Beadalon Blog

The holidays are approaching quickly, and I am in a flurry of gift making! These are my go-to earrings for gifting this year. They are super simple and fast to make, and serve as a foundation for so many different embellishment techniques.

To make the earrings, you'll need:

2 Quicklinks
Diamond Ball Chain
Diamond Ball Chain Ends
Chain Maille Jump Rings
Ear Wires
Memory Wire Cutters
2 Chain Nose Pliers
Memory Wire Finishing Pliers

Instructions:

1. Use the Memory Wire Cutters to make a cut in the QuickLink.
2. Bend each end back in the 2mm side of the Memory Wire Finishing Pliers.
3. Cut 4 pieces of Diamond Ball Chain about 1/2 inch long (7 balls).
4. Add a Diamond Ball Chain End to each end of the pieces of Diamond Ball Chain.
5. Use small jump rings (20 gauge 7/64") to attach a piece of the Ball Chain to each of the loops.
6. Connect the ball chain ends together at the top with another Jump Ring and attach it to an Earwire.
7. Repeat the steps to make the second earring.
8. Embelli…

Whenever Product Manager and Education Director, Wyatt White, joins us for Facebook Live it's always a fun time! This Facebook Live is full of tips, tricks and ideas for ways to take finishing your jewelry to the next level.

We featured lots of products including Bead Bumpers, EZ Crimp Ends, and Memory Wire.We're offering a special coupon code for 20% off of our featured tool kit (and my current favorite!) the Shimmer Pliers until Wednesday, November 20, 2019.



Bead Bumpers were originally introduced to help reduce the abrasion between pearls and beads for people who preferred stringing rather than knotting. There are three different varieties - small oval 1.5mm, large oval 2.0 mm, and square 1.7mm; and 5 colors - black, white, satin silver, satin gold, and clear. As with so many of our products, the more we used them, the more uses we figured out for them!

One of the most important advantages of Bead Bumpers is that they allow you to string your bracelet or necklace snug, but …

We were so lucky to have Sandra Lupo join us in the Beadalon Studio to demonstrate a gorgeous stacked cone bracelet using her Conetastic Tool.

Sandra is an amazingly talented metalsmith, beader and inventor who designed the Conetastic Tool. The original tool comes with three mandrels and make cones about 1" long. She also designed two additional mandrel sets - the Hourglass Mandrels and the Inverted Mandrels. Full instructions are included in each of the sets!






Sandra shared so many great tips for getting the best cones from the Conetastic. Even though I have been using it for years to make cones (I like to use them as tassel toppers), I learned some extra tricks to take my cone making to the next level:

- use 20 gauge wire and work right from the spool
- hold the tool in your non-dominant hand, and use your dominant hand to guide the wire
- wind away from you, not towards you
- start with a quick turn of the wrist to lock the wire in place on the diagonal
- hold the tool so that…