Handmade bead necklace - Bellisimo

Here's another necklace I made with beads I handmade from scrapbook paper. This is soooo easy and generally uses about 1/3 of a piece of 12x12 paper for a full necklace. For this one, I think I used a little over half that amount (I cut a 4x12 strip and used 6.5 inches of it). The paper I used is Bellisimo from Zsiage's Ti Piace Italy? line. For added dimension, after I rolled and glued the beads, I added some embossing. To do this, I threaded each bead one at a time onto a piece of wire I had bent a small "holder" out of. I took a stamp with a small design and inked it with Versamark. The choice of stamp is absolutely of no consequence as you will not actually get the design on a bead this small - the point is to simply get some random ink onto the bead. Hold the bead by the wire and roll it around on the inked stamp. Then dip the whole thing into your embossing powder and tap off the excess - again, you're looking for random so if extra falls off, don't sweat it! Your little wire holder provides the perfect handle to heat the embossing powder. I also didn't heat beyond the "pebbly" stage - I didn't want smooth sections of silver, just a random mottled effect. I dipped these a few more times in my finish that I usually do because of the bumpy texture and wanting to be sure this didn't get chipped off. They were probably dipped 8-10 times (I lost count - I just dipped them every time I walked by, lol) and left to dry overnight.


It's snowing here still so my light is kinda funky. Here's a closeup of the beads themselves and I'll try to photograph the necklace a little better later on. As always, you can click on the pictures themselves for the gigantic version.