Featured Brand of the Month: CzechMates - Week One

 

As we welcome in the month of June, the designers here at Beadaholique would like to feature a brand that's perfect for creating colorful, summer-inspired beaded jewelry. The new and exciting 'Brand of the Month' pick for June is the CzechMates 2-Hole Beading System.

We will be highlighting and exploring all the ways these two-hole beads add stability, shape and definition to your bead work.The CzechMates Two-Hole Beading System combines the beauty of Czech beads with the design advantages of 2-hole beads. And although designing with these two-hole beads may seem a bit intimidating at first, they allow you to create 3-dimensional designs that might be challenging to achieve otherwise. We hope that by showcasing the variety of shapes and styles offered by these 2-Hole beads, you will be inspired to experiment and create wonderful new designs using Lentil, Brick, Square, Dagger, Triangle and SuperDuo beads.

Featured Project: The Laura Bangle by Megan

Megan's bangle bracelet features pale jade brick beads and crystal cup chain and has a definite vintage vibe. This is a wonderful example of adding a strip of bead work to a bangle and allowing the uniform look of these 2-Hole beads to shine.

Featured Video: How to Bead weave a Strip of 2-hole Brick beads

In this video, you will learn how to bead weave CzechMates 2-Hole Brick Beads into a strip using a combination of ladder and peyote stitches. This video will assist you in replicating Megan's Laura Bangle, featured above.

 

For this week's picks, we'd like to focus on our favorite shape from the CzechMates 2-Hole Beading System line. Here are our Designer Picks:




Megan:

I love the possibilities in bead weaving that all the new shapes present.  One of my favorites (because it's so versatile) is the Brick Bead.  It pairs and mixes pretty easily with other shapes of beads and adds a lot of visual interest.  My favorite way to use these beads is stitched together in a strip - and they actually do look just like bricks that way!


Kat:

I really like using the CzechMates 2-Hole Lentil beads.  They are like little tiny connector beads and they work great when you use a color like Apollo Gold that has a double sided effect to each bead.  These are great beads to have at your finger tips while you are designing because you can use a lot or just a few as a supplement to your work.




Karlin:

From the variety of interesting shapes that the CzechMates 2-Hole Beading System has to offer, I would say my favorite is the Czech Two-Hole triangle beads. I am a big fan of the triangle shape in general, and think that the pointy tip allows you to make jewelry with an interesting, 3D effect.







Check back in throughout the month of June as we showcase the CzechMates 2-hole beading system!