Once in a while we share tips on recycling…
Turn an old pill box into a bead organizer!
Bedtime -- time for purple peyote!
This works best for seed beads, since the compartments are small. You can organize your beads by color, while stashing them securely to avoid pesky bead spills.
And if you’re seriously compulsive, you get a built-in reminder of which color to use at which time of day.
Here’s a quick tip that we found at the excellent Starving Jewelry Artists discussion forum:
Multipurpose this: learn another use for wire protectors!
“I shared this with a friend awhile back and she thought it was a great idea. I came up with it out of frustration.
“I use wire guards (or what ever name you may call them) as extra protection and finishing when using watch faces.
“I never liked the look of the beading wire going through the hole but more than that I was concerned about the durability. I always used two strands of high quality beading wire but never felt extremely confident. Now I have no worries and although it is obvious I still think it looks a little better or more finished.”
- Sophisticated Hippie
Know another great tip for using findings? Share it here in a comment!
The featured bead this week is the CRYSTALLIZED™ – Swarovski Elements #6906 orchid pendant. Here’s why:
The crystal orchid pendant is lovely to start with. But you can get more for your money, and so can your customers, if you multi-purpose this bead into fashionable steampunk designs.
Given the steampunk affection for making things industrial look pretty, how about a crystal propeller?
This pendant comes in various colors, so blend it into an overall color “blueprint” in your designs. For starters, we’ve thought of using these on leather cuffs from Tafuri Tough. Here’s a similar idea recently made by Cindy Gimbrone using glass beads:
Steampunk "Deconstructed watch" / propellers pendant by Cindy Gimbrone
This is a good illustration of how you can add in some cogs, maybe some wire, watch parts…the sky’s the limit for propeller beads!
Do you have a steampunk inspiration? Lots of components can be re-purposed to use in this style. Share your ideas in a comment!
Looking at the new Wedding / Bridal / Prom section that we’re building in our Design Gallery, I learned a technique…
Strand enhancers can grow your business. For a second, I thought this might mean “necklace extenders“, which are amazingly useful findings themselves.
But no, strand enhancers are yet a different way of offering extra value to your jewelry customers. They instantly make any necklace into a “Y” necklace, as @wendytgibson put it on Twitter. See one detached, and one in action, in this “Always a Bridesmaid” necklace design:
The "Always a Bridesmaid" design from Rings & Things
For this necklace, designer Cindy made the “pearl enhancer” with a #39-541-11 9×15mm oval no-trigger lobster clasp, in sterling silver. Have a custom wedding order? You can make clip-on strand enhancers with colors that match the bridesmaids’ dresses!
You can take this idea to craft fairs and jewelry shops too! Offer necklace-buying customers a matching strand enhancer for a little sales bump. They let the customer multi-purpose her necklace, choosing the style she wants. And they’re easy to make — so you could even offer to “build to order”. As @CreationsWHeart (also on Twitter) pointed out, “I can see how you could come up w/ a ton of designs whether it’s on a chain or beaded necklace! How fun!”
PS: A little extra design trick is to use seed beads in a pearl necklace like the one seen here. They’re easy, affordable spacers and they take far less time than knotting the cord!
Want to suggest more necklace design tricks and tips? Share them in a comment below. You’ll be entered in our drawing!
Multipurposing tip: Rings & Things’ sterling silver teapot bead caps also make a magical Aladdin’s lamp charm.
Sterling silver teapot bead cap (Rings & Things #43-546-02)
Credit goes to @tamdoll on Twitter for this great craft business tip! Just “cap” this finding around your favorite 10- to 12mm bead. It makes a fine addition to a charm bracelet, or earrings… Here’s another style that we offer:
Sterling silver teapot bead cap (Rings & Things #43-546-01)
This means you have at least three flavors of lamp for Arabian Nights-themed jewelry, because we’ve also added this new antiqued-silver plated Aladdin charm:
Aladdin's lamp charm (Rings & Things #44-940-17-AS)
How about an aquiline crystal bead as a lamp? Check out this Aladdin’s Lamp earring design from our Design Gallery!
Have more ideas for Arabian Nights jewelry? More multipurposing magic in mind? Share by leaving a comment!
Plan ahead for May birthstones!
There’s one main birthstone for May, emerald. This is also the seasonal birthstone for Spring, so it’s doubly appropriate. For an economical emerald look, think about glass beads. Anything from these metal-core Calypso™ (“Pandora”-style) lampwork beads…
…to the ever-popular, economical Cosmic Crystal™ bicone…
…can be an evocative way to play on the emerald theme. Just search our online store for “emerald”! Or for “sapphire”, which some consider a birthstone for Taurus. Now that’s multi-purposing your components!
Speaking of zodiac signs, Gemini’s birthstone is agate. We always seem to have dozens of varieties of it at Rings & Things’ BeadTour bead shows, and you can always find agate beads in our online store. A couple of favorites are Botswana agate, like these faceted rounds…
…and blue lace agate, like this bib:
Less well-known May gemstones, according to various traditions, are chrysolite, carbuncle, and chalcedony. For reliable, honest background information, you can look these and many more up in our popular Gemstone Beads Index!
What’s your favorite May birthstone, or birthday jewelry? Share it in a comment below. You can even link to pictures of your own creations!
You know Rings & Things is all about the “grow your business” tips. One of the most inspiring kinds of tips we’ve found in the craft jewelry world are ways to multipurpose the parts you use and the designs you make. Here’s another way of getting that extra mileage…out of bracelet blanks and frame charms/pendant blanks:
Instead of gluing onto them, “paint” pretty designs on the flat pads with rubber-stamping inks. Cindy Gimbrone shows off this great inspiration in her wonderfully titled blog post, “Glue is Not My BFF”.
Cindy also came up with the idea of adding texture and design elements by hammering a bracelet blank. This way, you wind up with a personalized piece of jewelry with no need to spend much on embellishments!
Another unglued inspiration from Cindy is this Deconstructed Watch on our brass square frame. This project can be done for under $10!
Here’s one of Lisa’s ideas from her A Bead A Day blog:
multi-stranding by adding a couple strands of chainmaille-type link work on either side of the bracelet blank.
In another great burst of inspiration, Lisa also created not just a bejeweled pendant, but also an amazing bracelet centerpiece, from our glue-on pendant frames.
Lisa says that this third design– 
–is easy to do, but I think it’s so impressive that you’d think it took a jewelry master’s touch.
The always-productive Lisa also came up with this cool approach, 
which she titled “Jewelry Making w/Scrapbooking Supplies”.
Tish (quite brilliantly I think) documented her first experiment with bracelet blanks, “in case it was brilliant.” She wasn’t satisfied with the results of the bracelet, but wound up with a great tutorial on what to look out for when combining polymer clay with bracelet forms!
More “Glueable Challenge” pieces by Tish included the poly clay design above…
Dawno deconstructed a bracelet blank in a nice tutorial at her blog…
…and invented a cool new technique–
–that I want to call faux cloisonné!
Melanie of Earthenwood Studios had multiple ideas too. Interestingly she also took apart a bracelet blank,
this time to make a necklace.
She also combined her unique “cog” and “face” ceramic creations with our frame charms:
We hope these neat creations by our Blog Partners give you some ideas that you’ll run with and make your own!
Have more ideas for using glueable frame charms & bracelet blanks? Talk about them in a comment below!
Quick post today!
A trend we’ve noticed in the scrapbooking world is “inchies”. These are like little challenges to yourself: Create a nice collage in the space of a square inch (ergo the name). What about wearable inchies?
Can you say "inchies"?!
Check out our item #49-441-0, 30mm square brass picture-frame charm! The usable surface inside the frame is almost exactly a square inch. This finding is perfect for gluing things onto. You could even follow Dawno’s idea and incorporate some brass wire into your collage, for a neat faux cloisonné look.
Thanks to Amy M for this idea. PS: a 2″x2″ collage is called a twinchie!
More mini-collage ideas? Share ‘em here in a comment!
Looking for another market for your beaded productions? How about fishermen…or more accurately, fish?
Mmmm, beads!
It turns out that beads make good bait for certain fish. Trout think orange-colored Miracle beads are salmon eggs, and will try to eat them. Steelhead, less easily fooled, just think the beads are inferior to their own eggs and try to move them away–which gets them caught on the hook.
Local anglers have told us that the shine of the bead catches the fish’s eye very successfully. They put one bead on the line with a hook below it and a bobber on the top of the line. Both the 8mm and the 4mm sizes have been used.
This makes us curious, what other beads can you use in lures, artificial flies, etc.? What about the other orange beads, like opaque glass ones? Share your experiences and ideas in a comment below!
Love the Earth? Love trade beads, and looking for more ways to use them? Breathe a new spirit into your rosaries!
We found a great blog post by Anne of Atelier-Beads, about two sorts of multipurposed jewelry in one. She writes about “Rosaries that Care: Recycled Glass Beads from Africa.” (You’ve got to click through so you’ll see a great photo of one of these rosaries!)
Anne sums up well when she says, “Ghana recycled glass is a wonderful rosary application. Not only is it innovative and beautiful, but it also promotes good stewardship both in the re-use of manmade materials and in the provision of employment and income to the artisans who create the beads.”
She’s writing about traditional-style powdered-glass beads, made by recycling modern materials from medicine bottles to TV screens. Africans have been crushing old glass into powder for centuries, though, to make these beads (also called “sand beads” sometimes). You can buy a good selection of older powdered-glass beads in our online store; we don’t have information at this time to suggest any of these are more recent.
The great-looking rosary shown in Anne’s blog post makes use of an Ethiopian cross pendant. These reflect a unique, ancient Christian style that many North Americans are unfamiliar with (Legend has it that Christianity came to Ethiopia quite early, around AD 300, but the country was not in close contact with other Christian nations.) So these cross pendants add a fascinating bit of history, and a beautiful style, to any rosary that you make.
Did you know Rings & Things sells many other Ethiopian beads and pendants? We’re also known for our extensive line of African & trade beads in glass (some even have “cross” designs), metal and natural materials. And don’t miss out on our many other recycled-material beads!