Beads are the classic embellishment for any wardrobe. Whether as an accent built into clothing, accessories or jewelry, beads can give the finishing touch to that special look. The variety available in any good bead shop or catalog means you can make any design inspiration come to life. With just a few basic techniques that beginners can master in a short time, you can quickly add new dimensions to your wardrobe. Experienced bead artists may also find helpful tips in the following discussion on new ways to use old beads.

DESIGN
The best way to make beadwork easier and less time-consuming is to have a plan. Before picking up needle and bead, try brainstorming, thinking of which colors and shapes you want to work with. What overall effect are you looking for: delicately luminous for a bride, casually earthy for everyday wear, or a more showy look for evenings out? Keep your design in mind as you go bead shopping, and don’t be afraid to ask for suggestions from beadsellers–they usually have in-depth knowledge of what beads will best serve your purposes.

There are numerous tools on the market to make it easy to design beadwork, but if you enjoy drawing, get out your colored pencils (or crayons!) and sketch the beaded piece you’re imagining. Consider more designs than you actually need; you’ll find yourself getting into the creative flow and developing inspirations for future bead projects. You can keep your designs in an idea file, along with clippings from magazines, newspapers, and the Internet of other beaded projects.

One simple trick is to draw on graph paper. If you want to make 2-dimensional designs with beads (like American Indianstyle beadwork), it’s extremely helpful to use a grid framework. You can easily determine how many beads of each color you’re going to need for your project before you begin beading. The best graph paper is actually designed specifically for beaders, showing seed bead shapes in either staggered or gridded rows, just like your actual finished product. You may want to look at downloadable beadweaving graphs from Bead Dancing or in beaders’ handbooks like “Beader’s Companion” (see For More Information, below), or ask your local bead store.

Several companies offer easy-to-use computer programs for seed bead designing. Beadesigner 1.0 is a free program downloadable from the Internet (see FMI). This program is a sort of interactive graph paper; click to select a color, then click the spaces you want to apply it to; click to select a second color, and so on. Choose oval or square beads, change the colors of your design, or make it into black-andwhite. You can even magnify and shrink the image, and experiment with other options.

Bead design boards, available from any bead store, provide curved necklace-length channels of various lengths. Just lay your beads in the slot and arrange them until you have a symmetrical design of the
appropriate length. (Use only part of a channel, if you want to make a bracelet.) Better boards offer multi-strand channels and inch gauges; some are quality wood, while others are durable lightweight plastic.

TOOLS & MATERIALS
The supplies you need depend on the kinds of beadwork you do. Almost all beadwork will benefit from the presence of a needle threader, which drags the thread through the eye of a needle. An alternative to conventional needles which reduces eyestrain is to use a “big eye” needle, usually made out of somewhat flexible wire, with the eye running nearly the length of the needle. Big eye needles work well with many thread sizes, including some fairly thick elastic cording used with crystal beads. A hands-free magnifier also makes very small work much easier. Keep a towel over your work surface whenever you work with beads; it will catch any beads that fall. Afterwards use a “bead nabber” to pick them up.

For seed-bead work, use a fine bead thread like size O Nymo® and a size-12 beading needle. A small block of beeswax will coat your thread to keep it from fraying and tangling as you work. Size-E or Griffin silk cord with a flexible wire needle are excellent stringing materials when working with small beads, including E beads, freshwater pearls and gemstone beads under 5mm in size. A great all-purpose thread is size-FF nylon cord, which goes easily through Czech and other glass beads of many sizes.

For somewhat larger beads, use waxed linen cord, which knots and braids well, or PowerPro cord. Probably the strongest stringing materials are braided wire cables like Beadalon, Acculon, and SoftFlex. These feature 7, 19, or 49 strands of tiny wire woven together and coated in a plastic cover durability, and are suitable for even the heaviest beads such as chunks of turquoise or metal pieces. Consider natural-material cording, such as hemp twine, leather and imitation leather cord, and waxed cotton cord, for larger beads. Waxed cording can be extremely water- and weather-resistant, often a selling point when for men’s jewelry.

Crystal beads are often strung on elastic cord like StretchMagic or Gossamer Floss as bracelets, necklaces, or anklets. (Toe rings can be made by stringing faux-crystal plastic beads on a shorter length of elastic cord.) Higher quality crystals work well in fancy jewelry using strong thread with sterling or gold-filled findings. Crystals, including rhinestones, can also be sewn directly onto clothing using a strong thread like Nymo.

The two primary ways of finishing a strand of beading cord are to tie it with a good square knot, when the cord is light enough, or to crimp the cord closed, as with Beadalon cable. For the latter purpose, crimp beads or crimp tubes are used. For a permanently closed piece of jewelry, usually made with elastic cord, run both ends of your cord through the crimp, then “smash” it neatly with pliers (specialized crimping pliers do the best job) so that it holds the necklace shut.

If you prefer an openable piece, just run each end of the cord through a crimp, then back through again, leaving a small loop past the crimp; you simply add each end of a toggle or other clasp onto the two loops. Use good-quality clippers to cut your cord to the length desired.

THE BEST BEADS
Some of the most subtle, versatile embellishments are made with very small glass beads. Seed beads are donut-shaped and are sized by “aughts”: size 11° is “eleven aught.” The larger the number of aughts, the smaller the bead is, so a 13° seed bead is much smaller than an 8°. By choosing the
right size of seed bead, a good contrast can be achieved with any other beads used. Nice touches also come from using Charlotte-cuts with a single facet on them, three-cuts with three sparkling facets, or hex cuts with six facets. Working with square-holed rocaille beads or those with copper- or silver-lined holes is another way of gently influencing the overall appearance.

E beads, usually 5° and 6°, are the next larger size of glass bead. Like seed beads, E beads are used in American Indian and other styles of bead weaving, and are available in a dazzling palette of colors. A good supplier should be able to offer you dozens of choices, including opaque, translucent, coated, matte, plated, and multicolor striped selections.

Larger glass beads are available in a much greater array of shapes. You will find crow beads (essentially a very large seed bead), spherical beads, tubes, wafers, faceted shapes, hearts, stars, shells, and leaves; pendants; spacers; and much more. Depending on the bead shape, it may be available in versions that are drilled top-tobottom, side-to-side, or kitty-corner.

Crystal beads tend to make your work look higher-quality, and are highly soughtafter elements in the jewelry market. Technology has made possible the production of over 130 high-quality colors of crystal bead, in sizes commonly ranging from 3 to 10 millimeters. Various coatings make the shine of the crystal more or less brilliant or metallic.

Beads can be made out of almost any material, each having its own unique feel and look. When designing and bead shopping, be sure to investigate the earthy look that bone, horn, and shell beads can bring to your work. Of course, you will also want to think about using timeless favorites like turquoise, coral, freshwater pearl, sterling, other metal and various semiprecious gemstone beads, all of which are available for surprisingly affordable prices from a number of suppliers.

STRINGING
The basic advice is to condition thin thread and cord with Thread Heaven or beeswax, making threading as easy as possible. (You can dip the end of some threads in superglue to make an instant built-in “needle end,” too.) Heavier cording won’t need conditioning, and can often be threaded through beads without using a needle.

Jewelry accents will require estimating cord lengths and the number of beads to be used. Knotting between beads, especially in a pearl necklace, is an important touch that keeps beads from rubbing and scratching each other, and from falling off if your cord breaks.

Knotting tools are available, like the Tri- Cord Knotter, which make strong, tight knot-tying faster than ever. If knotting by hand, take time to tie as close to each bead as possible. For many uses, fine chain can substitute for cord, as long as you select beads large enough to fit onto it. Consider alternatives from inexpensive ball chain to delicate precious-metal link chains.

EMBELLISHING
To bead onto items of apparel, you’re likely to use embroidery needles and techniques including back, cross, and buttonhole stitches. Wax your thread! Nymo and Silamide thread are the common bead-embroidery choices, both offering a large color selection to match beads and fabric.

Another approach, which uses the same thread types or sometimes very thin (.010½) SoftFlex, is bead weaving with a long needle on a loom, to create 2-dimensional panel designs; you can then stitch these onto a garment or bag. Somewhat more freeform designs, going into three dimensions, can be achieved by bead weaving off-loom with a “sharps” or long needle. For this, use stitches like brick, peyote, ladder, or square, easily learned from expert guides like The Beader’s Companion(see For More Information, below).

As with all beading, use the thickest, strongest cord possible, remembering you’ll need to pass it through each bead as many as five times when weaving.

Don’t forget beaded fringes, which are another classic, easy way to make a good piece great; just stitch beaded loops, knotted single strands, or more complex patterns onto the edge of your bag or garment. Another reminder: Any garment with dyed gemstone beads should not be washed, as the dye may not be permanent.

INDIVIDUALIZING
One of the most exciting opportunities in beading is individualizing existing beads or buttons. The off-loom techniques mentioned above can be used to literally cover an “off the shelf” button, for example, in a pattern made of smaller beads. Similarly, weaving tiny beads around a large background (or showcase) bead can produce spectacularly artistic effects.

There’s no limit to the techniques you can bring into your workshop, such as heating faux-amber resin beads to a rich lustrous color, or carefully drilling into a large bead and gluing in head pins strung with seed beads. Even just adding a beautiful bead cap here and there in your design will help bring its personality out.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Numerous books and online resources are available to the bead artist. The following is a selection of some resources that have proven useful. The Internet, bead companies and craft stores can also be great sources of information to help you with your bead projects.

BEAD DANCING BEADWORK GRAPHS
Downloadable for free from
http://beadwork.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsit e.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chrystyna -m.com%2FBeadDancing%2FGraphs.html

BEADESIGNER 1.0
Downloadable for free from
http://beadwork.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsit e.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.umb.ed u%2F%7Elkramer%2Fsoftware.html