Beadalon Blog

Beadalon had a blast in Birmingham, UK for the Craft Hobby & Stitch International Show last month. Designers, retailers and wholesale suppliers fell in love with our new shapes of German Style wire and saw first-hand all the gorgeous colors of Artistic Wire.   The Chain Maille trend has spread over the Atlantic and our new Artistic Wire Chain Maille rings were extremely popular. Our daily workshops were sold out and participants loved making their own fabulous cocktail rings using 16-gauge Artistic Wire. Come and visit us at these upcoming shows: Handarbeit & Hobby April 8-10, 2011 Cologne, Germany We're heading back to Europe for Germany's premier crafting tradeshow. We'll share new products, meet with customers and demonstrate tools and techniques in three jam-packed days. Wire Fest April 8-10, 2011 King of Prussia, PA Wire Fest is one of our favorite shows because it's right in our backyard! Meet the Beadalon team and see our newest styles of Germa...

I did it!  I finally mastered all of the weaves in Lauren Anderson’s (the Chain Maille Lady) Basics of Chain Maille and Advanced Chain Maille books . When we added the program, I had dabbled a little bit with some of the weaves in the past, but hadn’t tried my hands at all of them including Turkish Round (yikes!), Half-Persian 3-1 (my new favorite) and the dreaded Dragonscale.  When we put the books together, I had the opportunity to try the Turkish Round and the Half-Persian, but the Dragonscale evaded me for months. I hadn’t even tried it because I got it into my noggin that it was just too hard and frustrating. Let this be (another) lesson to me: not nearly so hard (I promise)! I put my mind to it, and I’m happy to say that thanks to Lauren’s clear and detailed instructions, I can now count myself a Dragonscale expert!  Both books are wonderful resources to learn eight chain maille weaves – Byzantine/Birdcage, European 4-in-1, Turkish Round, Ful...

If you're following us on Facebook, you already know that Beadalon Design Team Member Fernando Dasilva can't live without his smartphone. Feel the same? Now you can get more info by scanning the QR codes on our new and improved packaging. The special bar codes you see on the back of Beadalon packaging are called QR codes, which stands for Quick Response. When scanned with a smartphone, the code will point you to a special web page with more information about the particular product you’ve chosen. Simply hold your smart phone up to the code using a QR code reader. If your smart phone doesn't already come equipped with a reader, there are many free apps available that you can download to your iPhone, Blackberry, or Android.

Here's an overview of jewelry making components I will be working with on my next designs. Clockwise from top left: Filigree silver-plated beads; lush antique brass and copper chains;   Beadalon 7 Silverose™, Silvergold™ and Champagne; Artistic Wire® tinned copper; colored wood leaves and colored filigree beads; Tierra Cast® assortment of   charms and pendants, metallic brushed gold-plated beads;   John Bead Corporation latest findings (pewter findings, circles, Czech glass beads from "Icy" collection (loved it); white matte chains and Morrocan ceramic tube beads; papier marche beads; SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS in light silver and new sunflower shades. In the center you can see a necklace I created while demonstrating in Tucson. I used Artistic Wire in three different colors and SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS in shades coordinated with the accents of the focal bead. All the comments made by attendees and friends at Beadalon's booth were incredibly positive abou...

Need an idea for your leftover rings? Why not make a simple yet elegant necklace. Better yet, make two and use them for a pair of earrings! What you need to make one of these cute, little whirly-gigs: 2 (A) 18gauge 9/64” Artistic Wire® Chain Maille Jump Rings 6 (B) 18gauge 7/32” Artistic Wire® Chain Maille Jump Rings 1 (C) 18gauge 11/64” Artistic Wire® Chain Maille Jump Rings 1 (D) 18gauge 3/32” Artistic Wire® Chain Maille Jump Rings 6    6mm pearls, I used Swarvoski™ pearls 1    8” piece of .015mm Wild Fire™ beading thread, I used Frost Beadalon® Bead Stringing Glue A necklace chain Scissors 1) Close the six (B) rings 2) Open the two (A) rings 3) With an open (A) ring, scoop up all six of the (B) rings, close the (A) ring 4) Repeat step 3 with the second (A) ring 5) Place a bead stopper at one end of the beading wire 6) Thread the other end of the wire through any of the six (B) rings 7) Thread a 6mm pearl onto the beading wire 8) Thread ...

I went to JTV's Jewel School last month and visited with Margot and show host Katie Rooke. They sold out of memory wire kits in less than an hour! It was a pretty amazing experience and I had fun seeing the show from the other side. My pal Margot Potter is the new director of education for Jewelry Television® Jewel School™ . You've probably seen lots of Margot's projects here on the Beadalon blog and site. She's a talented designer and a prolific author! Now, she's heading up the educational videos and blog on JTV's Jewel School site. She also sits in on the Jewel School shows on JTV, where viewers can call in to buy the latest and greatest products for beading. Beadalon has put together a lot of new product collections that JTV is selling during their Jewel School shows. Over the next few months, you'll see members of the Beadalon Design Team visiting the set of Jewel School to show viewers ideas and techniques for using the kits. There ...

Even though you can buy premade jump rings for chainmaille, it's fun to experiment with different metals to make your own rings. For this lovely Byzantine chainmaille necklace, I made rings using 20-gauge German Style Wire from Beadalon. Each Byzantine chainmaille segment is separated using SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS 4mm pearls. The instructions for the Byzantine chainmaille weave are available in my book “Basics of Chain Maille” available at your local bead shop or on my website www.TheChainMailleLady.com . It’s easy to make your own jump rings. Just wrap the wire around the appropriate size mandrel to make a coil and use your flush cutters to cut the coil into individual jump rings. There are a few ways to attach the pearls. One way is to take a piece of wire and make either a wrapped or simple loop, string the pearl and make another loop at the other end. The way I did it for this necklace is to take a small piece of wire and starting at either end of the wire, wrap it around ...