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Antique African Djenne trade beads
Meet the oldest beads I own. I have strung these Djenne beads into a 27″ triple strand necklace with Italian seed beads as spacers. Lois Scherr Dubin, in The History of Beads, writes that “all the glass beads excavated from Djenne in Mali date to the later phases of the Islamic period, c. A.D. 1000-1400.” They are…
Bead shopping at the thrift store
This was strung on elastic, these wonderful blue and green beads. I had a clasp from a bracelet I took apart (I don’t trust elastic), and now I have this understatement of a bracelet.
Waxed cotton bracelet
So, beading time has been scarce, but I made this little bracelet. I’m going to make a couple more, wrapping the waxed cotton between the beads twice to see if the color will show more. It should also decrease the curve a little; this bracelet almost wants to corkscrew. I was inspired by several examples…
Knotting pearls
All of those pictures of Tucson bead shows with their tables of pearls reminded me that I have these funky brown keishi pearls waiting for me, and that I’d purchased orange silk for knotting them. I bought my pearls locally, and the button hiding the knot is a vintage button I purchased at General Bead…
Vintage German flowers
Sylvia came back from Tucson with a gift for me of these amazing beads. The core colors are varying shades of orange, with a milky-colored-glass covering, and while I believe these are pressed, not cut — they appear cut. Look at the glow! I tried combining them with a matching Italian milky-white seed, it looked…