What Does a Beaded Jewelry Designer Work With?
What can one say about a beaded jewelry designer? When it comes to an artist indulging in their most creative endeavors (to create one-of-a-kind pieces), a beaded jewelry designer has a wide variety of options. Beads can be made from a wide variety of substances, from plastic to glass to crystal to gemstone.
Throughout time, beads have been made from bone, horn, ivory, metal, as well as shells. Frankly, anything that can be pierced to fit a string through, and is small enough to be worn, has been used as a bead. Indeed beaded jewelry may have been the first jewelry. A pair of beads made from Nassarius sea snail shells, approximately 100,000 years old, are thought to be the earliest known examples of jewelry. These beads have been found throughout Israel and Algeria, in Northern Africa.
Some of the most popular types of beaded designs are as follows:
Chevron Beads are glass beads that were first made by glassmakers in Italy in the early 15th century and are commonly referred to as Venetian or Murano glass. They were, and stil are composed of many layers of colored glass over a star-shaped core.
Dichroic Glass Beads are really cool. The metal used to coat these beads, "dichroic" was developed by NASA for the space program. A thin film of metal is fused to the surface of the glass, which gives the surface a metallic sheen that changes between two colors depending on what angle it is viewed from. Dichroic glass beads are commonly used in high-end designs, as they are rather expensive.
Lucite Beads are used to typically describe any plastic bead, although technically it is only one from of plastic...acrylic resin. Nevertheless, beads made from acrylic resin are plentiful, inexpensive, and come in all colors and shapes.
Gemstone Beads are the most sought after and expensive type of bead in the beaded jewelry designer's palate. Value depends on many factors, but usually is determined by clarity, cut, carat size, and color.
In the end, it's the talent and technique of the beaded jewelry designer that determines how these various beads work with each other in truly making wearable art jewelry.
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