Findings Make The Jewellery

FINDINGS MAKE THE JEWELLERY! 

Findings are essential for creating jewellery, but it’s easy forgotten when you‘re shopping for beads. Jewellery without findings is dull, like a film with no music. Findings also save you money, making semi-precious beads go a lot further.

Findings enhance and bring beads to life, without drawing too much attention to themselves.

• You need wires to string the beads onto, whether they are flexible beading wire or rigid. Items made with flexible wires will need crimp beads to secure the ends, and you’ll want ear wires if you want to make earrings.
  
  
• You’ll also need a clasp to create necklaces or bracelets, and jump rings to attach those clasps. Toggle clasps are the easiest, but you can also use spring ring or lobster claw clasps if you want an adjustable length necklace.
  
  
• Spacer are useful to both add-design and to economize on the beads used in a project.

You could create beaded jewellery without any metal beads, but they will help your jewellery appear more professional.

Spacer beads vary greatly in size, thickness, and shape so you can dramatically alter the style of your necklace by exchanging the metal beads. They are excellent to add a ‘sliver of metallic flash’ – while larger beads (often called Bali Beads) may be fancy enough to function as the focal beads in your designs.

Try using small 925 gothic spacers in between colourful single beads for a classy effect, and and cone or dome-shaped ones called bead caps are great for topping off a drop.

At MrBead we stock over 100 different spacer beads. Most of these are what is known as ‘Tibetan Silver’, a more affordable and flexible material than pure silver. However, we also have many Thai Hill Tribe Silver spacers – these are 97.5 to 99% silver.

Tibetan Silver
In ancient Tibet, jewellery was made by hammered the back of coinage-silver plate, to create a design in relief on the other side. Today, Tibetan Silver still has an antique silver finish like pewter - but is an alloy of copper and tin, with no actual silver. Hence the great value of these type of findings. They make very attractive jewellery.

We've tested some of these beads and can confirm they're both nickel and lead free. However, some may have small traces of other compounds like zinc that could cause an allergy in some people. Therefore, they shouldn't be used on 'broken' skin like earrings and piercing.

Like most metal, including silver, oxygen will tarnish them over time - they can be brightened with silver cleaner. For a higher-quality finding, click to see our Pure Silver Beads.

Click to see all our: 
Findings & Spacers Beads
Catches, Clasps & Hooks
Bead Threads & Wire
Charm Beads

Thai Hill Tribe Silver

Over 100 years ago, Chinese hill tribes migrated south into Northern Thailand.

These poor nomadic farmers used elephants to clear the jungle and quickly took to growing opium, rotating their crops every few years. The largest of these, the Karen Hill Tribe, still live in bamboo huts built on stilts.

In the 1960’s, the King of Thailand tried to discourage drugs by helping the Karen develop an alternative income.

Royal silversmiths taught them to design and make jewelry using high-content silver. They learned to create unique designs reflecting their own culture. Today, the skills are passed on to the next generation who specialize making silver engraved with plants, animals, and other geometric designs.

These hand-crafted Thai spacers have a high-silver content and are of a better quality than our other metal beads. Use them to enhance your best designs. Size as quoted – but please note that some are tiny, so we advise handling these with tweezers.

Thai Silver Purity
Silver Spacer BeadsThai Hill Tribe Silver is 97.5-99% pure silver. Sterling 925 silver is only 92.5% pure. The high silver content of Thai silver makes it softer than Sterling, but it doesn’t tarnish as easy as Sterling silver which has copper added.

Obviously, this extra purity makes the silver slightly more expensive than 925.

Click To See Our Pure Silver Beads