Bead blog recap week 42

For anyone who's never read my recaps before, I just want to make it clear that I recap the posts I write not here, but on my other blog, Manekis Pärlblogg. A blog on beading and jewellery-making featuring projects, inspiration, product news, history articles, trivia and facts on anything related to beads and jewellery. The blog is written in Swedish, but you can translate it using Google Translate.


Make purple jewellery to show support
Jewellery has at least partially always been used to signal something. This is a challenge at a bead forum, inspired by a suggestion on FB to dress in purple or wear a purple accessoary on Oct 27 to show HBT teenagers that you support them and that they shouldn't feel ashamed or scared. That gay youths choose to end their own lives due to how they are treated is not just something that happens over there.

Beautiful wire flowers
K S Jewellery Designs has three lovely tutorials for how to make many different flower pendants using metal wire and a few beads. Be inspired both by their beauty and the many variations on one basic concept.

Alcohol inks
It's popular to use alcohol inks to colorize metals for jewellery right now, either on their own or together with acrylic paint, embossing, patinas etc. Read more about the inks as well as how to use them in jewellery-making.

Temari and kaga yubinuki
Temari is Japanese embroidered balls. Kaga yubinuki is Japanese thimbles. Both use the same type of geometric patterns and special "woven" embroidery. And both can be used as inspiration for making embroidered jewellery and beads.

Beadweaving with farfalle
Farfalle are Czech peanut-shaped beads that are often used in stringing. Many probably hesitate to do off-loom beadweaving with them due to their shape, but as Maggie shows the bead can be just perfect for herringbone, peyote, RAW and more.

Porphyry -- "the Swedish diamond"
Porphyry is easy to recognize with its white (or sometimes black) specks on a brownish or grey background. In Sweden, porphyry has an interesting history and is not least associated with the famed Älvdals porphyry (älvdalsporfyr). Artisans in the Älvdalen region still make porphyry jewellery for tourists.

Beads of Clay hosts virtual open studio blog event
Tomorrow, Sun Oct 24, a number of clayers (working with ceramic clay) will parttake in a blog event, a sort of open studio online, that will include giveaways, shop specials and more. Read about the event at the Beads of Clay blog.

Tila bead projects
The long awaited tila beads have been out for a little while now. Don't know how to use these two-hole beads? Here you find a collection of links to projects using this new innovative bead shape from Miyuki.