I attended an Earth Day conference yesterday and one of the many things that kept being emphasized is our need to use more renewable resources, which are natural resources that can be created or sustained as fast as they are used. If, for example you plant a tree for every one you cut down then trees are renewable resources. A better idea might be to plant two or three trees because the time it takes for a tree to grow is definitely a big factor! A great example of a renewable resources that is being used more and more is bamboo.

Bamboo is a renewable resource that can be used to make jewelry!

Bamboo is technically a large “grass” and it grows very, very fast. Bamboo is being used in all sorts of products now, including in home furnishings, flooring, kitchen accessories and more. The advantage to bamboo is that it almost grows faster than it can be used in many cases! And while I was admiring a sample of dried bamboo at one of the booths I was suddenly reminded of the bead jewelry that was made from grass in the Leaky collection. I figured if they could make jewelry out of one type of dried grass, then there’s no reason that you couldn’t use bamboo for the same kind of jewelry.

Sure enough, there are lots of great bamboo bead projects and artisans out there now! It looks as though working with bamboo is pretty much like working with most wood beads: they’re fairly natural so you might want to consider using string instead of wire and you may need to cut or drill your beads if they don’t happen to fit your exact needs. Real bamboo beads or tubes are obviously not going to be uniform in color, size or even shape, so it’s a bit different than working with manufactured beads.

First, you might need to work a little bit just to find some decent bamboo beads. Sure, your local bead store or FireMountain Gems might have some stock bamboo beads, but there are lots of other options out there. To get some more exotic bamboo beads and other natural wood beads along the same lines as bamboo you might need to hunt around a little more. I found some great looking unique bamboo beads over at Harlequin beads. If you really want to learn a lot about bamboo and see some amazing things that can be done with it, then you definitely need to check out Organic Body Jewelry’s bamboo information page.

Now that you have some bamboo beads, what are some of the projects you can do with them? Well, DIY Network has a cool tutorial on how you can take the bamboo from a placemat and use it to make some pretty wild bead type jewelry. You’re going to be using simple stringing skills and tying knots for most of the project and it might be a good one for kids to try.

But if you really want to see how the experts work with bamboo in jewelry making, then you need to check out the Bamboo Arts and Craft Network. They have an incredible site filled with people doing all sorts of things with bamboo, including making bead jewelry. They have galleries and forums and all sorts of projects that really push a simple grass to the limits!

Working with bamboo is like working with any other jewelry material: it seems simple at first but the more you work with it the more you can begin to appreciate its subtle complexities. There are bead jewelry artists who only work with bamboo and there are people who mix bamboo with other materials. It looks like a lot of fun to work with bamboo as a jewelry material and you can feel good by using a renewable resource while creating beautiful jewelry!

[tags]bamboo, bamboo beads[/tags]