For the full list booked so far click 2022 Bead Fairs.
New MrBead Shop: https://mrbeadshop.com
Shipping is free too on UK orders over £30 – under this UK P&P is just £2.50. International shipping from £5.
Can only be used at the NEW shop & not with any other coupon. To get the discount Key PINK at checkout now, as offer ends Friday 10th June 2022. Use at https://mrbeadshop.com
For details of October and to exhibit go to: For details of October and to exhibit go to: https://www.beadsupnorth.co.uk
The Strength Of Pink
Pink is calming, associated with love, kindness, and femininity. Some say when you need to feel kind to yourself, use pink. Pink is good to nurture relationships, and is associated with healthy flesh and new life. Making pink inspiring and creative to some.
Pink can be both feminine and vibrant. Bright pink makes people feel flirty, astute, and capable to accomplish the day’s toil. . All pinks creates feeling of joy and happiness – ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’. Friendly and familiar with no worries, like being home.
Red comes across as harsh and overly bold – while pink is bold, but gentle, feminine and versatile. Muted pinks represent youth and innocence, while loud pink elude sexiness and boldness. Pink makes people feel excited and happy. Full of life and character. Some American sports clubs even paint their opposing team’s locker rooms soft pink – because it makes players feel passive and less energetic.
Hot Pink
Hot pink is vivacious and joyous. Summer 2022 fashion designers want something bright, bold, fun and energetic to get over covid and lockdowns. Hot Pink is the colour! Alexander McQueen, Dior and Versace are all using pink this year.
The punk community use hot pink for its aggressive and rebellious sentiment. It’s packed with energy, youthfulness, vibrant, electric, provocative and bold. Always making a statement.
Pink With Other Colours
Blue and violet make hot pink come to life – and it pairs well with black, yellows and cyans. On the tamer side, pink goes well with white .
Is Pink An Artificial Colour?
As pink is not in the visible light spectrum, some say that it doesn’t actually exist. This gives pink an ethereal and artificial feel desired in certain designs. However, pink is found in nature in the flesh and shells of crabs, lobsters and flowers.
“Pink isn’t just a colour. It’s an attitude too.” – Miley Cyrus
Whatever your views: use more pink beads!
We have over 100 different pink beads, click: Pink Beads
Also, search Beads By Colour
Pearls are expected to be expensive and in short supply
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 jewellery, you will make you even more profit!
The pearl is the queen of gems and the gem of queens
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 colours 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, lustre, and colours 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.
Freshwater pearls are popular for their colours: 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 colour comes from the mussel species and water quality – with pearls taking the colour of the shell in which they form. However, permanent dyes are used today for most saturated colours.
The Best Pearls
Good pearls have thick overlapping layers of nacre. This can be tested by viewing its “lustre”. Roll the pearl with a pen in bright light – the best pearls will reflect the pen more.
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 shining, playful, reflected light of mother-of-pearl has attracted attention since ancient times. The natural material has always been popular.From then, different technology has turned mother-of-pearl into many uses, apart from jewellery. Today, it’s dyed every colour under the sun – creating attractive jewellery at affordable prices.
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.
See our Mother of Pearl Beads
Glass Pearls
As the name, these are coated glass to look like the best quality pearls possible. Any pearl that is a perfect round shape without any grooving, will either cost thousands of pounds or made of glass!
However, glass pearls are fantastic value for money and have a big place making affordable fashion jewellery. To see our colourful range of glass pearls at under £1.25 a string, click here.
Matching Pearls
Matching pearls isn’t easy, but is important when planning jewellery. It’s an art in itself, requiring a sharp eye, judgment, and experience. Try to buy all the pearls for a project at the same time, as later batches may not match. When balancing pearls for jewellery, you need to consider:
Pearls should be restrung every few years, depending on wear and exposure to hair spray, perfume, body oils, lotions, moisture, and perspiration. This weakens the silk and cause a potential break point for the strand. There’s a few ways to knot a beaded necklace, but this is the easiest for beginners. First choose your cord: either silk or nylon. Silk is traditional, however many complain that it snags and frays. Both come in a variety of colours and sizes – thicker cord for larger beads. 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.
For 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 colour of the cord with the colour of the beads. A popular way to start any beaded necklace is with bead tips. The only difference here is that two strands of the cord are inserted through the bead tip instead of one. This is easier than using one strand of cord, and the results look almost the same.
Professional Testing
If you want to buy expensive pearls that are perfectly matched, a gemmologist certificate is essential. It costs about £100 for a test, as opposed to several-thousands for the type that warrant the test. An x-ray will show variations in density inside of the 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, dye can fill in natural depressions.
Close Inspection
Look at the pearls in bright light. Unless they’re very expensive, genuine pearls have slight variations in shape, size and colour – along with grooves in their nacre, with ridges or pits. If any are perfect sphere or grainy smooth: they’re suspect. Cutting a pearl open reveals everything. 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 edges. Holes of fake pearls are usually strait and are more likely to be larger all the way through. 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.
Real pearls are heavier for their size than any fakes. Other signs are that a genuine pearl necklace is more likely to be knotted and set in gold, or silver. You can examine clasps for stamps in the metal. The clasp should have a safety mechanism – 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 pearl powder. This is then dipped into various solutions of pearl film to simulate the lustre of a natural pearl.
Pearl Folk Lore
There are an almost infinite number of myths and folk lore associated with pearls. Many pearl web sites included their own version of pearl myths. Here are a few that I found:
Click To See All Our Many Pearl Beads
New Forest Bead Fair
Enjoy a day out visiting us at this charming old-world village in the heart of the New Forest. Brockenhurst is bustling with old pubs and restaurants, yet offers spectacular views with ponies and donkeys wondering free.
Close to Southampton and Bournemouth – or if you’re coming north or London, its just 20-minutes from M27 at exit 1, and follow the A337 through Lyndhurst.
For Details Click New Forest Bead Fair
Cornish Bead Fair
The Cornish Bead Fair is in the village of Probus, which is almost right in the centre of Cornwall. Close to Newquay to the west and Mevagissey to the east. About 50-mins south is St Ives and Falmouth – and 50-mins north Loo and Padstow. And Probus is easy to reach right on the A30, the duel carriageway through the West Country.
For Details Click Cornish Bead Fair
Next Bead Fairs:
Sunday 12th June: Cheshire Bead Fair, Nantwich Civiv Hall, Nantwich CV5 5DG
Sunday 26th June: New Forest Bead Fair, Brockenhurst Village Hall, SO42 7RY
Sunday 3rd July: Cornish Bead Fair, Probus Village Hall, TR2 4NB
Sunday 10th July: Norwich Bead Fair, Best Western George Hotel, Norwich NR2 2DA.
For the full list click 2022 Bead Fairs
Shipping is free too on UK orders over £30 – under this UK P&P is just £2.50. International shipping from £5.
Can only be used at the NEW shop & not with any other coupon. To get the discount Key PINK at checkout now, as offer ends Friday 10th June 2022. Use at https://mrbeadshop.com.
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