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Tips From Rena
by Rena Klingenberg
Rena is expanding her presence on BeadBugle.Com with her column, Tips From Rena, and she's looking for input from you! For every tip submitted that we publish, you'll receive a $10 off coupon from BeadBabe.com that can be used in conjunction with your order. Tips can be about anything bead-related, from threading a needle or storing beads to polymer clay or business. So start sharing your time-saving tricks and handy hints. If you can, send a j-peg along with the tip to illustrate it.
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March 2008 Tips, Tricks, and Orphan Bead Suggestions
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More Tips for Making Jewelry with Less Precious Metal:
Four Great Places to Find Cheap, Unusual Jewelry Components
As silver and gold prices continue to rise with no end in sight, it's time to find some cheap, cool, and very unusual jewelry making components.
 You could use these items as alternatives to traditional jewelry components, or along with them. You could also use them in place of some of the silver or gold in your pieces, to make your jewelry spectacular with less precious metal.
Here are my top four great places to find cheap, unusual jewelry components:
- Fabric Stores - These shops are treasure troves of small, craftable items.
Examples: buttons, various fasteners, ribbon, gauze, various trims, velcro, suede, feather boas, velvet, lace, snaps, fringe, artificial flowers, netting, leather cord, elastic, wired ribbon, small seasonal doodads - and much more.
 Hardware Stores and Home Improvement Stores - Although you might not think so at first, if you wander around a hardware or home improvement store looking at everything through your "jewelry artist eyes", you'll find lots of potential jewelry components!
Examples: rubber tubing, O-rings, mesh, copper wire, sheet metal, chains, paints, epoxy, drawer pulls, nuts & bolts, washers, wood scraps in interesting shapes, fishing tackle, small automotive supplies, etc..
 Thrift Stores and Garage Sales - It's always a treasure hunt when you go to these places! Lots of second-hand items can make intriguing jewelry components.
Examples: keys, old jewelry to take apart, silver spoons, tiny souvenir spoons, other small souvenirs, old magazines full of pictures, old photos, postage stamps, silk scarves, old typewriter or adding machine keys, parts from dismantled household appliances or electronic devices, pieces from old games - there's no limit to the cool potential jewelry supplies you'll find in these places.
- eBay - I recommend just getting on there and wandering around through the auctions and eBay stores with an open mind. You're bound to find great deals on several things that would make fantastically unusual jewelry components!
 Do you have some unusual places of your own for finding jewelry components?
Please share! Send us your ideas to Alternatives To High Component Prices
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Orphan Bead and Other Tips From Our Readers
Send us Your Orphan Bead or Other Tip.
If your tip(s) are published, we will send you a $10.00-off coupon for Beadbabe.Com’s Bead Site for each tip(s) published (per issue). Send all Tips with an optional picture of yourself to BEAD TIPS
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Please send us your tips and tricks
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Archived Tips, Tricks & Misc Info From the Past BeadBugle Pages
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Hitch Knots
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Hitches have been a favorite in macramé for years. This easy single hitch can be done tightly to secure a woven end, or with the center loops loosely, to form a decorative looping fringe.
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- Take the right end (1), and wrap over the main line, then back under and up (2).
- Now wrap the right end (2), behind the main line, then back over and up (3).
- Repeat from the beginning, alternating wrapping over and under the main line.
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Square Knot around a Main Line
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This knot works well to separate beads being woven along a center main line, or to use as a repeating decorative knot for hemp macramé.
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- Lay a right and left string on the outsides of your main line. Take the left string (pink), lay over the main line (blue), and under the right string (green).
- Take the right string (green), draw under the main line (blue), and over the left string(pink).
- Take the new right string (pink), lay over the main line (blue), and under the left string (green).
- Take the left string (green), lay it under the center (blue), and finally over the right string (pink).
- Pull the ends gently to tighten the knot.
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About The Author
A passion for earrings started Rena Klingenberg down the beading path. Since then her jewelry business has taken many twists and turns - including teaching workshops and selling her work via shows, shops, and online. She also combines jewelry-making with one of her other lifelong passions, writing.
Rena's ebook, Ultimate Guide to Your Profitable Jewelry Booth, details her secrets and strategies for selling handcrafted jewelry like crazy at shows, fairs, and festivals. She also publishes thousands of tips for marketing handcrafted jewelry in her Home Jewelry Business Success Tips website and Jewelry Business Success News ezine.
When she's not writing or making jewelry, Rena enjoys hiking, traveling, archery, voluntary simplicity, historical sites, arts events, collecting too many rocks and crystals, and acoustic and ethereal music.
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