Our Flower Beads in BeadStyle Magazine

The Beadin’ Path vintage metal flowers make the cover of BeadStyle Magazine! BeadStyle and designer Naomi Fujimoto team up and deliver a trendy bib necklace using beadinpath.com’s vintage metal flower beads.

Vintage metal bling is the thing in September’s issue of BeadStyle Magazine. Naomi Fujimoto’s cutting edge design features large metal flowers purchased from our vintage metal stash at The Beadin’ Path. The flower trend in jewelry is going strong, and Fujimoto’s “Bib in Bloom” design is nothing short of striking.

Designers will enjoy this BeadStyle step-by-step tutorial and undoubtedly create their own dazzling version of this trendy bib necklace. As with all vintage stock, the gorgeous pieces used in this design sold quickly. The good news is that we have many more vintage metal flowers which are very similar. Check out our latest collection below and purchase them before they sell out!

Behind the Mask: Artist’s Opening Reception at The Beadin’ Path in Freeport, Maine

Freeport, Maine – Wednesday, June 4, 2008.

The Beadin’ Path in Freeport issued a challenge to beadwork and fiber artists from all over the world: to accept, be inspired by and submit a mask for a show entitled ‘Behind the Mask’. Over 50 artists answered the call and joined in this challenge, creating beaded masks using varying techniques such as bead weaving, stitching and embroidery, sculpture, mixed media, clay and more. An opening reception will be held at The Beadin’ Path in Freeport, Maine on Friday, June 27th from 5-8pm. It is open to the public and is a great opportunity to meet with many of the artists and discuss their process and statement behind their mask.

Behind the Mask is The Beadin’ Path’s 2nd large scale ‘Bead Challenge’ featuring a call for submissions. In 2007, beaded dolls were submitted with the common theme entitled ‘Beyond Make-Believe’. In both challenges, calls for submission were put out in the Freeport store and online at http://www.BeadinPath.com and various beading Yahoo Group sites, yielding bead and fiber art talent from within the US and 7 other countries. Debra Ward, a local fiber and bead artist of Green Maine, organizes the annual Bead Challenges for The Beadin’ Path.

Participating fiber artist, Aryd’ell Hotelling of Bryson City, North Carolina says of the process, "The Mask started out first as just something to reflect Beauty, as many of my beaded art dolls do. Then it took a slightly different direction, wanting to reflect and enhance understanding of how the face reveals (one’s) emotions, through bead(s)...". Many of the artists collaborated and bounced ideas off of each other, including technique and inspiration, using a Yahoo online forum specifically for challenge participants.

The Beadin’ Path is a bead company based in Freeport, Maine with a website at http://www.BeadinPath.com. Offering an open studio and lots of inspiration to jewelry designers and bead artists alike, The Beadin’ Path offers a full class schedule, free demos in the shop, as well as various in-store events and activities. Importers, collectors, and over all hoarders, The Beadin’ Path is an industry leader in vintage beads including vintage Lucite, old and rare Swarovski crystals, vintage glass beads, and other scarce and collectible beads.

‘Behind the Mask’ will be on display and open to the public from June 27th – July 27th, 2008 during store hours which are 9:30-7pm daily. You can also view images of the exhibition once the show closes, after July 27th at http://www.BeadinPath.com.

Photo: Mask by Debbie Williams of Maine

Up to date...

So I've alwasy been so intimidated by this blogging thing. I always put his pressure on myself to say something so worthwhile, so profound in each and every post. I originally starting writing blogs more as informational articles on beads and beading: to share the love but also to help get traffic to our site BeadinPath.com.

Now the more I read blogs, the more I realize that I need to blog just to help me organize my thoughts. And what an opportunity to get back to my love of writing! Since it seems I never have time to put an actual pen (remember the 'vintage' kind that had ink in it - used with paper?) to paper, I am trying to revive my blog. It will be a dual purposed blog: daily ramblings of what is on my mind, but alos bead tidbits and updates on store stuff. Store stuff is what is on my mind quite often anyway so it's all the same really.

SO, on the store front: We just got in the most darling vintage Margarita crystal beads. Rare & vintage Swarovski. While we have a pretty large collection of vintage Swarovski crystals still these days, it's been awhile since I've 'stumbled upon' any "NEW" vintage crystals. Back in the day, I had to ration my buying as there was so much out there and not a super-huge market (I know, can you believe I used to see walls of 'polka dotted' Art 42 Swarovski beads in varied colors & sizes and didn't BUY THEM ALL?!). But in recent years - there's a market. And the good finds still happen, but they are fewer and far between than they used to be, that's for sure. Luckily people come to us now and that's how we 'stumble' on these treasures lately. Back to the beads...

Vintage Art 3700's and 3701's. Swarovski still makes 3700's but not in these sizes & colors. We found 16mm double coated Comet Or in 24k coating, 14mm Bermuda Blue and other lovelies. Art 3701 is a similar style to the center holed sew-on margaritas (Art. 3700), only 3701's have extra facets on their perimeter. We now have 16mm in the double coated Comet Or in this shape too. I am addicted to wearing gold anything lately, so many of these will go into the BP archives (my stash :) but we'll have them listed on our site very soon. Miss Megan just priced them out for stranders today so we'll have them back in the shop and hopefully online sometime next week.

We also just purchased a large joblot of vintage glass stones & cabochons, mostly made in West Germany, Japan and Czechoslovakia ca. 1930's and 1940's. Again 'back in the day' (and I'm really not that old...) I used to find these high end, highly leaded, lovely colored stones all over the place. I used to be able to buy some of them by the pound!!! That was some years ago though! These are 2-tone colors and other specialty pieces that are hard to find in one place. BUT we're still trying to figure out what to do with them. Such is the problem with having a 5,000 square foot bead store: a space I never thought we'd ever fill! We're already running out of room and have to decide what to do with things like this: lovely things that have a market, albeit smaller than our general bead market. Chris (dear hubby) just built new display tables and I believe this lot is beckoning for a 3rd to display them out loose. These will not get online for a while as we have many Czech glass beads and other lovelies on their way in that take priority

SO, on the daily ramblings... I'm losing my voice. I LOVE karaoke and just came from my friends house where we sang our arses off. Little Chasie (15 month old baby boy) was bouncing and singing into the microphone like the next American Idol. Her husband had borrowed a DJ-friend's set-up to DJ an event their hosting tomorrow night. So he was practicing his set-up in their basement tonight. After a glass of wine or 2, Karen & I (my best girlfriend from grade school) broke out the Cheap Trick and the Journey and sang so long we had the kids begging us to put them to bed! Maybe it wasn't because we sang too LONG... maybe we just weren't all that good! But it was fun. I used to think I could sing OK. I sang in church growing up and was always encourage to perform. But it's the kind of think that if you don't use it, you lose it. I need to practice more often because tonight... was bad. And wow, Steve Perry really could sing... you try it. Separate Ways in your shower tomorrow morning. You'll see.

OK, I have no idea if this blog is going to be something I keep up with or not. I will try... and hopefully it will be more 'on task' and less long winded going forward. And I'll post pictures once I figure out how...

Swarovski Beads in Opaque Colors: A Rare Find

Written by Heather DeSimone

Swarovski Beads in Opaque Colors:
A Rare Find
For years and years, while we’d comb for beads, we’d come across loads, and I mean LOADS of opaque colored glass beads. It was kind of like a treasure hunt when someone had beaten you to the treasure. Or like on the Charlie Brown “Great Pumpkin” Halloween special: all the kids are lined up to get tricks and treats dropped into their bag and as the candies are doled out down the line you see yummy treats. But when you get to Charlie Brown they plop in what looks like a piece of coal and he says “I got a rock.” Anyway, it was same sort of let down. Opaque beads, especially opaque white, were passe’. Just non-desirable. We’d leave them behind. Our vendors at the joblot warehouses would send us offers “1940’s Opaque white glass beads for $5 a LB!!!!” and we’d say “no thanks.”

It’s funny how everything, even in the bead world, goes in very cyclic trends. Those opaque white beads that for so many years we passed over were really a hot ticket in the era of Lucille Ball. Remember her crisp strand of opaque white beads that were as essential to her as her apron? She’d wear her fire-engine red lipstick and her understated beady elegance in each and every crazy situation that she & Ethel got themselves involved in. In fact as an aside, Miriam Haskell adorned Ms. Lucy episode by episode and she used many an opaque bead to do so. During my 15 years in the business we’ve been waiting and waiting for these opaque beads to come back in vogue. And guess what… they have!

Actually this article is a couple of years too late. These beads really came back in style a year or two back, but they’re still going strong. They’ve become just an every-day part of our bead palette. Where before, we’d only be drawn to a transparent sapphire with loads of sparkle, we now swoon for a true navy blue. That brings us to the mac-Daddy of the opaque bead keepers: the Swarovski opaque crystal. With their 30% lead content and highly glistening facets, Swarovski did these opaque beads better than anyone else. Dense, rich, non-transparent tones take on a whole different light when they’re machine cut. They reflect and refract the light all around them. They don’t change the color of the bead as you’ll find in many transparent beads or chatoant colors. But they make that one true color just gleam to its fullest potential.

And speaking of these Swarovski opaque colors: have you ever seen them? You’re probably thinking to yourself… “Ok, what is she talking about?” Because they are rare! Even though I turned my nose up at them for years, some others evidently did not, because I don’t find them very often anymore. We were fortunate to buy out a job lot (ie job lot = designer’s overstock or closeout) several years back and at a really good price. The lot included many Article 5110’s and 5105’s (the vintage flower bead and emerald cut crystals) in loads of opaque colors. In fact, I can remember thinking to myself at the time (it was probably 1998), “These are SO UGLY, but the price is right…” It’s so funny how that works. Now I think they’re some of the rarest treasures we possess at BeadinPath.com & I happen to have in my own private jewelry stash a necklace I made with the darling little green flower beads.

Let’s spotlight the colors which is much easier to do here than in my never ended glass bead finish glossary (see the last blog). There is Opaque Green which is a yummy milky almost Kelly green with a marbleized opacity. This is not to be confused with Swarovski’s Apple Green, a much darker and denser opaque green. Unfortunately we don’t have any stock in this color right now. But keep looking wherever you can and when you find it, or any of these colors, hoard it. It’s worth it. And you never know what we’ll come across. And then we have the Opaque Rose which is a delicate and almost ‘antique’ pink. Mixed with Opaque Green, you would make a real preppy statement or if you’re in “Old Florida” you’ll fit right in mixing these two colors on a simple bracelet. We also have Ivory which is the most elegant color for bridal jewelry you’ll find. It seems Swarovski has tried to come up with that hot bridal tone in recent years with the introduction of White Opal, White Opal Sky Blue, and White Alabaster. But they forgot about one of their old classics and should seriously consider bringing it back. These beads evoke rich tones of a royal wedding, a color for the most elegant brides (OK, I wore regular old white at my wedding too).

There are other colors that I once had and still yearn for. There was Opaque Red (Dara: do you still have that package of 14mm 199’s you found in our back room a couple of years ago? I want them back!) And there is Navy Blue. I’ve only ever had these in 8mm 5000’s which seems so unexciting. But these were SO beautiful in a nautical sort of way. I want some.

So if you have a stash of opaque beads and you’re still not into them: hold onto them. They’re truly beautiful and their time will come in your mind if they have not yet. Trends come and go, but color sings no matter what year it is.

Last Updated ( Monday, 12 November 2007 )

Types of Vintage Pendants

Written by Heather DeSimone

Types of Vintage Pendants
Recently Dara, our West Coast Sales Rep, had a Summer series of vintage bead trunk shows across California. We send Dara the best of our vintage finds for these shows. What is great is that we can send her items that have very much or very little quantity available & her customers enjoy the process of digging for a treasure. Our store is like this too where we can put out items that are special and one of a kind, or items that have sold down to levels where there are only a few scarce pieces left. Online, this is more difficult because we have to weigh out whether it is worthwhile to put an item on our website that we will likely run out of faster. It’s frustrating for the customer for an item to sell out before they get any and before we have time to remove the item. And it’s a lot of work for our staff to be putting items online to only remove them the next day or two.

So Dara wound up her Summer bead show blitz (see Dara’s bead show blogs) and we recently have been combing through what bead stock was sent back to us from her bead show kit. We’ve been finding loads of lovely vintage pendants including some vintage glass lovelies that we haven’t had online in a while because we had thought we sold out, and some we’ve never had online. It made me realize how many unique styles are out there for vintage pendants, particulary vintage pendants made with glass.

Intaglio Pressed Glass
Intaglio refers to a piece in which there is a design impressed or cut into a shape. Many times a collector or dealer might refer to this technique as ‘carved’ which is actually inaccurate. The motif may look like it was carved, but this style is manufactured using a press-mold technique and not a carving or removing of the product. We have a great example of an Intaglio Pendant in our store. You can find these often in circulated vintage jewelry. The trend in the 60’s and 70’s was to simply hang them from a plated chain.

Reverse Painted Glass
This technique goes hand in hand with Intaglio pieces. Only the process is taken a step further by coloring the concave motif either by hand or machine. This process was used not only in jewelry components, but you’ll find that there was a trend in the 1940’s – 1970’s where reverse painting was also used in home décor items such as paper weights and ornaments. This technique was especially popular in Chinese and oriental collectibles from past eras. Here is an example of a darling reverse painted piece made in West Germany ca. 1940’s. I can’t believe we still have any of these left.

Givre’ Glass
This style of glass is not specific to pendants, however it makes for some of the most alluring color combinations in pendants and beads. Givre’ refers to the style of glass where one color is inside or encased by another. Generally it is a color that is encased in clear, however that isn’t always the case. Swarovski made some truly rare givre’ crystals many years ago (but that is another blog topic) and glass is still produced in many gorgeous givre’ colors. This is a fantastic vintage West German pink and clear givre’ pendant.

Foil Backed Glass
Many beads, pendants, sew-ons and stones are enhanced by coating one surface with a metallic foil. Sometimes this is a layer of actual silver or 24k gold. It caused the front surface to have a glowing quality. The only draw-back is that many times vintage foil-backed pendants will show their age with slight scratches or chips to the foil finish. Sometimes they can be re-coated to restore the pendant and other times the scratches do not detract from the piece's quality. Here is a beautiful foil-backed shell pendant to show you an example of a foil-backed glass pendant. Sometimes just a spot of foil is added to highlight the glass, like in this pendant.

Leaded Glass Pendants
Crystal is also many times, referred to as ‘leaded glass’. Technically, glass doesn’t achieve ‘crystal’ status unless it contains 30% lead. However there are many beautiful pieces containing a lower lead content that are referred to as leaded glass and then they are machine cut achieving the look and feel of a crystal piece. This leaded glass pendant is an excellent example of such a piece that was made in Czechoslovakia ca. 1940’s.

“Carved” Glass Pendants
Again, this term is generally used in error in referring to press-molded glass pieces. However, it has come to be such a common term in glass that it is widely accepted to describe any bead or pendant that has a relief motif. One of my personal favorites is this vintage Japanese glass pendant in “Jade.” The Japanese glass houses of the 1940s’ often strived to replicate authentic gemstones that were considered high-end jewelry at the time in glass such as Jade, Carnelian, Lapis & Malachite. Here is a great example of a "carved" glass pendant.

I hope you have enjoyed this glossary of glass pendant terminology & these gorgeous examples of collectible vintage glass pendants. Be sure to keep an eye out in your travels for these styles as you can often find them in vintage jewelry. Or take advantage of the opportunity to add to your vintage bead collection by snapping up uncirculated glass pieces such as those in our offerings. Either way, you’re sure to look back at your stash a few years later and find that what was readily available at the time, has become more and more scarce on the vintage bead & jewelry market as time goes by.

Last Updated ( Friday, 16 November 2007 )