Types of Seed Beads for Making Beaded Jewelry

Types of Seed Beads for Making Beaded Jewelry
Welcome to the Bead Bar in Orlando, Florida. My name is Debra and this morning for Expert Village, I am going to tell you a little bit about the wonderful world of seed beads. Seed beads are tiny little bits of glass that have been colored in all different ways, that have a hole in the center that enables you to run a needle and thread through and create all sorts of wonderful projects. Seed beads come from one of two places; usually either the Czech Republic or Japan. The seed beads from the Czech Republic are usually sold in hanks, which is this cluster of strands or beads that will come in several different sizes. Size 11 is the most common one that you will see and the seed beads from Japan are going to come in tubes, they are sold by weight, a little more uniform usually than the ones from the Czech Republic. I have poured out a few of these right here. These are size 11 seed beads. They look very tiny to you but this is one of the building blocks for the seed bead projects. These are size 15, so I am going to show you just how tiny those are. You see they are even tinier than the size 11s, but the size 15s give you the ability to get a lot of tiny little details in your work. Another type of seed bead that you will see is the bugle; bead. This is actually a long tube. It comes in a lot of different colors, a lot of different lengths and shapes and it is one of those wonderful ways to put some real sparkle into any project that you are working on. Another wonderful bead is the Delica Bead from Japan. It is a cylinder bead, it is actually shaped like you had a cardboard tube out of your paper towels and cut it into pieces and it is a very uniformed shape; as you can see they are in a uniform shape, so that if you are doing something that has a very tight pattern to it, a Delica Bead is a wonderful choice because it always lines up exactly with its neighbor and sits right in your pattern beautifully. As you can see these are several different projects that you can do with these seed beads. These were all done with a needle and thread. Most of them one bead at a time and you can see that you can do anything from a small purse, a bracelet. This is a beautiful piece that has a sunflower in the center and it is a bracelet; can be worn as a bracelet. This is a vortex spiral piece that is also a bracelet and of course the look depends on what colors you choose, how you put your beads together and that changes the look of what you are doing. You can combine your seed beads with natural materials; here I have used a cabashan of jasper, a piece of amber for the toggle and a little bit of pearl and citrine embellishment around the sides. This is a three-dimensional sculpture that is actually free form done with the seed beats. It has Delica’s, it has the Czech seed beads, it has all different sizes and it also has some crystals and wire in it. You will hear people talk about peyote stitch, brick stitch; there is all sorts of different stitches that will give you different looks and depending on the project that you are doing, you will choose the seed bead stitch that best suits your project. Seed beading is a fabulous way to get a lot of detail and you can create almost anything once you have learned a few basic stitches. We hope you will stop in and enjoy it with us.