Hand shaped beads

I thought I would briefly explain my definition of hand shaped beads. This will give people some insight into the process as well as explain the difference between hand shaped and machine made beads.

My beads are all hand shaped. This means I shape and polish them individually. I don’t use spherical grinding wheels or a bead mill. Most beads these days are machine made. You put in a rough shaped piece of stone and the machine shapes a whole lot of them exactly the same.

Hand shaping means that because the beads are made individually. This means each one is a different width and size.

You can see some of the process below. It starts with cutting little bead blanks out of a piece of jade and then slowly shaping and refining each one.

When I have enough for a strand (around 60 – 80 beads) I measure each one and string them up by size so they taper from the largest at the front till the smallest at the back.

Then its onto making the silver clasp, loop and stringing the whole strand together.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Aaron

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