Holy Land Market 8mm Rosary Beads (1000) - Bethlehem Olive Wood

These arrived today and are beautiful! They're about 3x's more expensive than other wood beads I normally use but I needed these for their authenticity and origin. They are similar in size to many other 8mm beads I use frequently. The grain is gorgeous and they do have a semi-shiny finish. The holes are well drilled from the ones I quickly viewed for a quality check. Most other wood beads I use I often have to ream more than half to smooth out wood splinters. These don't appear to need any extra work at all! Buy these with complete confidence!

A little pricey, but I love them. Usually when I get olive wood beads (I make rosaries for a hobby), they are half drilled and a lot of splinters. These were tons better than usual. I still needed a needle file to smooth out the hole because the cord catches otherwise, but these beads were beautiful and smoother than others. They were polished on the outside and had a nice yellow-brown tone. I have used about 1/4 of the bag and found only about 5 that had flaws enough for me to not use them. That is better than usual.

I love these beads and use them often for my jewelry business. They’re well packaged, are beautiful, and well made. My only complaint is the fact that many of the bead holes are blocked. It can be very frustrating to have to stop beading, with almost all the beads, to clean out the hole & try to poke something through it to remove the tiny piece of wood blocking it. I’m sure I’ll buy these again I just wish the maker would figure out a way to have each bead have a clear hole.

These beads are not polished and the beads have different sizes. The holes are not open. I will not buy them again.

A few of the beads are odd shaped and I opted not to use them, but a very small number. Probably one out of ten need one of the holes cleaned before you can thread it, but again, no big deal. Just take the tip of your scissors or anything and clean the excess finish off the hole. A great value for the price! My rosaries look really nice!

This review is with respect to my third bag of beads ordered. This seemed to have been the "reject" bag. Some of the beads were unpolished. Some were misshapen. Some had a sticky residue, maybe a natural thing. Some had their holes improperly drilled. It is true that these faults were in the minority, but I didn't experience these flaws with the previous two bags.What happened?

Even though the photo makes the bag of product look bigger than it really is, the beads themselves are wonderful quality. It is hard to find unique wood beads in quantity, that are not all one color and actually have character. I am excited to start using them with my handmade snood creations :-)

I love these beads. I have ordered them several times. There's usually some that are cut funny and unusable, but this batch seemed to have more than other times. The holes on these beads are also bigger than I prefer. Sometimes if they are strung beside a seed bead, the bead gets trapped in the hole. Otherwise, I really like these beads.