A review and artwork by Stamp Artist Mary Garvey

Tiny holeless beads aren’t just for shaker cards anymore. I’ve decorated pens, frames, card fronts, book covers, votives, and pins, to name a few. The place to get them would be Penny Wise Art Supplies. The owners, Suzanne and Brian Glazier, started out by just carrying the clear Glass Glitter Micro Beads. They’ve now expanded to 21 colors of Micro Beads - both translucent and metallic / opaque. They also carry a strong adhesive tape (comes in sheets as well) that is needed to cover surfaces, called O’ So Sticky Tape. There is even a new product called O' So Paperback Tape, for using with punches.

Of course, being an old fan of red line tape, if you’ve got red line, you can use that for several of the techniques. What you cannot use is a Xyron -- the adhesive just isn’t strong enough to hold the beads in place, nor is the coverage 100 percent.

Don’t know what to do with hole-less tiny beads? Here are just a few ideas:

1. decorate pens - See samples here
   
2. cover entire card fronts with clear beads for a frosted effect - great for Christmas cards
   
3. cover parts of a design for a “watery” or reflected effect
   
4. create a frame with strips of tape and beads
   
5. “edge” microscope slides
   
6. create faux stained glass using acetate
   
7. add to last layer of hot UTEE when creating pins or tiles
   
8. create a mosaic with shrink plastic and use micro beads as “grout”
   
9. use with a thin coating of Diamond glaze (wait until dry before removing excess beads) - and the reason for a thin coating? - you don’t want the beads to “sink” into the Diamond Glaze and lose it’s identity… unless that’s the look you want of course
   
10. use with punches! - though I would recommend using their O' So Paperback Tape , because of the difficulty of using most sticky sheets with punches
    
11. cover glass votives with the tape and just add colored glass micro beads
    
12. oh, and you can use the beads “loose” in shaker cards and pins ;-)