Paper bead jewellery set

Here is the paper bead jewellery set that I made for the Ambassador of India to Sweden and Latvia, Mrs. Banashri Bose Harrison.

This is made from a food store brochure.

Market in Stockholm

This is a long overdue post and finally as promised, here is an update from my stall in Kungsträndgården in the heart of Stockholm. It was a fantastic day with hoards of crowd pouring in to enjoy the India day, with yoga, cultural activities, food and things to buy.

This is the picture of my table.Notice the sign at the upper right corner of the picture?

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I loved making this sign. I had some real boxes and brochures stuck to the board and a real necklace and earrings made with paper also on the board. Quite a few people were attracted to my stall looking at this board as it highlighted the recycling concept of my handmade jewelley and you could see the fascination in their faces.

I had my tools and beads out too as I was also doing the demo of how I make my jewellery.

I also had made my own display for jewellery using an old box, toilet rolls and some cloth. I found the jewellery hanger in a thrift shop. The paper beads jewellery and paper jhumkas on display.

Some more paper bead earrings and quilling earrings. These were a colourful array of paper bead earrings and a crowd puller and quite a hit. I had then with gold, silver and copper wires.

My paper bead bracelets. again these were very loved and the display is self made with kitchen towel cardboard rolls and cloth covering them.

Some of the sets that I had made and on sale. 

It was a great experience and an amazing feeling to see the love and respect for handmade products here in Stockholm.

Namaste India fair in Kungstrandgården Stockholm

From India to Sweden. Seems my feet have grown wheels. I have been travelling and living in different countries so frequently in the past couple of years and it seems like an adventure. But I have my huge box of tools and supplies with me everywhere I travel.

These days I am extremely busy preparing for the fair this weekend in Kungstrandgården in Stockholm, Sweden. I will have a lot of paper jewelry on display for sale so have had no time to post and keep my blog updated. If you want to check out what is happening on the 23rd May in the centre of Stockholm, check out this link.


Here is just a sneak peak to one of my projects. I am taking a lot of pictures and more will come in my next post.

Thanks for stopping by!

Paper bead jewellery sets

I love to wear my paper bead jewellery with pride when ever I am meeting friends. Recently I wore this set to a party and when talk got around to my unique jewellery, I explained that the beads were made with a recycled cornflakes box. In this era of recycling, you can imagine the excitement this created. Everyone wanted to find out how I made it and if I take orders!

So these are the 2 sets that I made with one cornflakes box.

The green and red one was the first one that I tried. I applied the paint after making the beads. It is a bit noisy and loud in color, but not bad for a first try. And with a matching dress it goes quite well.

This is the set that I mentioned in the beginning of the post that I had worn to the party. Here I painted the edges in copper colour before rolling the strips. I have also used semi precious turquoise gemstone beads to complement the paper / cardboard beads. I love the colours here and the royal touch that the turquoise beads are lending.

If you find my work inspiring and create something similar, please quote my work and blog in your post. I would also appreciate if you leave a comment. All artists do need a pat on the back! Thanks for visiting!

Quilled Rose Tutoriial

Browsing on Facebook, I saw a question from Nandini on a Quilling group that what size quilling strip is suitable for making a quilled rose. My response to this was it really depends on what size you want for your finished rose. And then I remembered that I had pictures of roses that I had made with 3 mm strips and also one that I had made with a 2 inch or in other words close to 50 mm wide strip. So I uploaded them promptly on the group and that started a string of comments with a request for a video on making roses with 3 mm strip.

So here is a tutorial for making quilled roses with 3 mm strips. It is practically my first video tutorial. So thanks to Pratima for this request which helped me break the video making inhibition.

Here are the rose pictures that I took 2 years ago with the 3 mm and 50 mm strips. Notice the rose size difference between the 2 different sized strips. The red rose with 50 mm size strip is the size of my hand. The size difference is clearly visible in the 4th picture.

 

And here is the link to the video tutorial for making the rose with 3 mm strip. I tried compressing the video but it is still too large for me to be upload it here directly. So follow the YouTube link below to see the video.

Quilling Rose Tutorial Link

Here is the rose size comparison that I showed in the video.

You can view a finished card with 3 mm roses in one of my old Valentine cards post here.

If you find my work inspiring and create something similar, please quote my work and blog in your post. I would also appreciate if you leave a comment. All artists do need a pat on the back! Thanks for visiting!

Jhumka Sets

It is so heartening to see that people from all over the world visit my blog. Today my blog touched the magic figure of 100,000 page views!!! Thanks to all my blog readers for your continued support and encouragement!

Continuing with my current obsession with jewellery making, here are some quilled jhumkas that I have made in the past month. This time I made a matching pendent to go with the jhumkas. Being a novice in the field of jewellery making, it is always fun to try out different embellishments/findings to see what looks the best in the finished piece. The ear hooks and the first pendant bail have been handmade by me with 20 gauge wire.

 

 

 

 

If you find my work inspiring and create something similar, please quote my work and blog in your post. I would also appreciate if you leave a comment. All budding artists do need a pat on the back! Thanks for visiting!

Paper Bead Tutorial : Bead shapes

I have been experimenting with paper beads and would like to share what I have learnt. I am working my way with writing tutorials so if you find gaps in my explanation, please ask me questions and I will try to answer them.

My intention is to have 2 parts to the bead making tutorial. The first part will focus on bead shapes and how you can get different shapes. The second part will show how to get the patterns and designs on beads. I will additionally discuss about hardening the bead and making it water resistant.

It is possible to make paper beads of varied shapes and the factors impacting the shape are

• the shape of the paper strip
• the width of the paper
• the length of the paper strip
• the thickness of the paper

The basic principle is that the shorter or thinner the paper, the slimmer the bead from the core (cylindrical) and the longer or thicker the paper, the fatter the bead is from the core (rounder or saucer shaped). The width of the paper strip in addition to the above factors, impacts the shape of the bead. 

If I have confused you enough and you are on the verge of leaving the page, just hang on because I am going to explain with pictures what I mean by the above statements.

Here are some basic shaped beads.

Fig. 1: Basic shapes

Fig. 2: Round Beads and Dumble Beads

Round Beads and Dumble Beads.

The two beads on the top row and right and the small bead on top row left are circular beads. The white blue and purple bead in the top row is cylindrical but looks round as the hole in the bead is very thick.

The dumble shaped beads look like two similar shaped beads joined together.

Fig. 3: Cylinder Beads

Cylindrical Beads. 

These are made with rectangular paper. The tiny blue cylinder on the right is the regular tight coil made with a quilling strip.

Fig. 4: Conical Beads

Conical beads.

The blue white and multi coloured beads here are conical beads. These taper down as a cone.

Fig. 5: Long beads and Saucer beads

Long Beads and Saucer Beads.

The three beads on the right bottom are long beads with the thickness of the bead less than its length. The green and purple bead on the left is a saucer bead. Here the thickness of the bead outwards from the centre is larger than the width of the bead.

Now on to the details of how these varied shapes can be made.

Fig. 6: Paper marked for cutting

Here I have taken a used A4 paper and I first drew parallel lines along the longer edge of the paper making long rectangles. On this paper you can see rectangles of width 2 cm, 1 cm and 1/2 cm from left to right. Next I drew diagonal lines across each rectangle dividing the rectangle into triangles. You can see that a few of the rectangles on the right still don't have the diagonal line drawn.

Fig. 7: The cut triangles

Next I cut out the triangles using scissors. I used scissors for this tutorial but normally I just use my paper cutter and the scale on it to directly cut out the triangles. That saves me the previous step.

Here you can see the triangles of three different widths and same lengths.

Fig. 8: Bead rolling tool

I use a home made bead rolling tool for rolling the beads. It is basically a grill stick with a rolled paper in the centre to make a handle. I have slit the stick at one end to make a slot but I tend to use the side with out the slot using it as a needle tool.

I some times also use a tooth pick for making the beads but I find  the hole size made with a grill stick more appropriate.

Fig. 9: Bead shapes comparision

Here you can see the different shapes of beads made with different widths of paper. 

On the left, the beads are made with 2 cm thick strips. The ones in the centre are made with 1 cm thick strips and the ones on the right are made with 1/2 cm thick strips.

Since we used the same paper for all the beads, we have paper strips of same thickness. To make different shaped beads using this paper, I have stacked multiple papers increasing the thickness of the paper and have used that for making the different beads.

Fig. 10: Beads with 2 cm wide paper

Here you can see that the beads are getting fatter from bottom to top tending from a long shaped bead to a more rounder shaped bead.

The bead on the bottom is made with a single strip of paper. The one above it with 2 strips piled together and rolled. the next one is with 3 strips together and the top one with 4 strips. 

Note that you cannot join the strips end to end as in quilling as the shape of the paper is not rectangular. So you will have to pile them together. 

The length of the paper used is about 30 cm. We would have got a bead of similar thickness as the second bead from bottom had we used a paper strip that was 2 cm wide and 60 cm long. The only difference would be that the layers would be more closer and giving a neater effect. But getting hold of a longer paper and cutting the longer paper is more effort. So the choice is yours if you prefer a longer paper of pile more shorter papers.

I think we would get a perfectly round bead with 6 or 7 strips piled together. It is always a good idea to experiment with the paper you are going to use for your project and when you get the perfect shape you want, you make the rest of the beads using the same number of strips.

Fig. 11: Beads with 1 cm wide paper

Here again the beads are getting thicker to bottom to top. I have used one strip for the bottom bead, 2 for the middle one and 4 for the top one. 

You can see that since the width of the paper is 1 cm, we get a rounder bead with lesser number of strips compared to the strip that was 2 cm wide. 

Here we would have got a perfectly round bead with 3 strips. The top one with 4 strips is beginning to get flatter.

Fig. 12: Beads with 1/2 cm wide paper

Here the beads are made with 1/2 cm wide strips. Again the bottom most bead is made with 1 strip and progressing to 4 strips at the top.

Here we see that because the width of the paper is only 1/2 cm, we get a flatter bead with even a single strip. The beads here are tinier than the beads with a wider strip and it is easier to make a saucer bead with a narrower strip.

Fig. 13: Five beads with 1/2 cm wide paper

Here we have a 5th bead in addition to the previous 4 beads in Fig 12. Here you can see the four beads again from a different angle and scale.

The left most bead here is made with 9 strips of paper and is a nice saucer. 

Just to give a perspective the green and purple bead in fig 5 is made with 40 strips of 1/2 cm width.

Fig. 14: Some saucer beads

The saucer beads in my previous post are made with 1/2 cm wide and 45 cm long paper and this was a thicker paper so I could get saucer beads of same size with just 2 strips that I got with 9 strips in the previous figure.

Fig 15: Dumble Bead strip 

To make a dumble bead as in Fig 2, use the pattern in this figure. Changing the length, the width and thickness of the paper, you can come up with different shaped beads.

Fig 16: Paper Beads set

Fig 17: Paper bead set

This is a set that I have made with paper beads. I have used pages from an old magazine to make this.

I have used 32 paper beads for this set and used a total of 243 strips of paper that were 2 cm wide at the base of the triangles.

Fig 18: Paper bead necklace

The necklace is made of 21 paper beads of increasing size with the smallest beads made with 3 strips each and the largest one made with 24 strips.

Fig 19: Paper bead earrings

The earrings beads are made with 3 strips each. 

Fig 20: Paper bead Bracelet

The bracelet is made with 9 beads of 3 strips each.

Fig 21: Bracelet

The snug sitting bracelet.

After making the beads, I coat the beads with a PVA glue to harden the bead. After this dries up, the bead is again coated with either varnish or transparent nail polish to make give it a gloss and make it water resistant. 

Hope the tutorial was helpful. I would love to hear how you found the tutorial, things you found lacking and questions if I have missed something. 

The next tutorial will talk about giving colour to the beads and how different pattern paper give a different effect to the beads.

If you find my work inspiring and create something similar, please quote my work and blog in your post. I would also appreciate if you leave a comment. All budding artists do need a pat on the back! Thanks for visiting!