Pressed glass beads mainly come from the Czech Republic and are available in a number of standard colours and surface treatments (including transparent, matte and iridized). Their main use is to provide interesting novelty shapes to accent certain styles, such as fringe and garden vine or floral style strung or beaded pieces.

Flowers have multiple methods of application. They can simply be strung into the main strands of a necklace like an ordinary bead; but their effect is heightened by using them at the end of fringe, or embroidered / appliqué-ed to beadwork or fibre, so that the flower face shows. This is achieved by using a small stop bead (11/0 or 15/0) in front of the flower, usually in yellow or a contrasting colour to imitate the stamen of the flower; to do this, pass the thread from your beadwork / fibre through the flower from back to front, pass the thread through the stop bead, then pass the thread back through the flower from front to back and back into your beadwork / fibre. Many flowers have very small holes and can accommodate threads up to sizes D oe E (not cords) and up to medium-weight beading wire. Flowers can be mainly flat or be bell-shaped to varying degrees.

Leaves are more flexible still and come in many styles, including cross-end drilled (so that they stick out from beadwork) and conventional centre-hole (which can be treated similarly to flowers).

This page still under construction - more items being added.

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