Beading is a way of creating interesting items by threading glass, wooden or plastic beads through a special thread. Beading was born many thousands of years ago, and yet it is still making a comeback. If you want to try your hand at beading, we invite you to read on!
To create a beautiful beaded craft, you need to get the following materials:
Of course, beads come to the fore. These happen to be both glass and plastic, wood or stone. Most often they come in the form of slightly flattened at the edges balls with a hole in the middle. Glass tubes of various lengths, from a few millimeters to as much as ten centimeters, as well as teardrops with a hole at the top, are an interesting form. You are also sure to come across beads beveled and ground on two sides, reminiscent of a seal ring.
Nylon threads, up to 0.3 mm thick, are best for creating beading items. They are made of many thin fibers, covered with wax and combined into a single thread. Their advantage is that they come in many colors, which cannot be said of polyethylene threads, available in 2-3 colors. The latter, however, will work well for larger beads.
Those used in the beading technique are flexible, thin and have the same thickness along the entire length, so that the beads can not “get stuck” in the middle, which can happen when using an ordinary needle.
You will appreciate these when the desire to create a bracelet from beads comes to you. A mini loom can be made of wood, metal or plastic.
In addition, you should get felt, useful as a base for embroidering beads, sharp scissors and a crochet hook.
Beading is an addictive, but also quite difficult activity. In order to conjure up a small masterpiece, you need to master the basic stitches, on the basis of which you will create jewelry ornaments, decorative elements, pendants and other trinkets.
In the peyote stitch, the beads are arranged like bricks in a wall – with an offset of half a bead. The stitch itself has several variations. Due to the number of beads in a row, we distinguish between even and odd peyote, and due to the shape of the resulting decoration – flat, cylindrical and circular peyote.
With the peyote stitch you create larger beaded planes, while details are easier to obtain with the brick stitch. In this stitch the beads are also arranged like bricks in a wall, but you can work it both flat and in laps, creating circles and tubes. It is with this stitch that popular tassel earrings are created.
Slightly more difficult to master is the rectangular stitch, especially its spatial variations. To make things easier, it’s a good idea to get two needles, although you can also get the RAW stitch with one needle. In this stitch you can combine different types of beads, obtaining fancy bracelets, rings and beaded balls.
main photo: unsplash.com/vonvix
