Monday, January 11, 2010

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.

6 comments:

  1. Nice to know I'm not the only tardy one...I just posted too. I really love the turquoise one....I seem to be on a turquoise kick lately.

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  2. Jepp, the turquoise one is my fav, too. The bubbles really look like balloons. Great choice for the name!

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  3. Thanks Mikki and Kokopelli! I usually don't work in turquoise so that one was a departure from my usual color schemes. I'll have to explore turquoise more in the future!

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  4. I am new to beading and was wondering what you used for spacers.. By the way these are beautiful!!

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  5. Thanks Debbie and D! For spacers between the beaded beads and the Bali silver beads, I used 8/0 palladium-plated Japanese seed beads and 6 mm Czech firepolished glass beads. I tend to frequently rely on those kinds of beads as spacers!

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