strand and mixed it with different shape of paper beads mostly the smaller paper beads and made bracelets and necklaces out of it.
Don’t you just love these colors?
The olive shaped paper goes very well with it.
I made one, with one stone as a focal bead with a magnetic clasp.
Three diamond shaped paper beads in the center, certainly adds interest to this bracelet, strung on elastic.
You can make several elastic bracelet like these:
Look, how pretty they are worn together.
I still have some beads left over for a necklace to match all these pretty bracelets.
Long and Lovely Paper Bead Necklace
I am happy to tell everyone that we are working on an online shop dedicated to selling handmade beautiful paper beads jewelry. I would like to set aside a time each day to make some nice pieces for the upcoming shop. Each finished jewelry will be shared with you, hopefully inspiring you to try something new, be more creative. A good New Year’s resolution, I think. The long necklaces are all over magazines and catalogs, and so I came up with one using mixed stones and different shapes of paper beads but mostly the diamond shaped ones.
It is about 47 inches long and can be worn doubled up.
Or as a belt…
One of my favorite style is the lariat.
What have you done with your paper beads?
Paper Bead Threader Earrings
Paper beads is just perfect for earrings because they are lightweight, you can make them into chandelier earrings or dangling earrings, it gives you the desired look but also easy on your ears. When I saw this threader earring finding, I thought they would be perfect for a single paper bead. I chose what I call the diamond shaped paper bead for this project.
Materials you need are the following: threader earring finding (available www.aubreysbeads.com), tear drop shaped (briolet) crystals, 4mm bicone or round crystals or any bead of your choice, 3 inches eye pin, bead cap, spacer and 26 gauge silver or craft wire.
First, you take the 3 inch eye pin and put in bead cap, paper bead, spacer and 4 mm bicone (in this order), make a wire loop (please check our tutorials), before closing the loop attach it into the ring and the end of the threader and wire wrap. It should just take you 15 minutes to do the earring. Of course, what is fun and takes longer time is the selection of the beads.
I have made them using tear drop shaped crystals with the 4mm bicone. I think the Crystal Topaz Threader Earrings came out really nice, can be worn day or night.
I also did it in blue sapphire crystal.
Something Old….
My love for old and vintage, in fact my love for anything used and old was influenced by my mother. I remember that she was not crafty or anything like that she does not even sew, but she loved taking laces and trims from old clothes and using them to spruce up an old dress. She would always describe colors to me like, yellow like an egg yolk or pink like old rose. I thought of her when I found this vintage leaf pin from a thrift store. It looked like it has been missing a stem and the pin backing was just soldered. It has been sitting in my box for almost two years now, waiting for the perfect vintage black ribbon that I thrifted.
This is how the back looks like.
Vintage black velvet ribbon, about one inch wide, I had to sew along the long edges to make it not as wide, I then just then attached it to a ribbon finding.
This would look good worn with a lacy dress or tee shirt and jeans. What do you think?
Happy Thanksgiving!
Around this time, a prayer I learned as a child from my mother comes to mind:
Thank you for the world so sweet
Thank you for the food we eat
Thank you for the birds that sing
Thank you God, for everything
– E. Rutter Leatham
I loved the simplicity of this poem and it always evokes childhood memories for me. I remember sitting down with my mother and saying it over and over until I had it memorized. I looked up the author of this poem and found it here.
It was a beautiful day today, perfect for sitting outside with friends.
It is not complete without the guava punch.
A table set with napkin rings made out of paper beads.
Sweet sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves.
Salted eggs
Turkey cup cakes that someone brought over to share.
Here’s to all the things that we’re thankful for….
Delicious Cream Caramel by my friend Susie.
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