Glass Lampwork Beads
Glass lampwork beads are all handmade, so when you buy in quantity from your wholesaler, you may see slight variations from bead to bead. Lampworked beads are the most labor intensive of all glass beads, and so, you'll see they cost more. These beads were once painstakingly created over hot oil lamps, which is how they come by their name. Today, most bead makers use gas torches, and so often, today's lampworked beads are also known as "fireworked" beads. These glass beads are often hand decorated too, or they can have a finish fired on in a kiln. They come in a wide variety of shapes and colors, and are available from just about any large bead wholesaler.
Cast Your Pearls Before Knitting Needles
You can use pearl beads in knitted bags and ropes, too. Many beaders find the size 0000 knitting needle with no head makes an excellent beading tool, and they can also use it to knit small stitches.
Aventurine Beads
Aventurine is a quartz gemstone that often contains tiny flakes of mica that give this stone depth and sometimes a metallic appearance. It is most commonly green in color, but also occurs naturally in shades of Peach and other tones. "Adventurine" (note the different spelling) was a term created in Italy in the 19th century to describe a glass bead decoration technique. The glass contains tiny flakes of metal to give a shiny and somewhat metallic appearance, similar to the Aventurine gemstone. The letter "d" was added to the name to distinguish between the two. Both of these beads are available for jewelry making so check them out to decide which appeals to your style.
Silver-Lined Beads
Silver-lined beads have a silver coating on the inside that looks like foil. They are usually very sparkly and come in just about every color of the rainbow.
Karat Weight of Gold Beads
The value of gold beads is measured in karats. A karat was originally the weight of a seed of the Mediterranean carob tree. Today karat has two meanings: (1) 200 milligrams, or 3,086 grains troy, used for measuring the weight of gemstones; (2) a measure of the amount of gold per 24 parts of gold ally. Thus, 24-karat gold beads are pure, and 18-karat gold is ? gold and ? other metal. At the bottom of the spectrum are metallic finish glass gold beads.