How It All Began - Show your very first beads

Cloverbead wrote:These are my first ever Trollbeads bought nearly 5 years ago in Denmark.  I was so thrilled with them and looked at the all the time on the holiday....they soon got new friends

Really love those sage colour beads   gorgeous   

Pandabee(uk) wrote:This was mine, it took me over a year to collect enough beads for a full bracelet.....those were the days. I have also stopped taking photos of beads on my phone.

Love this Pandabee(uk)   there are some really lovely beads on there - mermaid was on my first bracelet too   

Trollperle wrote:Your boyfriend has excellent taste, Stacecase

Silverbells, thank you so much for sharing Brightonbelle´s and your beads Your combos are gorgeous!

And I thought mostly elder ladies wear necklaces Cats, your combo is beautiful, makes me work harder on my neck problems !   

plumbun wrote:@ silverbells, awesome that you still keep your first combo together. it's very fun/fairtale "troll"

@bb, you have such a wonderful way of placing milans and mosaics in your bracelets; your combo here shows that off so well!

Thanks Trollperle and plumbun    

April 15, 2011 I had the successful conclusion of a project that was long, difficult, and filled with obstacles.  I needed to reward myself so, I went shopping  .  Although I was aware of Pandora from their huge billboard ads along the highway, I did not know of Trollbeads.   I wandered into a nice little dress shop in Madison, Wisconsin; they had TB; the shop gal loved her TB; the rest is history.  
I originally purchased Antique Flower, Small Berry, Blue Triple Pearl, Hydrangea, and Blue Petals on a bracelet with the Big Flower Lock and two stoppers.  (I should have known I was hooked because the very next week I drove one hour to go back to the shop and purchase the Amethyst and Lavender Stripe.)  I wore this bracelet every day and I was content for a couple of weeks.   If TB is an addiction, those first couple of weeks is sort of like the incubation period but after that, its a full-blown addiction.   

There were nine shops within a one hour drive which also helped feed the addiction for glass beads.  I did start ordering some silver beads online but after receiving seven beads or so, I felt I was being sold fakes so I stopped and patiently waited for the 3 get 1 promotions.    And now we don't have those promotions anymore but we do have the store closing sales...and so it goes.     

As you can see from this first bracelet, I tend to be monochromatic.  This site has broadened my horizons regarding TB combinations which is both   and  .

I love seeing everyone's "firsts".  
 

What a great start! Love your firsts Gail201

[quote="Cloverbead"]These are my first ever Trollbeads   I was so thrilled with them and looked at them all the time....

I know what you mean.  I did the exact same thing with my first beads 

Fera wrote:The first Troll I bought was the Baby Dragon. He lived on my standard necklace.
Then I bought my first bracelet, in April (I think) 2009... I ended up with around 300 beads 5 years later... I wonder how that happened...   

I know what you mean. Reconstructing my 1st TB for this thread and realizing that it has only been 3+ years for me....yikes  

Trollperle wrote:... I chose the lilac flower for my spirituality, the green one for my health, the Lucky Dragon for, well his name already says it (plus he is a dragon, need I say more   ), and Freya´s knot for my love of the old Norse and this goddess in particular. : 

Isn't it just the nice part of TB that we can determine the meanings of the beads for ourselves   We don't have to accept some artist's version of what a bead for "good health" or spirituality has to look like.

That Lucky Dragon is so darn charming.   

Brightonbelle wrote:

I can't show pics of my first beads because most of them have flown the nest. (Silverbells might still have some of them though.   )  I bought them when I got a job after more than a year out of work.

I think this is the first pic that I took of a combo after hiding for quite a long while.  I called the bracelet ARCTIC CHILL.

BB, you do the prettiest combos in my fav color pallet.

[quote="ceruleanbluebird"]This is my very first bracelet: a southwest theme.



CB, amazing vision for your 1st bracelet. (I could not have been that focused, as a newbie. My taste was all over the place.)

SilverBells wrote:This is my first bracelet which I still keep together - it has various silvers including mainly fairytale ones and the purple kit plus a couple of other production glass beads - at first I only had the silvers and no glass but it really came together with the purple glass and I still love it   

I love the many shades of purple, lavender, violet that TB has. So nice that you kept this together.

Catsworld wrote: 

I only meant to do a necklace, not a bracelet, ...within a few weeks I then had several bracelets...

Pretty necklace. Looks like it fits in well with your wardrobe.

[quote="stacecase"]This was the first actual bracelet combo I took a photo of, roughly two weeks after I started collecting (sorry for the bad flash/overexposure   ). As you can see, I didn't stay a TB purist for very long. My first non-Trollbead was the Unicorn, but if TB had had a unicorn, I would have bought it instead. It's very meaningful to me.  

Love the combo you created. IMO TB has really interesting beads in the brown tones.

Plumbun,
You had a lot of insight early on if you stayed away from the glass beads for six months.    Love your first choices for silver.

Pandabee,
Love the rainbow effect  and the very good-looking Troll Baby.

Love your first bracelets Gail, Catsworld and Silverbells. Panda - you were so adventurous right from your first one

My first bracelet was very monochromatic too - not adventurous in any way except maybe mixing brands and all OOAKs - sorry for the horrible picture quality - can't find a better one:


Interestingly, I have only a few beads from that silver brand now and only a few OOAKs. So my collection went another way from there.

And this was my first full bracelet not even 4 months later:
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Interestingly, I have only a few artisan glass beads, so this is still not a typical combo for me.

Fast forward a year later after that first one, which I haven't kept intact, I have 6 full bracelets, one that is missing only a couple of silvers and some assorted beads for the bangle and the FN.

Not sure what to think of my addiction now though, I am not feeling any immediate need to get any beads right now, and I feel as though I haven't purchased anything in a long time, although my credit card report says my last purchase was made about a month ago   That is not a long time, is it? And I only got 2 beads then...

I still wear a bracelet every time I head out of the house, but I am definitely not as excited about them. There are a few beads I love that I do not own, but I don't have time lately for bead play (I used to find it) and I don't want to start a whole new bracelet... I am even considering asking for vacation money (my pre-bead-addiction present of choice ) instead of bead money for my birthday and upcoming silver wedding anniversary...

Hmmm...

natalyk wrote:

...Not sure what to think of my addiction now though, I am not feeling any immediate need to get any beads right now, and I feel as though I haven't purchased anything in a long time,...

I am (sort of) right there with you.  I am not feeling it like I used to.  Don't know why.   The beads are beautiful, they allow me to be creative, they are unique.  I don't know what's up with me.

Gail201 wrote:

natalyk wrote:

...Not sure what to think of my addiction now though, I am not feeling any immediate need to get any beads right now, and I feel as though I haven't purchased anything in a long time,...

I am (sort of) right there with you.  I am not feeling it like I used to.  Don't know why.   The beads are beautiful, they allow me to be creative, they are unique.  I don't know what's up with me.

Me too, and I feel a bit guilty for spending too much in the past - even on beads in the sale!   

I started with Trollbeads around May 2010. For me, I had seen people list Trollbeads in some of the Pandora Facebook groups, but they had never really appealed to me. And then for some reason they started to.    So I went online and found out that there was a small little shop only 15 or so minutes from me and took a trip. It was a tiny little display but I came home with an organic bubbles. I didn't even have a bracelet yet (although that was ordered a few days later).

The next closest stores (at the time) were an hour drive, so I made one or two trips to those but mostly bought online. My second bead was a dark leopard (although I didn't know the name when I bought it )



My first completed bracelet was my "woodland" bracelet, which took me about a year to complete, but which stayed together for quite a while, probably until about six months ago. It was where my organic bubbles lived. This is the last version, not the first   

Here are mine, July 2009:



Autumn/ Winter 2009:

Strike,
For your first bead the Organic Bubbles in the woodlands green colors was beautiful. Where I shop, that would have been an unusual color for the bead. Around here they came in a mix of blues and browns, sometimes with a touch of purple.
The woodland bracelet that you ultimately created was beautiful. Love the fern and gnome silvers on it.

Amanda,
You started off with a great pallet of colors. It must have been loads of fun choosing beads to add     

My first bracelet (it started with the swan lock, blue/green trace and two stoppers).  Within three days, it grew to this (pardon the horrible picture - that is two cameras ago and I have certainly learned something about focusing and lighting since then!):



Within a week, it looked like this:



And by the end of the month (I started collecting in June 2010), I had enough beads to make a patriotic bracelet for 4th of July:



And this combination:



It didn't help that a local shop decided to give up the line and offered me a tremendous deal for her inventory - thankfully her rep had allowed her to trade in some of her inventory towards more expensive beads that she wanted for herself so I could afford to take her up on her offer!

Ah, Pandabee, your first bracelet looks a bit like mine - lots of colour, ecclectic and just wonderful

Cloverbead, those beads look really good together and I can feel the joy they must have brought you during your holiday. Holiday beads are one of my most favourite kind

Ceruleanbird, your combo is very southwestern - it reminds me of our trip down from NY all the way to Texas and oneards to the west coast by car a „few“ years back. Wonderful vacation we had that year

Gail, dear, I would not call that monochromatic, but excellent taste While I started out wildly colourful with almost nothing matching and if, then by chance, I now appreciate those elegant combinations as much as I do the wild ones, and yours is truly lovely - wonderful way to reward yourself!

Great first beads and bracelets