Make Beaded Bracelet With Polymer Clay Focal Beads and Beading Wire

Looking for Blue Beaded Bracelet Designs? Why Not Make the Beads Yourself!

Sometimes it's hard to find exactly the right beads for your jewelry making projects. You end up searching for hours through bead stores and on the Internet… only to end up settling for something that's not quite perfect, but will have to do. This problem can be solved by learning how to make your own handmade beads out of polymer clay.

The big turquoise blue bead in the center of the beaded bracelet pictured above, is called a swirly lentil. These lentils have a very pretty shape that can be used as focal beads or filler beads, depending on the size, pattern and the way they are drilled.

Polymer Clay Lentil Beads are a fun shape to learn to make from polymer clay. So fun that they can become addictive!

The large round beads in the bracelet (the ones to the the right and left of the swirly lentil), were created in a different way. Thin slices of many different colors of clay were added to a thick piece of white polymer clay. The combined sheet was then rolled as thin as possible, creating a somewhat blended but still multi-colored look.

The sheet was then torn into small pieces and added to round white balls of clay to make the beads. Because some of the scrap clay from the turquoise lentil bead had been included in these beads, everything coordinated together quite well.

What I like about this bracelet design is the circles that were formed when connecting the beads. Strung like a ladder stitch, the beading thread bypasses each other inside the polymer clay bead so that the tiny glass seed beads can be strung in a loop around them.

When you are creating jewelry pieces, do you like to include focal beads into the design? If so what are your favorite types of focal beads and are they easy for you to find?