Peanuts!

What wonderful undulations are created when you use a peanut beads in place of another! These stone color beads...of the #900 series, are beautiful when showcased on this bracelet next to black and silver. They would be equally pretty next to other shades of gray and brown I'm sure. A fun way to experiment with the peanut beads is to replace a seed bead in your pattern with these little beauties. Here, using a peyote stitch, they replace a line of size 8 seed beads. They have more vertical way about them and look good inside the piece as well as on the outside perimeter. Note the little detail on top of the loops of the slide closure, a size 6 sb with a Delica or size 15sb on top. Do this after you secure the slide to your work, used as embellishment only.

Tila Beauty

What a fun new bead is the Tila! I have had a great time developing new pieces using these beads in the most unsual ways. This piece involves peyote, square stitch and right-angle-weave, just to keep it simple! The most exciting part is that I haven't seen this version any where yet, so I'm happily submitting this item to a bead mag and we'll cross fingers and hope it sees the light of day! Of course, it will be on my roster of classes at Monica's Quilt and Bead Creations for those more adventurous students. The beads here are Tila beads, 4mm fire-polish and size 11 seed beads built using one-G thread, altho' I would also us Fireline or Wildfire.

A big plus...my daughter, Dawn and her friend, Jessica both admired the piece, so it could be a hit! Maybe Dawn would wear one in grays and black???

Tila Film Strip Bracelet

What a wonderful chance to use these marvelous Tila Beads! Work this braclelet as you would a semi precious stone leather wrapped bracelet, just remember to stay in place and catch both holes! On this piece I used both a matte and shiny gray Tila bead, just picked up at random and it created such a translucent effect that I thought it looked like film strips...you know the old 35mm kind before there was digital media! Each color used weighed about 10 grams of tila beads and the leather was 1.5mm thick.