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In my last post I mentioned that I had made a few jewelry pieces from the extra fair trade brass and bone beads leftover from my handwoven runner projects. I thought my readers might like to see some of those pictures so here they are…

I made these earrings and then made this earthy necklace to go with them.

The round elephant disc is made from FIMO clay that I impressed using one of my rubber stamps. Recently I added a light layer of off-white paint to just the elephant part of the clay and then burnished it with a light layer of antique bronze coloring. I’ll try to post a picture of those changes when I get a chance to take a few more pic.

Pictured above are several additional sets of earrings that I made. Two of the pairs of earrings have lava beads in them. I added the lava beads because they are porous and I can add a drop of essential oil to them. It’s like having a little therapeutic uplifting scent added to the back of your ear.

I made this necklace to match the above earrings. Once again I used FIMO clay for the bottom focus part of the necklace. This time I added a little bit of bronze color to the stamped design in the clay. This is one of my favorite jewelry sets to wear, and since the colors are neutral these pieces go with lots of different outfits.

This is just a quick post to show you some of my handmade jewelry. My next post will include pictures of the other runners I made and embellished with the fair trade brass and bone beads.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! Until next time….

….I wish you Peace

Turning plain white Tyvek paper into these colorful beads!!

My latest project has been making these beautiful paper beads. Just the kind of project my happy painting fingers were ready for! I had been watching several videos online about making these beads and decided I definitely wanted to make some, so I ordered 20 sheets of Tyvek paper from Amazon. I did see that several of the people in the videos also used Tyvek envelopes that they had saved from something they received in the mail or from a friend that had recently put insulation on their house and had some of the extra tyvek paper. I was very surprised at how strong this paper is, I couldn’t even tear it! But it did submit to the coaxing from my heatgun to make some very interesting shapes!

To begin making these beads I first crumpled the paper up, then flattened it back out for painting. I knew that would add some dimension as I painted these white sheets of Tyvek with several colors and layers of acrylic paints. I made sure to add in some glitz by painting on some metallic gold paint as you can see from these pictures.

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After I painted the front side I let it dry and then I also painted the backside. Once the paper was completely dry on both sides, I cut it into strips. Some of the strips I cut into long triangle shapes, some I cut into other various shapes and sizes.

Then the fun began! Using only one strip at a time I wrapped the painted paper onto a dowel ( I used several sizes of dowels to get the different sizes of beads). Once the strip was wrapped onto the dowel I pinned it with a straight pin to hold the strip of paper in place.

Once I knew the paper was well secured I used my heat gun to begin “melting” the paper strip to itself and help it to create textures and curls in the “bead”.

Here are the beads that I ended up making…

For the beads pictured below I laid beads on the paper that the strips for them had been cut. As you can see the color of the beads can sometimes look very different from the way that the paper had been painted.

As you can see from the pictures I made a lot of beads! The process was very fun and addictive! It was always fun to see what the result would be from the heat being applied to the painted paper and to see what the shape of the bead would be from the way I had cut the strips.

I am already picturing all the fun things I want to make using these beads! Definitely jewelry and I have a few other fun things in mind that I would like to try!

I hope you enjoyed seeing how these beads were made and will drop back in for a visit when I post the pictures of the resulting art pieces made from these beads!

Until next time……

…..I Wish You Peace