Mixing Micro Beads – My Recipe For Success

Here is a close up picture of my Vintage Fat Book page showing more of the detail and dimension.

I used 1/8” O’So Sticky Tape all around the edges and coated it with a mixture of micro beads in many colors both translucent and opaque.  Because fat books get handled a lot and pages rub against each other, I painted a coat of clear Diamond Glaze over the beads to help them stay on strong.

Micro Bead Mixology

When I’m creating a mixture of micro beads for a project I always look at the colors that are already there.  In this case I saw primarily brown, orange and pink.  So I started with just a little bit (maybe 1/4 teaspoon) of each color from my shelf that is in those color families.  Copper opaque, orange translucent, rose, brown translucent and brown opaque. I liked it but wanted to bring out the pink more so I added some cranberry translucent to the mix. 

Beads don’t have to be the exact same color as your project to be a good accent.  They just need to be from the same family of color.  Once I had the colors figured out I played a little with the ratio, adding in more cranberry and copper since those were the primary family of colors for my design.  The last little thing I like to do is toss in a scoop of randomness.  If you look closely you’ll see little bits of blue and purple opaque. I think that they work nicely when used in tiny amounts so as not to over power the main colors.

So tomorrow will be the next page from our fat book swap – stay tuned!

Hugs, Suzanne