Focal Beads - Handmade by You

Unique Focal Beads Are What Give Character to Your Handcrafted Jewelry Projects:

However, it's often difficult and time consuming to find the perfect focal beads for sale at your favorite wholesale or retail bead supply shop.

That's why I love to make my own, and would suggest that you do too. My material of choice for making focal beads is polymer clay because of it's versatility. So here's my…

Top 10 List of Reasons To Make Your
Own Focal Beads Using Polymer Clay:

#1: You can choose your own colors - One of the most frustrating things about buying beads that are already made, is not being able to find the right colors or color combinations for your project. When you make your own polymer clay beads, you can mix the clay to get whatever color you desire.

#2: You can make your beads whatever size and shape you want. With ready made beads, even when you find the right color, the size may be off. Or they may be too dainty or too chunky for your jewelry design idea.

#3: You can make the holes in the beads what ever size you need. People who work with hemp know how much of a problem it is finding pretty beads with large enough holes. Alternatively, you may need to string a large bead onto fine wire, but the hole is so big that the bead just 'slops around'.

#4: Sometimes it's just really difficult to find unique beads. A lot of the bigger chain craft stores carry beads from all the same suppliers. So even if you go from big store to big store, you see the same stuff… Boring!

#5: Because polymer clay is so versatile, you can have your beads looking like they were made from almost any type of material, including: wood, glass, ceramic, pewter, gemstone, ivory, jade, turquoise, coral, copper, silver, pearl, leather, and on and on and on. Making antique or vintage beads with polymer clay is also a fun thing to do.

#6: It is way cheaper in most cases to make your own beads than to purchase ready made beads, especially with beads made from gemstones. You can make tons of beads from a single block of clay. Sometimes buying the beads that you want for a project becomes so expensive that you end up wondering if it is worth it. I'm really talking about the focal beads here. Filler beads are cheap and look nice as accents to your more special handmade beads. So you may still want to purchase some beads for that purpose.

#7: You can make truly one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry. Since no two handmade polymer clay beads are identical, your pieces will really be unique when you make the beads yourself.

#8: You can make very personalized beads. Transferring any photo to polymer clay is quite easy if you know the tricks. Choose a photo for it's colors, it's design or simply for who's-in-it. Image transfer beads are wonderful because they allow you to preserve very special, treasured memories of family or loved ones.

#9: You will impress your friends! Show your friends a beautiful bracelet and tell them you made all the beads yourself. They may be so impressed that they'll buy it right off your arm!

#10: It is much more fun to make your own beads than to buy beads off the shelf. Let's face it, us crafty types need to create. If you love to work with beads and want to take your creativity to a whole new level, then making your own polymer clay beads for your beading projects, just seems like the natural thing to do.