Using Leather to Make Beaded Jewelry

Video Transcript

"Welcome to the Bead Bar in Orlando, Florida. My name is Debra and I am going to take a moment for Expert Village this morning and tell you some fun things you can do with cord and leather. The two kinds that we use the most often here at the Bead Bar are actual leather cording, which comes in a swayed or can be slick and many different colors and a substance called waxed linen. It is actually made of linen and it is waxed. These are kind of projects you can do and have one of those instant gratification things; you can have it ready in five minutes and wear it out the door. Let us say I am going out tonight and I have got a wonderful green outfit and I need something green to wear with it. I have chosen this green gemstone doughnut. It is a piece of jasper and I am going to choose a piece of leather cord and show you just how fast I can have this ready to wear out the door. I am going to loop my cord in half like this. I am going to put it through the hole in the doughnut, hold the loop up and pull the ends through the other side. Okay, now, I have my doughnut all attached and ready to go and then all I have to do when I am ready to leave the house is put it around my neck and tie a knot and I have got an instant piece of jewelry that can go with anything that I want it to. Now the fun thing about this is that you can also remove this later and put something else on there. I have two pieces here that are on leather that have drops that were done with a piece of wire, just wire wrapped onto the cord and these were closed with a very special little connection called a leather clamp and it is setup to hold your leather. You put your leather in the end and take your little flat-nose plier and just crimp it right down onto the leather and your connection is made and you have a permanent clasp. This is a fun piece over here. It is a lariat and it doesn’t even have a clasp. It is one big long piece of wax linen and our designer here in this store Marta has taken it and tied knots and attached dangles all along the lariat, so that she has a pattern that goes all the way up. This can be worn looped around your neck twice and tied; you can loop it around like this, put your ends through the loop and let it pull up to your neck like that. It is one of those wonderful variable things that you can use in so many different ways and is always the key to all your beading is just jump in there, try and have fun because there are very few mistakes that you can make and you will come up with some wonderful ideas. "