Beads shops in Bali

Found this excellent resources that lists a lot of beads shops in Bali and other useful stuff.

Applebay Bead Shop

133 New Bridge Road
#02-05 Chinatown Point
Singapore 059413

Loot from my aussie trip

Whew! 11 days in Aussie, $400 poorer, and here is what I got.

This is for the competition at Beading Forum.

To be honest I’m a bit disappointed with the selections at the bead shops I went to in Sydney. If you like glass beads then you’ll be spoiled by the color-coordinated jars of beads, but findings and other materials are lacking. Prices are also more expensive than in Singapore, probably due to higher taxes there. But all in all, I’m quite happy with my purchase.

Bead rants

nitrogen from water

One of my biggest challenge in doing this hobby is that what I have in mind usually does not match what I have in my very limited beads stash. In the end, either I have few pieces of half-baked pieces or abandon the idea altogether and start thinking of a new design. Trips to local bead shops don’t really help either as most shops here carry limited range so it’s difficult to gather all the required components. Or maybe I just cannot think properly once I’m inside the shops.

I don’t know how to properly build my inventory to cover all the basics while still on budget. With semi-precious going for at least $15 a strand, every trip to bead shops burns hole in my poor wallet.

Beads inventory & jewelry pricing softwares

In an attempt to be more organized, I’m planning to use a software to keep track of my beads purchases and inventory. As usual, I started by dreaming what my ideal software looked like and then started to code from scratch. First with Delphi and later with Ruby on Rail (hey, old dog CAN learn new trick, right?). Wrong! Soonafter I realised that my programming skill is not as good as I believed it is and I gave up. I figured that I’d better spend the precious 4 hours each day doing something else and just pay for the software. So I began scouring the ‘net for more inventory softwares for the sake of comparison (another reason is I just LOVE searching for something on the ‘net. Yeah, geeky. I know. So what?).
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Bead size vs hook size

Here is a rough guide of which crochet hook and thread to use with various bead size.

Bead size	Hook size	Thread size
Bead size	Hook size	Perle cotton	Silk	Other
12/0	#13 (0.85mm) #12 (1.00mm)	#12	D - FF	Topstitching thread
11/0	#12 (1.00mm) #11 (1.10mm) #10 (1.30mm)	#10, #12	D - FF	#20 crochet weight cotton Topstitching thread YLI Jean Stitch
10/0	#11 (1.10mm) #10 (1.3mm) #8 (1.5mm)	#10, #12	E - FF	Topstitching thread YLI Jean Stitch
8/0	#11 (1.10mm) #10 (1.3mm)	#8, #10	E - FF	#18 Mastic cord Topstitching thread YLI Jean Stitch C-Lon Cord
6/0	#8 (1.5mm) #6 (1.8mm)	#5, #8	F - FFF	Rayon YLI Jean Stitch

Poor man’s bead spinner

Lately, I’m crazy about bead crochet and started digging more information about it. One of pre-requisite of bead crocheting is to have all the seed beads strung on the thread. Yes, all hundreds or thousands of those tiny round thingies and I really don’t enjoy doing it. Some people say it’s relaxing and therapeutic but it’s just driving me nuts.
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Lampworking class

water cooling towers

Last Saturday I joined the lampworking class at Glassil and it was really fun! I used to wonder why handmade glass beads are so expensive. Then I borrowed a bead making book and realised there are a lot of things involved in making a single bead, the most important being skill. Now that I have hands-on experience, hats off to all lampwork artists out there! I couldn’t even make the hole centered *blah*

Anyway, below are the results of the 3-hour class. The first picture shows beads done by the instructor, and the second one shows my murky, lopsided beads