Wedding Beads, Diamonds & Crystal for April

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If you're in the UK, please visit us for a MrBead bag & a free gift at one of our bead fairs during April, May & June - starting Sunday 28th April 2013 at Beads Up North, Haydock Race Course - for details click here. All our 2013 fairs here.

Wedding Beads
Diamonds - April's Gemstone
Man-made Diamonds
Cubic Zirconia
Quartz Crystal - April's Alternate Gemstone
See Us in the UK for a Free Gift!
Discount Offer

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Wedding Beads

Every bride wants to look her best, irrespective of cost. I know, I used to photograph thousands of weddings.

The bridal market is huge, with the average wedding costing US$20,000, that's over £12,000. Don’t miss out - get in now!

There are many ways beads can add an individual touch to a wedding, apart from the bride. Beaded jewelry is needed for the bride & groom’s mothers’, the bridesmaids, special friends, and just about every lady attending:

On gowns
Wraps
Purses
Tiaras
Hairpins
Necklaces
Earrings and bracelets
In flower arrangements
Presents

Bridal Jewellery
White or subtle shades of pink freshwater pearls are ideal. One strand will make three or four floating necklaces. These are popular for weddings, giving the appearance of floating on a fine wire. Beads are crimped in place either individually or in small groups, single or multi-stranded. Freshwater pearl earrings are inexpensive or you can make them yourself with sterling silver wire.

Beading for Gowns
The favorites for beading gowns are tiny 3mm Swarovski crystals, small shiny beads, light-reflecting coating, and silver-lined seed beads. The aurora borealis effect from many gemstones is striking. All these add interest to the dress and look great on the photographs, especially as the wedding photographer will feature the bride’s and bridesmaid’s gowns.

You can sew subtle little shapes, like flowers or butterflies, onto the gown with tiny seed beads. Longer patterns running right down the length of the dress look effective too. Keep the bead color the same or similar to the gown, so as not to distract from the dress’s elegance.

What bead pattern is best?
Try to match the pattern in gown’s detail, to that on the tiara. If you have a floral design in your gown, look for a similar headpiece. A modern, plain white gown usually looks best with a tiara with straight lines or a geometric pattern.

Bridal Tiara Designs Match details of the dress and tiara. If the dress has pearls or crystals, select a tiara with pearls or crystals. However, a tiara with only crystals or rhinestones will match any gown. Pearl tiaras go well with off-white or ivory gowns, and compliment a pearl necklace or earrings. Make sure all the pieces of the bridal ensemble work together and that no one piece overwhelms another. Brides with short hair look fabulous wearing a tiara too – but choose a lighter one that needs only a few pins to hold it in place. Like a headband style or a more petite shape. A tiara should draw attention to the bride’s face by framing it. The wrong shape tiara can make the face look too long and thin, or too short and full. Matching the face:

Round/full face: to make the face appear longer use a tiara with a peak.
Long face: needs headbands or a tiara with little or no height that extend over the head from one side to the other.
Oval face: avoid peaks at the top which make the face appear longer. Choose a headband, side hair comb, or hair pins.

Matching the gown:

White gowns: need a tiara that is silver-tone, rhinestone, or white pearl.
Ivory gowns: choose a tiara that has gold-tone or ivory pearls.
Champagne or dark ivory gown: choose a gold tone tiara or dark ivory pearls.
Diamond white gowns: this is a modern shade of gown, lighter than off-white, but not start white. Choose either gold, silver tone, or white pearl.

Gift Ideas
A nice necklace, or bracelet and earrings will complement the bride or bridesmaids dresses’. If you know the bride to be, incorporating beads into her wedding will bring unexpected joy. Like time together planning unique designs.

Other excellent lasting and unusual thank you gifts are:

Beaded keyrings or cell-phone charms.
Little beaded animals are fun.
Pin brooches.
Wine glass identifiers (different colored beaded rings around glasses).
Spectacle holder to keep glasses around their neck when not being worn.

Pearl are great for wedding jewellery, to see our huge range of pearl beads click MrBead.com or MrBead.co.uk

Diamond- April's Gemstone

April's birthstone is the diamond. Diamonds are a wonder of nature. Their cold sparkling fire has held us spell-bound for centuries with myths of romance, power, greed, and magic. Ancient Hindus, finding diamonds washed out of the ground after thunderstorms, believed they were created by lightning bolts. Today, the diamond is a symbol of enduring love.

Diamonds are the rich cousins of graphite, both crystalline forms of pure carbon. The enormous difference in their properties is a result of the way that carbon atoms are bonded together. In graphite, carbon atoms are arranged in sheets that easily slide past each other, making them ideal as lubricants. Diamond crystals, are a tight-fisted network of carbon atoms securely held in four directions, making it the hardest naturally-occurring substance.

Man-made Diamonds

Up until a few years ago De Beers controlled all the worlds diamonds - by stockpiling tons at a time, they greatly increased the value of a relatively-common crystallized rock.

However, it is now possible to artificially grow diamonds, the same way they are formed over millions of years. Using high-pressure and high-temperature in crystal growth chambers, the size of a washing machine. Within each chamber, a tiny sliver of natural diamond is bathed in a molten solution of graphite and a metal-based catalyst at approximately 1,500 C. Slowly, carbon precipitates onto the diamond seed crystal. A gem-quality, 2.8-carat rough yellow diamond grows in just under three-and-a-half days. This can then be cut and polished to give a gem larger than 1.5 carats. (One-half carat is equal to 100 mg of diamond about the size of a kernel of corn.).

To say these cultured stones are not real diamond is false. Chemically they are identical to mined diamonds, but they do have different growth patterns and a lack of inclusions that would draw suspicions to a qualified a jeweler. However, those bits of minerals that are enclosed in a natural diamond as its forms are regarded as flaws; a lack of inclusions is actually a good thing. For a jeweler to tell for sure, De Beers has designed a machine for around $10,000.

Cubic Zirconia

A much cheaper way of making a stone that looks like diamond was created by Russian scientists. Cubic Zirconia is a dense clear material through which laser light can be reflected. When melted at high-temperature and an incredibly-high electrical current sent through it, the compound crystallizes, forming chunks similar to rough diamonds, which are then be cut and polished to exact specifications. Using the naked eye, even a trained jeweler cant detect the difference between good cubic zirconia, genuine or cultured diamonds. And even diamond experts have been fooled between cubic zirconia and a five-million-dollar diamond - concluding that both were fakes! All are fully faceted, cut and polished the same.

To see our cubic zirconia rings click MrBead.com or MrBead.co.uk

Quartz Crystal - April's Alternate Gemstone

Diamonds are too expensive for most to make jewellery, but a gemstone with similar charectristics for April is quartz crystal.

The Mayans, Druid priests, and Tibetan monks all knew the spiritual power of crystal. The ancients used it to strengthen the sun’s rays to bring heat, and the Chinese science of feng-shui teaches that arranging crystals around the home retains positive energy.

Crystals became important to these people because of the belief in their capacity to store and amplify any power source fed into them - physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. Today’s crystal therapists say that the stones' ability to work as a conductor allows energy to be focused via a person's thoughts to stimulate healing. And many people use crystal to focus attention on what they want. With a little imagination, you too can use crystal's energy to access a higher level of consciousness and turn a desire into reality.

All types of crystal have this magical power, but individual colour crystal is believed to have other uses too. Rose quartz, the stone of unconditional love, is great for emotional healing. Red, yellow, and orange stones are said to produce energy; clear and aquamarine stones are healers; and lavender and blue-violet are calming stones.

Pure rock crystal is clear, but usually quart comes in a variety of opacity. Milky quartz is cloudy because of microscopic inclusions of fluid embodied in the crystal at the start of its life - creating an attractive effect of a crystal within a crystal, giving the interior a ghostly appearance. Smoky Quartz is caused by natural radiation from nearby granite rocks which have a small amount of radioactivity

See our crystal beads at MrBead.com or MrBead.co.uk
And or quartz beads at MrBead.com or MrBead.co.uk

See us in the UK for a Free Gift!

After being shut away in a little office reading and sending e-mails, we love to see customers!

Visit us in the UK and say you're a MrBead Newsletter reader, and we'll give you a MrBead bag & a free gift!

Sunday 28th April 2013 - Beads up North! Haydock Race Course, Newton-le-Willows WA12 0HQ
Saturday 18th May 2013 - The Luton MrBead Bead Show - Stockwood Hotel, Stockwood Crescent, Luton, LU1 3SS
Sunday 19th May 2013 - The North East Bead Show - Holiday Inn, Great North Road, Seaton Burn, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE13 3BP
Sunday 2nd June 2013 - Cheshire Bead Fair - Nantwich Civic Hall, CW5 5DG
Sunday 9th June 2013 - Norwich MrBead Bead Show with The Bead Queen - George Hotel, Arlington Lane, Norwich, NR2 2DA
Fri, Sat & Sunday 14th, 15th & 16th June - Middlewich Folk & Boat Fair, Cheshire, CW10 9AS. A fabulous weekend of folk & roots music. We will be in the craft tent, canalside.

We will also be calling at many beading groups. If you would like us to call on your group, please e-mail or tweet Nigel, or phone after 24th April 07576134264.

For details of all our 2013 bead fairs click here
See a video of our September & October bead fairs here

Discount of £6 or $10 Offer!

Sample our beads with £6 or $10 off any order from our MrBead bead store, just key in SEEMRBEAD at the checkout and click "Redeem Coupon".

No minimum order, but offer only valid until Friday 5th April 2013 only - so act now!

NigelHayMckay.com

Read about the man behind MrBead and watch him make a fool of himself at NigelHayMckay.com and his resent trips and what he eats in China! Much from these newsletters on beads is already on the site + a lot more with photos, and there will be a even more in the future.

Nigel's blog is now fully functional - so please join in at NigelHayMckay.com/blog!

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