Three Necklaces in Polymer Clay, Experimenting with Spacer Beads

Lilian Nichols has been giving us a lot of tips on bead making along with the special techniques she has shown us. 

This is the first necklace I made. If you have been following the polymer clay blogs you have seen some of the changes I've made along the way.

Here is the latest change. After sanding the leaf shapes and the round beads until they were silky to the touch I put two coats of liquid Pledge Floor Care with Future on them and then buffed them a bit more.

I used ready made spacer beads on the leaf necklace.

This is the second necklace.

 I used bicone beads as spacers on this necklace. Here is a short video showing how to make bicone beads.

I used a homemade bead roller that Tom made for me to make the two larger sizes of football-shaped beads.

There is a commercial bead roller which makes two sizes of the same shaped beads but much smaller ones. 
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When I had figured out the amount of clay I needed for each size, I wrote a note to myself on the direction sheet so I wouldn't have to rely on memory the next time I made the small beads.  The bead roller is above the directions in the photo.

I used the commercial bead maker to make the small striped football shaped beads in the necklace below.

 I used one half of the round cut-out to make each small blue-green bead and one  round cut out to make each translucent squarish bead. 

I  mixed glitter into the clay for both of these types of beads before I cut out the  circles and shaped them.  The blue-green beads are basic round beads.  The translucent beads were squared off by pressing all sides with a block of wood.  Fingers  would work to get the squarish shape also.