Using hollow rubber tubing

Hollow rubber tubing is a versatile component that every jeweller should have in their bag of tricks, personally I love its stylish matt finish. Rubber tubing is great as an inexpensive filler bead and can be cut to what ever size needed. The flexibility of hollow rubber means that it will conform to curved as well as straight designs and will not affect the drape of a finished piece of jewellery.

Hollow rubber tubing can be used as jelly jewelry and a connector comes in the pack, our preference however is to place it over stringing material such as memory wire and tiger tail.

Begin by gathering your materials, here we used bracelet memory wire and memory wire caps, Karen hill tribe silver beads and hollow rubber tubing.

It is now simply a case of determining your pattern, how long you would like your hollow tubes to be and cutting them to size, jewellery cutters and beading snips work well for this. String your hollow rubber tubes as you would a normal bead and finish your piece of, we used memory wire bead caps in this bracelet.

Here is a personal set completed using hollow rubber tubing, the bangle is memory wire and the necklace uses soft touch .014. The softness of the rubber makes it an excellent choice for the ends of the necklace where it sits against the skin.

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Free beading tutorial by Yvonne Kristel all rights reserved.