Remember my post on Preciosa Onela's new twin bead line that now starting to show up on this side of the pond?  These double hole beads add so much more potential to beaded projects as shown in the drop dead gorgeous bead work tutorials I linked there.


Well, Preciosa-Ornela really want beaders to get excited about these Czech beads so they are offering a huge collection of beads (shown above)  including the twin beads for one lucky winner of this giveaway. Isn't it just a delightful blend of colors?

They also sent me an equivalent collection in teal blue for review.  I wasn't kidding when I said huge.  I put the bag on my scale and it is more than 1 lb!



One of the best things about Czech beads are their color range and bead finishes. The collection included opaque, color-lined, silver-lined, metallic and pearly seed beads. The larger farfalle beads are at the bottom right.


I wondered what the twin beads could do for other jewelry makers who are not into bead work. So I experimented and here are the results.  The double hole beads can indeed act as tiny connectors in wire designs. However, if you are going to do the same, use 22G or finer wire. 20G wire does not go through most twin beads.

I made the upside down triangle form using a Toblerone chocolate box as a mandrel as mentioned in my triangular jewelry tutorial post.  I hammered the frame flat before wiring in lengths of beads.  The clear twin beads were added in intervals so that I could feed random short lengths of scrap sterling silver through them. After curving these wire scraps, I just wired them to the frame. As you can see, the extra wire bits filled in the gaps.


Here is a close-up to show what I mean : 


Although you could omit the twin beads as you can see from the triangular project I did before which also used the Preciosa-Ornela beads.


Another design I attempted was the double wired  tear drop pendant which also put the greyish twin beads to good use :


(I must add that this was one of the most difficult photo shoots I have ever done - a lot of silver and transparent beads make it challenging). It would have been next to impossible without the Modahaus setups I have.)

Giveaway
Now all the above projects barely made a dent into the large collection of beads so it will keep a beadaholic happy for quite a while. 

If you would like to be that lucky beadaholic, then try your luck with the giveaway. All you have to do is make a comment below. Subscribers need to click on the post title to come to my actual blog. Scroll down and enter your comment. Pick Name/URL. If you don't have a store or blog, leave the URL blank

Extra entries if you become or are a blog subscriber or are an existing GFC follower (I no longer have the widget for new followers) etc . If you also do shout outs,  those will count as additional entries too!  Preciosa-Ornela are also on Facebook and Twitter.

Please say so in the comments.

This international giveaway ends in a week's time at 6 pm EST Monday, March 26, 2012.

Disclosure

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