New year, new bead holes

I know I'm a bit late with the new year greetings but happy 2025 to you!

January is such a nothingy time. I always get a 'new year, same old same old' feeling with it rather than a 'new beginnings and fresh page' one. I do like the weather of it, though. It's frosty and crisp here today and when I popped to the shop for onions earlier I felt like I could walk for miles in the icy-cold fresh air, but alas, laundry, hoovering and bead stuff needs to be done.

Yesterday was my first day back in the shed. I've been very taken with the beads with smaller holes I made at the end of last year so I decided to see if I could make my usual sort of beads on the 1mm mandrels too. You might think it's just the same but the diameter of the mandrel greatly influences the shape that the bead naturally wants to be. A 4mm or 5mm mandrel will give you a more donut-shaped bead and a 2.5mm or 1.6mm one will result in a fatter donut shape. The 1mm mandrel gives you a much rounder bead. It's not spherical but it's too wide to be classed as a donut. This gives you slightly more surface area to decorate so things like polka dot patterns and scrollwork need to be adjusted slightly. Yesterday I just stuck with spotty beads while I worked out what size the core needed to be and how much encasing glass I needed to add to get a consistent size and shape while maintaining the all-important not-at-all-sharp bead hole surrounds. I've got it sussed so tomorrow I'll faff with other designs.

The 1mm mandrels are not easy to work with. They have a tendency to boing about and I melted through a couple so I had to adjust where I was working in the flame. Smaller mandrels result in smaller beads so these are about 10.5mm diameter as opposed to my usual 12mm to 13mm, but that's fine by me because I favour little beads.

Cleaning the beads is a bit more tricky too. It's near-on impossible to take them off the mandrels without bending them so I've been nipping the bent ends off when I've removed the beads. A bend in a mandrel is a wonk-maker, and in a 1mm mandrel it's also a weak point that can be easily melted through. Using the Dremel to clean out the bead release requires more precision so I have to really concentrate so that I don't slip with the reamer bit and scratch the bead surface with it.

So what are the bonuses of a smaller bead hole? The main one is that the beads 'sit' better when threaded on wire, thread or headpins. Seed beads snug up nicely to them too.

All of this doesn't mean I'm abandoning my usual 1.6mm mandrels. I just want to see what I can achieve with the smaller bore bead holes.

And speaking of bore, I think I've wanged on quite enough about mandrels and bead holes now. Honestly, if you're still reading, well done. I can't think that this is interesting in the slightest.

If you like the spotty beads in this post, they're available in my shop. I've got two strands of nine beads for sale and I can tumble-etch them for you at no extra cost. They'd look great etched because of their icy colours. Oh yeah, I forgot the colours. In this case they are CiM Foam encased with Effetre Pale Aquamarine 038 with spots in Effetre White 204.

Now it's time for me to sort that laundry and hoovering. I hope the rest of your Wednesday is good. See you later!