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Simple Tips

Self-adhesive finger pads, an alternative to thimbles used by tailors and garment designers, work great for beading and wirework, too. The pads stick to your fingertips and serve as a comfortable buffer against pokes from needles and wire.

Simple Tips

Avoid sticky situations by wiping the tips of your glue tubes with a lotion-infused tissue before closing the cap. The lotion keeps the cap from sticking.

Simple Tips

After spilling more than a few saucers of unstrung beads, I began using a new Saran Wrap product to cover my bowls when they're not in use. Quick Covers are plastic lids that look like small shower caps. They keep the beads in and the dust and cats out.

Simple Tips

When stringing beads onto Accu-Flex® professional-quality beading wire, place a rubber earring-stopper or Bead Stopper™ on one end to keep your beads from falling off while you're designing. Now, you can design with ease, and not worry about losing your design when you pick up your strand!

Simple Tips

When stringing long fringe or a continuous length of seed beads, make every 10th bead a slightly different color from the rest. This saves time since you can count the strung beads in a flash, and enhances the overall design.

Simple Tips

Recycle your floss containers--use the spool to hold your thread and simply pull off the amount needed for your project. You don't even need scissors--the floss container has a built-in cutter!

Simple Tips

Add visual interest to wire creations by flattening or hammering your wire:

Simple Tips

String 3 beads and pass through the first beads going in the opposite direction. Pull tightly so that 2 and 3 beads form a 1 on top of bead 1. It looks like a triangle. Now pick up a bead and go through the last bead. Pick up another bead and go again into the last bead. Repeat for the desired length.

Simple Tips

When making a project that has multiple wire-wrapped loops, such as chandelier earrings, make the first loop, then use a permanent marker to mark that place on the jaw of your round-nose pliers. Use this mark as a guide for making the rest of the loops the same size. Since the jaws of the pliers are metal, the mark wears off.

Simple Tips

Use liver of sulfur to create an aged look in metal jewelry. Soak the metal pieces in a liver sulfur bath and watch as the black tarnish darkens the surface and soaks deep into the coils and folds of the wire or metal. Then polish the black off the surface with a metal polishing cloth, leaving the aged color within the recesses.

Simple Tips

Thread many needles onto your spool of thread or bobbin. Pull 1 near the tip, cut off thread as long as you like, but leave the others on there. When you run out of thread on your work piece, just grab another needle that's already threaded.

Simple Tips

If you cut wire and it goes flying across the room only to be found when you step on it later, here's a tip that will catch those flying pieces. When you cut your wire, hold a damp paper towel in your hand over the tip that will fly. As you are cutting, you will feel the wire tip fling against the damp paper. Now you know exactly where it is, and clean up is a breeze!

Simple Tips

Beading wire can scratch the wearer if it is sticking out or not clipped close enough to the crimp. A good technique to finish a necklace so that the wire is hidden is to make sure your last bead or two are large enough for the remainder of beading wire to be threaded back through and clipped.

Simple Tips

Run curly thread through a curling iron that is set on a low heat to straighten. Check the contents of the thread, because some silks will burn or scorch under high heat. To prevent scorching or melting, move a test piece of the thread quickly through the curling iron. If it responds well to the heat, it is safe to use.

Simple Tips

Memory wire is tempered wire that remembers its shape and retains its coiled form. It's one size fits all and comes in pre-formed necklace, bracelet and ring sizes. You don't need a clasp to connect the ends because they automatically stay in one place around your neck, wrist or finger.

Simple Tips

Copper wire will patina, or darken and discolor, with age. If you prefer to keep your copper wire bright, coat it with a clear sealer or polish before stringing and let dry. Soaking copper in white vinegar will help to clean it.

Simple Tips

If you like to make your own wire earring hoops, a cheap and sturdy mandrel can be made from the white connectors used for PVC. They come with outside dimensions from 1.25 to 2.75 inches making them perfect earring hoop sizes.

Simple Tips

When following a detailed pattern, you're always looking at the pattern, then looking at your beadwork over and over and can lose your place easily. Try using a magnifier ruler to follow each row of your pattern. Then lay out your beads in a painter's pallet tray, and going from left to right follow the pattern, pick up each bead as the pattern requires and lay it out in a row on your pad. Do several rows this way. Then set your pattern down and peyote those 2 rows up really quickly.

Simple Tips

Use IV tubing or oxygen tubing to form the base for circular (tubular) beadwork.

Simple Tips

This is from my friend Barb, who does jewelry appraisals: Never use rubber bands (or any rubber) near silver or silver plating. The chemicals in the rubber will actually burn through the silver (or SP) and leave nasty black marks--permanently ruining the piece.
378 Resources Found
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