I love beads. I like wearing them a la fifties-style strewn around my neck or my hand (but not both else I look like a Christmas tree! bwahahahaha!). So the thought of putting beads as a scrapping embellishment didnt surprise my scrapping buddies. What surprised them was how I did it.

When I say beading, I mean wiring AND beading. This is different from crystal beading with a tacky tape or stringing beads in a string or fiber to further liven up a page. It is beading using WIRES as "thread" and creating various embellishments with it. The color of the wire, the color of the beads, the "gauge" or thickness of the wire and the number of passes you can make with the "variables" of gauge and bead size - are limitless and the combination of effects can sometimes surprise or bawl me completely.

Why WIRES? Well wires are "sturdy" enough to lend FORM to the beads and strong enough to string them securely.

I have a confession to make. I started "wire beading" when I accidentally came across a book by Klutz (for kids) complete with beads and a spool of wire. I wanted to make pendants for my friends as well as myself and pretty bobby pins for my hair. It was a breeze and as the story usually goes, I got hooked.

Whats stopping me from teaching wire beading is the fact that the wires in the specific gauge of 34 --- almost like a hair strand but STILL as sturdy --- is DIFFICULT (almost impossible) to come by. The thinnest gauge I was able to source in Divisoria (in a tiny nook in one of the pasillios I have forgotten where) is 18 and the one sold by Filstar in National Bookstore is already "alambre" as far as Im concerned (not appropriate for beading but great for simple wiring). Gauge 18 is ok too but I'd have to use beads that are a bit bigger and the result is not as "delicate" as the tinier beads strewn in gauge 34.

So where do I get my gauge 34 beading wires (in various heavenly colors like metallic aqua and deep sea green)? I order them from New Zealand - Artistic Wire brand - door to door.

How do I "mount" them? With glue? With tacky tape? The one attractive feature of using beads (the imported ones are super!) is that they glitter. To use tacky tape or glue to mount them on your paper is to lessen their "glitter" capacity. With a bad glue, some beads turn dull. Youmight as well not "bead" at all.

The key to mounting is piercing the paper on both sides of the beaded wire and twisting a loop or wire in to hold the "artwork" in place.

I tried drawing how it is to hold the wire in place with another wire. (click here).

The key is to create pinholes as snugly as you can on both sides of the wire and pulling the loop at the back of your paper and twisting them together to secure everything in place. The result is a "clean" look that sometimes leaves a scrapper asking me "so how did you mount it? I cant see the tape!" :)

After wearing all the butterflies, dragonflies, boy-girl pendants my necklaces can hold (and all the pretty bobby pins to hold my hair in place), I got into "bigger" items like jackets, bags and sandals (about 2-3 inches big) when I accidentally came across beading packets from Malaysia in a recent trip to Ayala Center Cebu! From there, I graduated to letters!

Beaded letters are soooo beautiful! The beads can add "wow" points into your pages instantly without you doing anything special or grand.

Level of difficultly on a scale of 10 (with ten being hard to learn)? Uhmmmm... I'd say beading would be a 4.

Heres a layout I made quite a few years back - my first attempt at beaded letters. (this layout is about 6 years old.)

The layout is a 10x13 jumbo page. I was able to get hold of a chilhood photo of mine that looked exactly like me (when I was still sporting very short hair- told you it was a few years back!).

I hid the photo under the girlpower cutout. I also had a couple of blurry/not so good photos I didnt want to throw away so I pocketted them against another blurry cut-out. I'd say it was a good way to make use of "bad" photos.

Click the layout and get a bigger view of the details. It aint special and I bet you can make something much much better than this. Its just the technique I guess. Scrappers get to learn from one another.

You wait til I get my hands on some wires... I'd be very happy to teach you how you can put some beads into your pages! :)