Taming the Long Magatamas

I love long magatama beads, but their wonky hole and odd shape can make them a bit difficult to use with the common beadweaving stitches.

  

The holes go through the beads at a slant so they don't sit all nice and neat like cylinder or seed beads.

But still, I wanted to use them and like a design challenge.  I found they play pretty nicely using the spiral stitch so I created a pair of earrings.

The long magatama beads are the white beads that spiral gently down around a center core of size 8 seed beads.

Somewhere along my beading journey, I learned a trick to tighten up a spiral stitch so that the beads don't hang all willy nilly.  I experimented with my earrings and discovered that with a small change, I could tighten up the magatamas and really show the spiral effect.

I've created a tutorial for the earrings as well as a matching bracelet and have now listed it in my Etsy shop.

I hope you'll give the long magatamas a try!  Happy Beading!