A long-desired bookmark
For quite a few years now, I wanted to make a bookmark with nice beads. So far, I didn't find a nice one that I wanted to buy and pimp. Until yesterday, when I was at the craft store looking for other supplies, my eye fell on a mermaid bookmark. It was the only one left in this design and the other weren't nice at all. I considered myself lucky and this had to be a sign to buy it so that I could wipe another thing from my wishlist. As I didn't want this one to look cheap with plastic beads, I decided to think of a design and buy new ones there. There was a huge section with gemstones where this bookmark was found so I took some time to go through all the colours and figure out which ones would fit nicely with the mermaid.
The Design
While I was in the craft store, I went back and forward picking the beads that I'd use. I thought as the bookmark came in the form of a mermaid, I'd probably pick some ocean colours and try to find beads that match the mermaid as well. I have enough plastic beads at home but when I noticed all these real gemstone beads and their detail because none of them is exactly the same, I decided to buy these for this project.
Don't you love them? I think are awesome and those plastic beads can't beat these. Granted, they are a bit more expensive, so I could not buy myself a big bag for future projects, but I'm very happy that I picked these. The roughly edged silver ones are great too.
This is initially the colour combination I thought of in the craft store, I had no clue how many beads I'd use but the colour scheme had to be right. The sea star was bought yesterday as well. Eventually, I ended up using more beads as I still had some "sea-themed" beads at home from another time.
The turtle was bought without me realising that it has no ring to it and is not suitable for the project I bought it for. It will come in handy perfectly today though as it fits the other beads well.
Tools & Supplies
As always, you can create your own bookmark as simple and crazy as you prefer, I'm sharing which tools & supplies that I've used.
- Mermaid bookmark
- Three sea-themed beads
- Handmade bead
- Jump rings
- Two colours gemstones (small)
- Silver beads
- Pincers
- Fishing thread
- Scissors
- Eye pins
The Process
Although the process is pretty self-explanatory I will share a few pictures of the process in case it wasn't clear.
The first eye an eye pin for the bottom bead of the thread as these beads are super heavy, it will be needed to make sure they won't fall off the string. Once the eye pin was attached to the bead, I used fish thread for the rest of the string.
I used this pattern and then in the middle, I added the turtle bead. After this, it's simple just finish the string with the same pattern but backwards.
Because of the weight, I attached the string by knotting the fish thread AND using a jump ring.
Then I attached jump rings to the three other beads:
I attached all of them on the jump ring from the bookmark. And the bookmark is now done!
The End Result
I love how it turned out, and I'm glad I decided there shouldn't be any more strings with beads when using these gemstones as it's already super heavy. In the case of plastic beads, more strings would work fine, but these beautiful gemstones are a different story. Less is more, I'd say.
I'm happy with the colours I picked and that the beads are all matching the sea theme. Taking a picture of it being used was more difficult:
Too bad I didn't notice that the turtle was upside down here. Oops.
The Lonely Planet Hungary will take good care of it.
Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely weekend!
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