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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

A Heritage of Inspiration: Creating Jewelry with Czech Glass Beads

Hello Everyone!

For this blog, I wanted to focus on the beautiful Czech Glass Beads that you can find at Bead Bee. The reason I'm so interested in these beads is because they're linked with my heritage, and I wanted to find out a little bit of history on them.

In essence, Czech Glass Beads were made from the ideas and demands of people all over the world. In the mid 1800s, Czech "sample men", as they called them, would travel the world trying to figure out what kinds of beads people wanted. They took back their notes and sketches to their home factories where the beads were produced. After a while, technological advances made it possible for Bohemia to mass produce pressed-glass beads. As a result, by the 1920s Czechs became the main bead exporters of the world.

I created a memory wire bracelet using turquoise Czech flower glass beads, jet Czech petal beads and tortoise Czech fire polished glass beads. For added detail, I added antique copper spacers. I picked these colors because I haven't seen these colors used together on jewelry. This bracelet can be worn dressed down with a white t-shirt, jeans, and flip flops, or dressed up with that "little black dress" you save for special occasions. Please leave questions and comments to let me know what you think!

Brianna

Brianna is our guest blogger for this Spring/ Summer season - welcome Brianna! Click here to send Brianna message or leave a comment.

2 comments:

Wire Jewelry Supplies said...

I loved the article! These types of resources are extremely valuable to anyone interested in making jewelry. I can't wait to read some more of your articles!

bloomingsisters said...

Hi, I'm fairly new to working with beads and enjoyed reading your articles. I look forward to learning more from you. Mary