New This Week!

Blankety blank blank

Fill in the blanks - yep - go ahead. You can fill them in, or file them or punch them or hammer them. You can texture them, glue on them, wire wrap, decoupage, collage. You can, in fact, do whatever metal heart desires. We have new blanks - and this new line is thinner than the old ones, in case you were finding those, nice as they are, a little hard to manipulate. These are also available in Copper, Brass and German Silver. German silver is a nickel alloy, by the way, harder than silver, but if you have a nickel allergy, you'll want to stick to the copper and brass. Interesting new shapes, not just various sizes of circles, but also butterflies, rings and hearts.

• Metal Blanks

The Bronze Age

What happens if your dinosaur leaves you? You have a dino-sore heart! That's what this is - a big bronze heart with a funky lizard-hide pattern. Bunch of new, bronze beads this week - while these smaller, hammered hearts are cute too, my personal fave is these dragonfly beads!

Although - this Crocodile clasp is also too awesome for words. How cute is that?

Over in the Sterling beads - these seedpod-like beads really appeal to me - I'm thinking two of the smaller ones on chains for earrings and one of the larger ones as a pendant.

And - another bead with a hole big enough for the Euro-style charm bracelets - or driving a truck through.

Thinking of Bailing?

A nice bunch of hand-picked new bails! Hard to pick a favourite here, maybe these really large Navajo Thunder bails, or these angular Triangle Filigree bails.

More of the Lampwork bead aligners, more styles, more colours. These are spacers with a post that slides inside the lampwork bead to keep it straight and even on the beading cable, as the the holes in lampwork beads are generally larger that most other beads, resulting in them sitting a little crooked when strung. Use them like regular spacers, one each side of the lampwork bead, for a nice, even, straight look when strung.

Baby crimps for feathers! Use these smaller leather-crimp-style crimps for the feathers. You can get up to 4 feather in one, and then, once it is secured, they are easy to hang in earrings, etc. Available in Silvertone, gold plated, and bright copper.

Oh, and speaking of crimps - if the soaring price of silver is making you hunt around on the floor in search of stray crimp tubes, maybe check out these silver-plated crimp tubes as an alternate. Beats whacking your head on the table.

New Literature

New Magazines - hot off the presses, Stringing Magazine, new special edition Easy Metal Clay from Lap. Journal, and the 6th annual Bead and Button compilation.

New book too - Spotlight on Wire, with a range of interesting projects that will appeal to beginners and advanced wire-ers.

Other new stuff too - so click on a link or a picture above, or start with the Main Page, if you feeling intrepid, (there is a LOT of stuff there), or chunk it down into bite-size portions by checking out the categories: Click on a link and go crazy! Firepolish, Pressed Glass, Swarovski Crystal, Seedbeads, Stone and Pearls, Preciosa Crystal, Metal Beads, Other Cool Beads, Findings, Metal Clay & Supplies or Books, Kits, Tools. Look for the "new" tags!

Or maybe check out all our free, yes, free projects. A new one every week.