Making a bracelet to celebrate Canada Day on July 1st should be easy. Red and white. Simple, right? But reds and whites are two of the colours that I’ve had the most trouble successfully adding to my bead box.
While there are a handful of production white beads, I have to admit that I’m not overly fond of most of them. I have the White Paper Fold and do love it, but that’s it. And Trollbeads hasn’t generally produced a large number of all-white (or white on clear) uniques. About a year ago they released a few batches that included white designs, but those uniques were scooped up quickly and prices on the secondary markets went beyond what I was willing to pay for a glass bead. There’s clearly a market for it since the beads are in high demand, but even artisans don’t seem to produce too many purely white beads, which leads me to wonder if perhaps it’s because the patterns don’t show as well so they are harder to make? Even harder to find, though, are true reds. Many of the reds have more of an orange tint to them, or end up looking like a deep pink. I have heard that red is expensive to work with and so they don’t produce many true red beads.
A few months ago I received a lovely red and white bead in a trade, so when I was thinking of putting together a Canada Day bracelet, it was the obvious one to start with. I pulled together my whites and then lamented my lack of reds again. I had a red and black artisan that I thought passed well enough, but my other red bead is predominantly black with only a hint of red. And that’s when I realized that my slightly impulsive order of the Ohm Beads Bacon bead might just save me since I had included the Broken Heart bead in the order as well! And when the package finally arrived, I was happy to see that the Broken Heart was a fairly good match for the other red beads in this combo.
The end result is a bit more raspberry than the traditional Canada colours, but I still think it passes muster ;).
Happy 147th Birthday Canada!
I’ve had the same issues with red and white in the past… but what timing, for true red and white beads have a look at my post today; I’ve gone back to February and created a Valentines Set!
I find my white paper fold beads quite cream, was disappointed when they came (as I was after white) as I thought they would be a true white, but white stripe arrived at the same time which just emphasised Paper Fold’s creaminess – still a nice bead though and I think mine may come in useful elsewhere for another project!
What’s the white bubble type bead? That’s gorgeous!!
Mars xx
You are right, the white fold is definitely creamy and I’ve had quite a bit of trouble matching it because of that so I mostly use it as the only white accent in a combination. I thought the production Cream Armadillo would match the paper fold, but the ones I’ve seen in person have a grey tint to them and don’t match my paper fold. But I do love the waving pattern in the paper fold :)
The white bubbles is from Etsy seller Anne Meiborg. I prefer it to the Trollbeads White Bubbles since it has more bubbles in it and I like the randomness of the bubbles.
I’ll have to pop on over to check out your post!