More Bag Beads

For all the beads described in this post, I used the same process for creating the bead as described in the Plastic Bag Bead post.

Tarkine Opal



Slogan Strip with Franklin Opals



If you click on the slogan you can see the strip that is cut from the Archivers bag. The bag is translucent, not clear and without color. I put an orange strip of paper behind it in an attempt to make the translucent strip show up in the scan.



This is the bead resulting from shrinking the strip cut from the Archiver's bag with the slogan written on it. It looks rather like a pearl.

Alcohol Ink with Plastic Bag Strip

I applied Wild Plum and Stream alcohol ink to a portion of a translucent plastic bag, as show below. I cut this into strips about half of an inch wide and about twelve inches long.



The beads resulting from this application are a little like amethyst. It's difficult to tell from the scan, but they are square, albeit, primitive squares.

Plastic Bag Beads

On one of the Yahoo groups I read there was a discussion about beads made out of plastic bags. I thought I'd give it a try. I had a bag with the Archiver's logo on it, so I cut the logo into strips. This way I wouldn't have to color the beads after melting them.



I wrapped the strips around a knitting needle and heated them with my heat gun. Then I rolled them on a piece of clean paper on my table top to smooth them out. The beads tend to be thicker in the center as they melt, so I used a second knitting needle to gently push the thinner ends toward the middle while holding the bead in front of my heat gun. Then I rolled the beads across the clean sheet of paper again to smooth them out. This makes for a more uniform shape. If you're going for the irregular look, skip this rolling step.

I heated again and rolled them in Franklin Opals. A final heating to melt the opals and the beads below were the result.



Because I used the colored part of the plastic bag and I didn't have to paint the beads, I also didn't have to seal them. The Opals took care of that.

Another fun project.