"There's nothing you can do that can't be done..." ~ Beatles
Recently I have been making beads with a faux ceramic appearance and have some of my results for sale on etsy. I also have been playing around with faux faience and what I am (tongue in cheek) calling "Fauxnician". Phoenician beads are clay or glass and have a very distinctive look to them. For this look I simply googled pictures and then set about making them as close as possible. Of course to get that old look you need to distress them quite a bit; staining with acrylic paint gives them that "buried in the ground" look. Surprisingly many of the really old beads are still vibrant in color so I made several of mine bright, and several with a more rough finish.
I am sure the trained eye will have no trouble telling the real from the fakes here; what about you, which do you think are real and which are my "Fauxnicians"?The original beads have a child-like quality about them, due to the bright colors and simple designs, and that's what I attempted to duplicate in my beads.
Now off to research finished jewelry using these beads. Probably a simple stringing would show them off to the best advantage. So while the original beads may strain your budget, I can enjoy these fakes as a colorful substitute. And who knows? Maybe someday, some one will find these stashed away and "rediscover" them all over again.