As a crafter I have found several products recently I absolutely love. Today I review 2 products and highlight a project from the Beadshop.com. FYI the Beadshop has some great tutorials worthy of a look.
One of my crafting tables for jewelry.
Compassion suede. I am an animal rights activist and vegetarian. I do not wear leather and I feed my dogs vegetarian food. WE live is a cruelty free household. Many jewelry projects I like are made with leather. But why must leather be used when we have the technology to create an alternative. Microsuede fabric is a great alternative. Beadsmith is one of several companies that offer compassion with their faux leather and faux suede stringing materials.
Cruelty free and more. So many colors and a variety of textures are available. It is easy to knot. Some colors have a tendency to bleed if wet but since I refuse to use leather I can deal with the issue. I have seen some feedback that the product doesn’t work well with slide knots and the microsuede probably has that issue. I have only used pleather cord for slide knots and had no problems so I cannot confirm the findings.
I used faux leather cord for this wrap bracelet. The cord has held my toggle button with no problem or breaking. I know photo isn’t great, my camera battery is dead so I used my phone. I like to wrap beads and do a herringbone wrap. I have tried Chinese knotting cord for wraps but floss or perle cotton work well also. I also have tried Tuff cord I had on hand for my Kumihimo braiding.
Tila Beads. My first tile bead project was using a Czech bead called a niblette. I liked the outcome but found that the metallic color was not embedded but plated or sprayed on the bead and rubbed off pretty easily. I haven’t seen Tila beads in the craft stores but have found in bead stores and online. Tila beads have 2 holes for stringing and weaving. They come in metallic, opaque, luster and translucent beads. New Tila beads in Picasso style, marbled, are on the market.
Here is a beautiful photo of project for a Tila bead headband project from beadshop.com.
I used Kevlar thread for most of my bead weaving but this bead works with Tuff cord #1. I use Tuff cord, hemp or waxed cotton when I wrap Tila beads on, called laddering. Tila beads offer a different look to wrap bracelets than regular beads. Tila beads give a different dimension to jewelry making and beadwork, better than the niblet or square beads.
http://beadshop.com/projects/projects/mosaic-headband/shewolf-mosaic-headband
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