Choosing Papers for Paper Beads

It's time to come clean and admit it. I'm hopelessly addicted to bead- and jewelry-making. Oh, it started innocently enough. While my studio was under construction earlier this year, I needed something I could do to keep my creativity alive while being without a space for making art  (poring over paint chips just wasn't enough). So I started making paper beads. It was great fun, and I found it was possible to roll beads on a surface as small as a TV tray as I sat in the living room at night.

 At first the beads were made from found images taken from old magazines. This upcycling resulted in many beads with fascinating patterns on them. Such as a series of beads created from a full page photo in an architectural magazine that showed lots of angles. You'd never know what the original subject was by looking at the beads, but the angles produced very graphic-looking beads with lots of zigzag patterning.

Next I tried using some of my own hand painted papers originally intended for collage. Some of these papers were textured; beads made with these papers exhibited a wonderful tactile quality. Collage papers made from deli paper painted with acrylics also yielded excellent results. The deli paper (bought several years ago at Sam's Club) was super easy to roll and took the adhesive and varnish very nicely. Another source that worked well for making beads was a museum calendar printed on heavyweight, glossy paper. Its smooth, lustrous surface made the beads look as if they were glazed ceramic, even before high gloss varnish was applied.

Now I'm experimenting with beads that combine solid color, text, and images, all on different kinds of paper used together on a single bead. These beads are more labor intensive to make, but worth the extra effort. I'm combining them with glass beads, fabric beads and semi-precious stones to create necklaces, earrings and bracelets. Photos of these latest creations will be posted here next week. Be sure to check back then for a sneak peek!


 ©2013 Lynn Edwards

Surprises in a Paper Stash

Today I tackled the Big, Bad Box -- a massive carton containing all my hand painted collage papers. My plan was to sift through them, cull out the ones I'd never use, then file the rest away by color groups in the five drawer basket storage unit, 2011's Most Useful Purchase.

It was tedious work. There were many more papers than I remembered creating, and of course they were all jumbled up, colorwise. The task was time consuming but it had an unexpected upside: I found papers I had completely forgotten about, which sparked a flurry of ideas for combining and/or using them in new projects.

Some tissue papers I had washed with color, adjoining opaque papers with stamped designs, produced startling color combos I wouldn't have thought of putting together. Like the magenta tissue which, placed over violet paper stamped with light green spirals, produced a wildly vivid purple with spirals of a hard-to-describe but very interesting hue.

I even came across a folder holding papers I had gathered for an Asian-themed piece I planned to do at one time. The folder had gone missing months ago. Over time I had completely forgotten it existed. When I rediscovered it today, it contained everything needed to create a nice little collage, including a vintage found image and materials corresponding to that focal point. So now it's on my list of pieces to work on next week. I should rummage through my paper stash more often, making a point to dig down to the very bottom of each pile. The TV commercial is right: it pays to discover!