Review, October 2005

Dichroic Delicas and Aikos

Last month I received an email from Jamie Kawahara of Dichrobeads by Kawahara with the information that she was producing Dichroic-coated Aikos and Delicas. I absolutely love the look of dichroic beads, so this sounded very exciting to me. I visited her website at www.dichrobeads.com to see what these looked like, and liked what I saw. I promptly requested some samples so that I could see how these would work up when mixed with non-coated Delicas and Aikos.

First, some information on the beads themselves. I received the beads in tiny one gram tubes, carefully stoppered with a small piece of foam to prevent spillage during shipment. When I first opened the envelope, I smiled with delight as the colors sparkled through the tube. The beads looked just as pretty in person as they did in the pictures. The dichroic coating is done on black base beads, with six colors available - red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. On closer inspection, though, I noticed that each bead had a tiny band of black - a section that was not coated. At first I thought maybe it was just one or two of the beads, but once I poured the beads out onto my tray, it was clear that every bead had a small uncoated section. I can only guess that this is caused by the method used to coat the beads with the dichroic glass.

Interestingly, the project I decided to make before the beads arrived was one that wouldn't be hurt by the uncoated section, because it was a layered peyote beaded bead. When you layer peyote on top of another peyote tube, the beads lay tightly in place without moving. However, in any technique where the beads can move, you will most likely have issues where the uncoated section could end up twisting to the top, and you won't see the as much of the beautiful dichroic colors. You will also find it takes longer to work a project, because each time you lay in one of the dichroic beads, you will have to work the bead around so that the uncoated section is to the back before pulling the stitch tight.

I mostly use Delicas/Aikos in peyote or brick pieces, because I love the uniformity and smooth tiled look it gives. However, as you might expect with a bead that has been coated after the fact, the dichroic beads don't give that smooth look. The coatings are going to make the dichroics lie higher than the other beads, giving a more bumpy/pebbled texture. I wouldn't necessarily call this a problem, though, as it could be an advantage in some designs. This distortion will only occur where the curved sides meet. The bead hole sides do not have a coating, so the beads will still "click" into place properly side-to-side. Since my sample tube was a mix of all the colors, I decided to just use the beads without picking and choosing, and I noticed that the pebbled texture was noticible even when using the dichroics by themselves, because the coating is not the same thickness on every bead. I couldn't sort out a large enough sample of a single color to see if this is a difference between colors, or if even beads in the same color batch will have this issue.

Which brings up something else to be aware of - when these colors become mixed, it can be very difficult to sort them back out again, since dichroic colors "blend" together as the light hits them from different angles. The colors that are closest to each other are especially hard to separate. You can pretty easily separate out the opposite ends of the spectrum (red/orange from purple/blue for example), but separating red from orange, orange from yellow, blue from purple, etc is pretty impossible. So if you decide to get some of these and want to use more than one color in a single piece, I would recommend not having them anywhere near each other in your bead tray, unless you don't care that they get mixed up.

Technical details aside, what do I think of these beads? I think they're gorgeous, but they also aren't for every project. (At $6.99/gram retail, they wouldn't be even without the technical problems I've listed above!) However, I think they will work great as a very special hit of that lovely dichroic color in the right place to give a special piece just that little extra something. As the first dichroic seed beads I've ever seen, they certainly satisfy my desire for dichroics in something other than a cabochon. I'm pretty sure that I'll be using some of my Christmas or birthday gift money on a few grams of my favorite colors! And if I ever win the lottery, I'll definitely be buying enough of these babies to get the wholesale price!

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