Have a great beading idea, technique or time-saving tip? View helpful tips from other beaders and submit your own to share with the worldwide jewelry-making community.
Beading Resources > Simple Tips
Fire Mountain Gems and Beads
Have a great beading idea, technique or time-saving tip? View helpful tips from other beaders and submit your own to share with the worldwide jewelry-making community.
Beading Resources > Simple Tips
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All products sold by Fire Mountain Gems and Beads are not intended for use by children under the age of 15.
A great sales technique is to remind your customers that jewelry is easy to care for and is always ready-to-wear!
- Susanne, Oregon
Customers love that, unlike shoes and clothing, one size fits all with most jewelry. Jewelry can be gifted and shared among friends, passed along to family members and enjoyed for years and years
- Susanne, Oregon
I like to share that women pay a great deal for new hairstyles, make-up and more. Jewelry offers an instant makeover and boost of confidence at a great value. It's easy to create any desired look with the right jewelry.
- Susanne, Oregon
I like to tell my customers that jewelry is the secret to creating great personal style. A well chosen piece makes any outfit new again (easily reinventing an existing wardrobe), offers confidence to its wearer and provides a conversation-starting statement.
- Susanne, Oregon
When I am finished assembling a necklace, I bag every little bead left over, including a few more from the original bead selection, and then place the bag in a basket. When I feel like making earrings, I take out each bag and create as many earrings possible that would match that necklace. I use every bead from one batch to make an assortment of earrings, bracelets, and accents that would match the original necklace.
- Veronica from Oklahoma
When you have a design idea, but not the time to get to it right away, put the components in a small container (like a plastic medicine bottle) and label what it will be. If you have a photo or directions, put them in there too. This can save a lot of time, and hair pulling, if you have everything ready to just pick up and go!
- Ronnie from Florida
For cheap and creative earring display, simply use a wire mesh wastebasket turned upside down. This works exceptionally well for hook earrings and if you look in the right places you can find rubber coated wire mesh bins in neat colors.
- Christie from British Columbia
I use empty clear spice jars. You don't need to write what is in them since you can see what's already there. It is a great time saver.
- Kaz from Australia
When beading with a needle or Tigertail™ and need to store it for a day or two, cut a small piece of flat cork and press needle or Tigertail™ end into the cork. The beads won't slip off.
- Glenda from South Africa
Coin tubes are great for bead storage. They are clear, come in different sizes and have screw on caps.
- Maureen from Idaho
I use the heat shrink tubing that normally goes over exposed electrical wires to place over pliers so they don't scratch the metal. I just use a hairdryer to shrink it nice and close to the tools so they never scratch the surface of wires or beads.
- Rachael from Michigan
A flexible curved ruler is actually a sewing tool. Since it follows your natural neckline, it can be very handy when designing a necklace for which the exact position of a specific bead on your neckline counts.
- Elissavet from Belgium
For keeping beads organized, I use a storage cabinet that is supposed to be for nuts and bolts. It is located in the automotive department. It keeps everything organized nice and neat, and it transports very nicely.
- Beth from South Carolina
After stringing your first string of beads in a straight stitch peyote project, place a needle in every other bead. This will enable you to easily manipulate your project without the usual awkward handling.
- Doris from California
I like to peel the Fire Mountain labels off the plastic shopping bags and stick them inside my bead compartments so that I always know exact sizes, types of metals and gems, etc. Sometimes I even write prices on there to keep track of the value of the pieces I'm making to sell.
- Nicole from Maine
Use teacher's pocket charts with clear vinyl fronts to organize and store small bags of beads and findings. Attach them to coat hangers with swivel hooks to store many in your closet or turn the hook to hang it over a door. I also keep my beads in the original Fire Mountain bags with the sticker tag for easy reordering.
- Ed from Washington
When making multiple pairs of earrings, I've been shown a simple time saver. Add an 8mm bead to the top of each headpin, then do your final snip, remove the 8mm bead and your loop to hold the earwires in place will always be consistent!
- Beth from Hawaii
I use the small plastic cups with peel-off lids, like applesauce cups, to sort beads for projects and to give away when teaching a beading class. A local pizza place puts salad dressing in small clear or opaque cups with clear lids that are great to organize pony beads by color for classes for kids. I use 2x4-inch dense black foam that came from a shipping container and stick my T-pins in the end of the rectangular foam for storage. Then I place my thick paper earring cards on the foam to punch the holes for the earwires without bending the cards. My sister encouraged me to get a small bookcase with several shelves to store my 40 or more 12-compartment storage containers on their sides, labeling each container by color or type of beads in that container.
- Ann from Illinois
Take a foot of 20# Fireline®, loop in middle, go through crimp bead, put Powercord® through the loop, then pull back through the crimp bead. Take out Fireline®. Crimp bead.
- VC from Oregon
If you spill beads, stretch a knee high nylon across the opening of a vacuum hose and secure the nylon with either tape or a rubber band so that there is a little bit hanging loose that will suck up into the vacuum hose end . Then "vacuum" up the beads. Hold the vacuum over a dish when you turn it off and all the beads that were sucked up into the nylon will fall into the dish. Really makes it easy to pick up the beads!
- Sherre from Virginia