Shamballa Bracelets and Pearl Beads

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Shamballa for Beginners
The Secrets of Pearls
What are Cultured Pearls?
What is Mother-of-Pearl?
Matching Pearls
Knotting a Pearl Neckace
How to Tell Real from Fake Pearls
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Shamballa for Beginners

Shamballa jewelry is made from Tibetan Buddhist-inspired beads worn by all the big hip hop artists. They bring a feeling of well being similar to the effect hip hop music has on the soul. Named after a kingdom in ancient Tibet where texts say it is also located in the heart of all living beings.

The jewelry is crafted from semi precious beads strung on cord, and can cost over thirty-thousand dollars US for a single bracelet. This would buy an exclusive design with diamonds and stone beads set in 18-carat gold. Mads Kornerup was the first to sell expensive shamballa jewelry in Paris in 1994. Now this beaded jewelry is sold from New York to Russia, to top London stores like Harrods and Tresor Paris.

King Ice and P Diddy are among many artists on music videos sporting these Buddhist disco ball beads. King Ices bracelets are on nylon string with a cord toggle, and are made from plastic and cubic zirconia or hematite diamonds. He raps with shamballa bead necklaces too.

However, shamballa beads are more than Buddhist inspired jewelry. Individual meanings can be expressed by their style, color and shape. And not only hip hop artists wear them for their own beliefs, other celebrities like basketball stars, Michael Jordan and Lamar Odom, and ladies like Demi Moore and Beyonce also dance with the bracelets.

These stunning beads are a unique mix between jewelry and spirituality. Todays turmoil brings no better time to get in touch with hip hop fashion and your inner self. Express your individuality and spiritual needs by designing your own unique shamballa bracelet and matching necklace. Create a mystical effect using skull and Buddhist beads with sparkling crystal beads to add bling.

To see our many shamball beads click MrBead.com or MrBead.co.uk

The Secrets of Pearls

The reason is that people understand pearls are natural. However, since the 1950s, natural pearls have been cultivated by man – making them much cheaper to buy. This means that including them in jewelry, you will make you even more profit!

What are Cultured Pearls?
The least expensive cultured pearls today rival the most expensive natural pearls ever found. Cultured freshwater pearls occur in mussels for the same reason saltwater pearls occur in oysters. Foreign material inside a mussel can't be expelled. To reduce irritation, the mollusk coats the intruder with the same secretion it uses for shell-building, nacre. To cultivate a pearl, farmers slit the mussel and insert small pieces of live tissue from another mussel.

The ancient Chinese practiced this technique, but the first real cultured freshwater pearls originated from Japan in the 1930's. Japanese farmers by Lake Biwa achieved natural colors previously unseen in saltwater pearls. However, water pollution today has virtually destroyed pearl production there. China now has the resources that Japan lacks: many large lakes, rivers, and a low-cost work force.

China has now revolutionized pearling - shapes, luster, and colors of Chinese pearls now surpass Biwa quality. Copying the Japanese to improve off-white and mottling, China uses a mild bleach, bright lights, and heat. Natural freshwater pearls are usually odd shapes. So for more roundness, they reshape rejected pearls into spheres, and then nucleate mussels with them.

Color Pearls
Freshwater pearls are popular for their colors: white, silvery-white, pink, red, copper, brown, lavender, purple, green, blue, and yellow. The most desirable are the pastel pinks, roses, lavenders, and purples. Natural color comes from the mussel species and water quality – with pearls taking the color of the shell in which they form. However, permanent dyes are used today for most saturated colors.

The Best Pearls
Good pearls have thick overlapping layers of nacre. This can be tested by viewing its "luster". Roll the pearl with a pen in good light - the best pearls will reflect the pen the most. A large pearl is only more valuable if it's the same quality as a smaller one - the rounder the better. Being an organic gem, grooves, pits, or dents are expected.

What is Mother-of-Pearl?

The mollusk forms mother-of-pearl as a protective shell. Like the pearl it’s a secretion of the mantle, composed of alternate layers of calcium carbonate and conchiolin. Among the chief sources are pearl oysters from the tropical seas.

Matching Pearls
Matching pearls isn’t easy, but is important when planning jewelry. It’s an art in itself, requiring a sharp eye, excellent judgment, and experience. Try to buy all the pearls for a project at the same time, as later batches may not match your original purchase. When balancing pearls for jewelry, you need to consider:

• How the pearls blend together in color, shape, luster, size and surface perfection.
• How centered the drill holes.
• How smooth the size increase is of pearls in graduated strands.
• If a necklace is part of a set, all of its pearls on earrings, bracelets or whatever, must match. However, don’t put too much attention perfectly matching against other factors.

Knotting a Pearl Necklace

Pearls should be restrung every few years, depending on the amount of wear and exposure to hair spray, perfume, body oils, lotions, moisture, and perspiration they receive. These elements can weaken the silk and cause a potential break point for the strand.

There are a few ways to knot a beaded necklace, but I’ll only tell you the easiest for beginners. First, you’ll need to choose a type of cord to use. There are two types that are usually used for knotting: silk and nylon. Silk is traditional, however many complain that it snags and frays. Nylon cord can also be used. Both come in a variety of colors. They can be purchased on small cards with about 6 feet of cord and a needle attached or, for the serious knotter, larger spools can be purchased with separate needles.

They also come in different sizes. The thicker cord is used for the larger beads since the holes in the beads are larger. For the beginner’s technique, two strands are put through each bead, so a thinner size is needed. For 6mm beads, use size 2 for this technique, and try to match the color of the cord with the color of the beads.

A very-popular way to start any beaded necklace is with bead tips (clamp shells). The only difference here is that two strands of the cord are inserted through the bead tip instead of one. Once the necklace is started, string on a bead, and make an over hand knot. Make the knot tight so it’s snug up against the bead. Continue to do this: string a bead, make an over hand knot, string a bead, make an over hand knot. That’s it. Finish the necklace as you would any beaded necklace whether it’s knotted or not. This beginner’s way is a lot easier than using one strand of cord, and the results look almost the same.

How to Tell Real from Fake Pearls

Natural
Real pearls may come from either freshwater or saltwater, and it’s very difficult to tell which - both form in a variety of molluscs (not just oysters). However, all grow the same way in baroque shapes as well as round. There are also shell pearls and genuine pearls which have been artificially coated or dyed. Before you deal in pearls, you need to know if they’re natural or not.

Professional testing
If you want to buy expensive pearls that are perfectly matched, a gemologist certificate (from one of your choice) is essential. It costs about $150 to have pearls tested, as opposed to several-thousands for the type that warrant the test. An x-ray will show variations in density the inside of the pearl, a parasite that might have caused the formation of a natural pearl, and the characteristic shapes of drill holes.

The tooth test
Rub the surface of the pearl over your teeth - a real pearl feels gritty, while a faux pearl feels smooth. Real pearls are made up of layers of nacre that are deposited like sand on a beach. The slight waves in the nacre give a bumpy feeling against the teeth. However, if the pearls are dyed, the dye can fill in natural depressions.

Close inspection
Look at the pearls in bright light. Unless they’re very expensive, genuine pearls won't look perfectly matched. There will be slight variations in shape, size and color - along with grooves in their nacre, bumps, ridges, or pits. Otherwise, or if any are a perfect sphere or have a grainy smoothness: they’re suspect.

Cutting a pearl open will reveal its true nature. Natural pearls are comprised of many layers of nacre. Cultured pearls have a mother-of-pearl shell core covered with a thin layer of nacre. Fake pearls have a core with one or more layers of coating which tends to flake away on cutting.

Pearl holes
Examine drill holes to see the nacre layers and what lies beneath. Real pearls are usually drilled from both sides to meet in the middle - making the hole appear wider at the outside edge of the pearl. Holes of fake pearls are usually strait and are more likely to be larger all the way through. The nacre of fake pearls near the drill holes, flakes away easier than on a natural pearls. And cheap real pearls may not be drilled straight, making a necklace hang badly, unless it’s knotted. Other clues

Sometimes fakes are made to look irregular, and glass pearls often have flattened ends. Genuine pearls warm to the skin faster than glass pearls - while plastic pearls tend to feel warm right away. And real pearls are usually heavier for their size than any fakes.

Other signs are in the pearl’s surroundings. A genuine pearl necklace is more likely to be knotted and set in gold, silver, or platinum. You can examine clasps for stamps in the metal or for magnetism (indicating iron as opposed to a precious metal). The clasp should have a safety mechanism, like a fish hook. No one would use insecure clasps on good pearls.

Faux pearls
Faux pearls, although manmade, are not necessarily a cheap substitute to the real thing. They have genuine beauty of their own, looking “almost” the same as natural pearls costing thousands of dollars. They’re created by coating the outside of glass or plastic beads with essence d’orient or pearl powder. This is then dipped into various solutions of pearl film to simulate the luster of a natural pearl.

Pearl folk lore

• Pearls have the powers of love, money, protection, and luck.
• Pearls were dedicated by the Romans to Isis and they were worn to obtain her favor.
• In early Chinese myths, pearls fell from the sky when dragons fought among the clouds.

Pearl care

We have many pearl categories - see at either MrBead.com or MrBead.co.uk

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