JewelStruck Blog

From wooden leaf beads to vintage lucite beads

Recently, I was on a long earring making kick. I made like 30 pairs in month and one day I just needed to switch it up. I began to search the bottom of my bead drawers to see what was down there. If you are a beader, you know what I mean. Sometimes you will finish a project and have two of a certain bead left. After time, this can add up until suddenly my OCD kicks in and I just must re-organize everthing! So what to do with all the random beads? I decided to group them all into color categories. Browns, blues, greens and yellow. Looking over my brown pile, I realized I had some pretty cool beads there. I’m glad I didn’t just decide to throw them out one day in order to keep the bottom of my beading drawers clean! I used all of those beads to create a long, like over 4 1/2 ft long, necklace that can be worn doubled or trippled around your neck. I used a black cotton stringing cord and seperated each bead with a knot. The result is a bunch of random beads that come together to make one cohesive looking necklace. The beads are very varied. There are shell beads, bone beads, wooden shapes in different finishes, blown glass, vintage lucite beads from some old costume jewelry, brass and antique copper findings, and faceted fire-polished glass beads.

The thing that I really like about this necklace is that all the beads are in the same color pallete, but they are very different shapes, textures and finishes. So I hope I have inspired all to keep those random beads and make something great with them! To check out the necklace feel free to visit my etsy store and convo me with any questions! – GeishaCreations.etsy.com

Keep those random beads!