#bead making

Looking for a creative way to turn trash into treasure? Learn how to make stunning DIY Tyvek beads using old priority mail envelopes! This fun, eco-friendly project transforms ordinary mailers into colorful, lightweight beads perfect for one-of-a-kind jewelry designs. Beads made from a priority mailing envelope Priority mailers are made from Tyvek, a durable plastic fiber known for being…

Making some wooden beads this morning. I cracked several in half before figuring out that they just need to be a little longer than they are wide to be stable.

They're very easy (much easier to get started on that antler or bone beads, imo) and pretty quick. You need a dry stick that has pith at the center (for the hole in the bead), a pocketknife, a needle/awl to poke the pith out, and some sandpaper or a rough rock. Debark the stick, sand the end, saw through the stick using a serrated pocketknife (or, i mean, a saw if you have one). Once it falls off, sand the whole bead and clean the pith. They take me about 5 minutes per bead right now (i made a lot that broke because they weren't long enough, so this is after going through a good hour or two of attempts), and are nice and meditative, if somewhat hard on the hands.

Im not 100% sure what i'll do with this lot once i've made a good handful or if i'll try to dye them or anything. My original idea was to use them to decorate a neolithic tassel on a handspun, handwoven belt. Especially because they clack around very nicely. But these are a bit bigger than i was envisioning for that purpose, so we'll see.

First try at making glass beads at home.

Nice, how did you make them?

I bought a starter kit for bead making which among other things includes a soldering torch and glass rods for bead making. This is my tiny workspace all set up:

You melt the glass in the fire and wrap it around an iron rod. And once you got a bead you can form it with pincers into different shapes or add more glass colors to it etc.