What's the best glue for ....?

I get lots of queries about glue. What sticks what to what mainly. So - this blog post aims to demystify the sticky world of bead and jewellery adhesive.

The answer to the title question is, irritatingly enough, 'it depends' so, before you click through and buy lots of craft glue , read on!

It depends on your materials, it depends on what you are trying to achieve and it also depends on your skill level.

Here is the madcowbeads guide to glue: :-)

Super Glue gives an instant hold and a very strong bond. The bond is inflexible, so over a long time it does become brittle and may crumble. Superglue will also stick your fingers together very quickly, so be careful! The instant bond means that you need to be very accurate as there is no time to make adjustments.

It's not particularly washable - although you'd think the opposite if you've ever tried to get it off your hands!

Despite these issues, superglue has one fantastic application when beading. It is absolutely unbeatable at holding a square knot tight -particularly in elastic cord . Nothing beats it. And for this reason alone, it deserves a place in your craft drawer. Unless you never use a knot on your creations!

Jewel Bond from Crafters Pick is a specialist glue. It gives a permanent and washable bond on fabric and other porous materials like feathers, leather or suede.

It glues any decorative embellishment,sequin, embroidery or even rhinestones, and dries totally clear. Once dry, it remains flexible and doesn't crumble or degrade. It leaves no mark on almost all fabrics - the main exception being silk, where you need to be a little careful of marks.

E6000 is an industrial strength craft glue. It's probably the most versatile and popular of all the adhesives I sell. It's quite thick, which makes it easy to control, and also has a five minute bond - which is great for those last minute adjustments.

E6000 adhesive does need a few days to cure completely, and once cured, it gives an ultra strong, flexible bond. It is suitable for non porous surfaces, particularly glass and metal, so it's very popular for bonding glass fused cabochons and pendants onto bails and pads.

E6000 is not as suitable for porous surfaces, and it particularly hates polystyrene and nylon - they just melt!

E6000 is a powerful, professional glue for crafters. Like most adhesives it is toxic if ingested and should be kept away from children.

GS-hypo fabric glue works well with paper, fabric and textiles - any porous surfaces. It comes with an ultra fine tip which makes it very suitable for precision work. GS-hypo fabric is a trusted international adhesive that is useful in mixed media creations.

Henriettas Gum Arabic is such a handy thing! It's not very well known, but is incredibly useful if you work with tiny holed beads. It turns any soft thread into a beading needle by coating the thread and stiffening it. You can also use it to seal knots, but do waterproof the knot with clear nail polish after using gum arabic as it is water soluble.

Diamond Glaze from JudiKins is a water based adhesive that leaves a glossy glazed finish. It's perfect for creating lockets, or sealing paper based creations with a tough 'glasslike' finish.

You can also add dyes, paint or glitter to diamond glaze, or thin it with water to give a varnished effect. It is very popular at the moment, used with heart frames to create personalised pieces

As an adhesive, it is one of the few that really works to glue non porous materials to porous materials. It sticks metal to paper - which means that scrap bookers and card makers love it!

Happy sticking!

Georgie

Suitably impressed, and overly excited...

Today, the lovely Steph - lovely jewellery maker, part time designer for madcowbeads, friend and truly honorary mad cow sent me this link!

It seems that Steph's lovely Valentine design for the mad cows made the cover of a leading Bead Magazine. We love Creative Beads and Jewellery magazine and we thoroughly recommend it.

The projects are a little bit different and the quality of the magazine is great -whether you enjoy glass fusing, bead stringing, wirework or just looking at pictures of beads (yeh - we know you do that!), it has something for everyone.

Steph has also just finished an exclusive pink and girly necklace design - only available to madcowbeads newsletter subscribers. So, if you'd like a copy of the project, just sign up at madcowbeads.com - or, even easier, fill in the box on the right ->>>

All of my heart(s)

With a nod to the classic 80s hit (yeh - ABC - how cool were they?)

All of our (Swarovski) hearts..

Our entire Swarovski Elements range is now in the madcowbeads clearance - you can save up to 20% off Swarovski sparkly things. What this means is that every 14mm Swarovski heart pendant is £1 or less in our fabulous sale, and if you fancy a gigantic 'heart of the ocean' size 40mm heart, then they are ridiculously cheap too.

Which is pretty handy. Valentine's Day being mere weeks away and all that.

New Book Shop

It's Friday evening, and despite the fact that I'm still working, I'm feeling kind of SMUG (In an endearing way - I hope!)

Firstly I finally got to grips with picking out bead and jewellery making titles for my Amazon links. I'm really pleased with the range, and I managed to fulfil a load of 'book requests' so that was a bonus.

Secondly, I then actually managed to integrate the newborn madcowbeads @ amazon bookshop into the madcowbeads website. Now I know to some this is a minor victory, in fact such a piffling victory that it should really be in the 'run of the mill' section, but to me, it deserves a small round of applause and a large slice of banana cake...

Hurrah hurrah!

Hope you like it!

New Year.. New Stuff!

I spent the holiday break pondering the usual ponderings:
'I should eat more oranges and fewer mince pies'
'what is THAT stuck in the baby's hair?'
'Who invited these people - do I know them?'
And, most importantly..

'2011 bead strategy'

So.. as a result of this pondering it's a fond farewell to the entire mad cow bead range of sterling silver findings. We will keep 16", 18" and 20" 925 chains, plus sterling ear hooks. Apologies if this causes an inconvenience. Please contact us if you have a problem sourcing the findings you need and we will endeavour to point you in the right direction.

It's also bye bye to gemstone chips and beads. But the good news is, all our remaining stock of sterling silver and gemstone beads is now on clearance in our January bead sale.

Enjoy!

Fame at last :-)

It may be Bank -Holiday -after-Christmas but the bead barn is a herd of activity (and very cold!) as I sort out the bead orders from the holiday weekend. There's no post until Wednesday but I don't like a backlog - it makes me anxious. There's no let up either - straight from holly charms into Valentines themes and then into Mothers Day. Beads for all occasions :-)

Also - it seems the cows are famous! The lovely Linda Jones has 'blogged' me:

http://www.wireworkersguild.blogspot.com/

I've been practising my autograph all morning, so please form an orderly queue.

If you enjoy wireworking, or would like to find out more, then it's well worth checking out www.wirejewellery.co.uk or checking out Linda's regular blog (link above)

Anyway, back to the beadery :-)

Sunday - 99p beads .. housework and junky magazines!

Ah Sunday. I love Sundays. A bit of a tidy up of the 'bead warehouse', some very overdue housework, a quick trip to the supermarket and then time to read whatever trashy magazines I fancy. Today, same as every week, they're stuffed full of Paris Hilton / Jennifer Aniston and other bland celebrities, with a lot of discussion about who's fatter / thinner / taking drugs/ going out with Hollywood's latest 'Mr Perfect' etc etc. I love predictable reading matter, it stops my brain from working!

Having finished with the magazine and coffee routine I packed some more parcels and started preparing more 99p listings for tonight. I should have around 50 strings of semi precious gemstone beads and pearls at 99p no reserve, so that should clear some room for me!

Next task is my newsletter. I'm running a competition in July and also need to work out some 'bulk offers' on multiple Czech bead string purchases. There are plenty of offers around for 'bulk, one colour' but I'm guessing that hobby jewellery makers aren't going to need 1000 beads in all the same colour... I send a newsletter around once a month, or every 6 weeks and they're really well received, there is often a featured design idea, a 'newsletter only' discount and sometimes a giveaway too!

I don't send Spam, addition to my list is on request only, I don't just add on existing customers when I feel like it - you need to ask! I've also made it really easy to unsubscribe if you no longer wish to receive the newsletter. Having been at the 'customer end' of unsolicited email, this is something I was desperate to avoid. If you want to take a look, just drop me an email and I can add you to the list.

Anyway, that's quite enough from me - I have a newsletter to write and pearls to measure!

Hope you had a restful weekend.