KRYLON AND BEADS

I had my first adventure in spraying beads with Krylon and thought I would pass what worked for me. In preparation for my Turkish Loops bead crochet class this month, I sprayed two different dyed beads with Krylon in an attempt to make the color stay on longer. Of course, the beads are the perfect colors and I can't find sustitutes that aren't dyed.

I put a small amount of beads (about 10 grams) in a plastic snack bag and sprayed the beads with Krylon in a few short bursts. I then closed the bag and massaged the beads through it to spread the acrylic through all of the beads. It didn't look like everything was coated so I opended the bag, sprayed, and massaged again.

After that, I put the wet beads on a sheet of parchment paper to dry. Once they had dried a bit, I rolled the bead clumps through my fingers to break up the beads and left them to dry thoroughly.

A few things that I learned:

1) Wasteful though it seems, it is best to use a new plastic snack bag for each batch of beads that you spray. I used the same bag to spray a second batch of the gold beads and some dye came off of the beads and stayed on the plastic bag. That made the second batch of gold beads stick to the bag and it was harder to get them out on to the parchment to dry.

2) My friend Suzanne suggests that you spray the beads before you make your beadwork item. She once sprayed the dyed beads in a finished bracelet with Krylon and watched the purple dye slide off the beads on to a paper towel underneath the piece.

3) The beads changed color when wet but went back to the original color when dry.

Now to see if the Krylon-coated beads keep their color longer than the non-coated ones.