Balloon Box Beaded Beads

Artbeads declared December as their month of Silver & Glass for their blogger partner program, and seeing as it's now January, I'm quite tardy in posting my contribution...

For this set of projects, I decided to sample some of their "medium" 6 by 9 mm Czech glass teardrop beads for some beadweaving experiments. My prior teardrop beaded bead projects use the smaller 4 by 6 mm Czech teardrop beads, and I wanted to see if I could make a beaded bead from the larger teardrops.

I'm totally stoked about the result! These beaded beads make great solo pendants as well as neat necklace components, and they're so fun to make too! I've named this design the "Balloon Box":

I used the "German Purple" shade of Czech glass teardrops for the above beaded bead, as well as some 2 mm round sterling silver beads and Japanese seed beads. Here's one in "Medium Amethyst/Copper":

And here's one in "Medium Turquoise/Picasso":

I had so much fun with these beaded beads that I made three more of them for a necklace, combined with some Bali silver hollow swirling wire beads and additional Czech glass beads and silver beads from my own stash:

The beaded beads in the necklace are in the same German Purple shade of glass that I used in the first pendant, but I changed the colors of the Japanese seed beads to a darker hue:

And finally, I made a simple pair of matching earrings with the Bali silver beads:

I'll definitely be making more of these Balloon Box beaded beads in the future!

Full disclosure: The Czech glass teardrop beads, 2 mm round sterling silver beads, and Bali silver beads used in these projects were received as a gift from Artbeads.com. No payment was made for the review of these products.