Beads ahoy

As artists we often chide ourselves (while completing checkout I'm sure) that we don't really need any more supplies, that we should really hold off for a while and make something with what we've got..blah blah blah. But when you specialise in things that are made with antique and vintage pieces, you can't really 'hold off'- most stuff that comes up is gone before you've had a chance to figure out what you'll do with it.

It's especially hard to abstain when these things are a bargain, and these recent acquisitions were.
They need a clean obviously, but for the price they were I'm happy to get the toothbrush out. The silver metal 'block' pendant charms were from an Ethiopian necklace of an undetermined age, the rest were a 'grab bag' from an eBay seller. These are actually only about 1/10th of the total bag, but there were a lot of coloured ones that I don't have a use for. I'll be putting them in my amazing kits when I do some up with tribal bohemian overtones. (This weekend, cross fingers!)

So ancient looking- I suspect all of these to be at least 100 years old, if not older.

But look at these! Could these be the tiniest beads in the world?

How about these ones?


So tiny! I really can't imagine what anyone could do with such microscopic creatures. Those last ones are carved lapiz lazuli from Afghanistan. I bought them to make hoops like these - but I'm really bad at measuring scale on the internet- I thought they'd be much bigger! Oh well.