What kind of turquoise-beads can you use to make costume jewelry?

The turquoise color was designated by Pantone "color of the year for 2010".

The turquoise color comes from the turquoise gemstone which has a specific blue-green color with sometime brown shades.
Note however that this stone's color can vary from deep turquoise blue to blue green. Turquoise stone come from different countries and each country produce a stone with a specific color.

The third picture shows different types of turquoise stones.

This stone has been considered as a "magical" or sacred stone in many cultures, Americans Indians, Tibetans to name a few.
It provides protection against negative energy (warriors wore it as an amulet).
It will also absorb all your negative energy and therefore will bring balance, self confidence and stability in your mind and body.

You can find this turquoise color in any type of beads (resin, plastic, glass, dyed on wood or natural nuts, seed beads…)

This website is about making costume jewelry with easy to find and preferably inexpensive beads and findings.
Nevertheless, we wanted to "talked about" turquoise stones for different reasons:

• For its magical properties,
• It was the color of the year 2010,
• you can mix this blue stone with other beads or gemstones and even if you use them in small amount, they can embellish a jewelry.

Look at the first picture: it shows earrings made with blue and white colors. The round resin beads enhanced with metal bead caps are finished with dangles. These dangling beads are made with turquoise chips and white 11° seed beads. We did not use the eye loop technique as you do usually but we used thin wire thread.
To do so, string a seed bead, a chips and pass the thread inside a chain's loop. Pass the thread back through the chips and the seed bead. Use a crimp bead to attach the two threads together, flatten it to finish and secure the bead dangle.

The second picture show a necklace made with pink and blue stones. The tiny seed stones are called "sleeping beauty". See how they pop up the pattern!

We like using the collage technique: here, we have glued a small and flat turquoise bird on a large rose quartz stone to add some life in the bead pattern.

Design Ideas

Earrings made with resin, mother of pearl and chips turquoise.

This necklace is made with rose and blue beads.

Different types of blue beads.

Simple earrings mixed with black onyx, another protective stone.
They were made with "left over" beads. Simple, quick and easy!

Click here to see other collage-ideas.