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
For stringing on artificial sinew, I do not cut the end until I am finished, but leave it attached to the large spool. It is an automatic bead keeper, and I never have to worry about the beads falling off.
Use top-loading clear sheet protectors in a binder to store your flat bead work in progress. The binder can also be used to transport finished, flat beadwork.
Use bright colored post-it-notes sticking out of the top of the Fire Mountain catalogs to mark favorite items. Different colors can coordinate according to different types of products as a quick-find reference.
Keep the smaller Fire Mountain mailer boxes for storing ''like beads and findings.'' Label four sides and top in felt-tip marker. They stack well and help to keep things organized and portable.
A small, framed corkboard is a great way to store strands and clear zip bags of beads by style, color or spectrum. Use push pins to hold bead strands and baggies in place.
An old TV tray covered with a rubber drawer liner with the edges taped down with 2X stick carpet tape is ideal for keeping small items in place and works great as a portable work area.
A small, flat magnet glued to the outside palm of a garden glove can be great for picking up the small metal pieces and beads that fall to the floor and are temporarily lost.
Save your spent wire and cording spools so that you can re-use them to wind other cord, ribbon, or wire on them. This is especially good for transporting portable projects.
Use old, large retro-style buttons to glue miscellaneous left over beads, pieces of fabric, old watch parts and threads onto and make one-of-a-kind art brooches.
If a bead starts to chip or break in your completed design, use clear nail polish or glitter nail polish to smooth it out and erase the imperfection.
To loosen up stiff fingers and hands, a pinkie ball, hacky-sack ball or similar squeeze toy can be squeezed to exercise the hand between projects. It will help strengthen and relax the wrist and fingers.
A black fireplace screen serves as a great storage and display unit for your earring collection. It is also portable for quick set-up at bazaars. Colored, framed window screens are lightweight and portable as well.
It is easier to make a symmetrical necklace if you mark the center of the thread or wire first. Then do short sections to match alternating on each side. It is easier to catch and correct a mistake.
At the end of each small project, close your eyes for a few seconds, do simple stretching exercises, get up and place your design on display. It will make a positive difference at the end of a long beading session.
For making necklaces for hand mobility-impaired folks, the Fire Mountain Gems and Beads black 1mm stretch cording is great for lightweight necklaces. Simply knot the ends and it is ready to pull over the head – no clasp needed.
A foam mouse pad with a gel wrist rest makes long-term beading more comfortable. Plus, the beads and needles stay where you put them.
If your eyesight is not great, and you love to bead, use artificial sinew and large-hole beads and freeform slabs for a bolder look.
A hard wood baseball bat makes a great bracelet mandrel.
To work on, store and display bracelets, using a 1-1/4" diameter four-foot standard wood dowel supported on the wall horizontally by two brass coat hooks.
Ever notice unwanted spaces on your necklace or bracelet after you've crimped the ends and the beads have settled into their final positions? This is where crimp covers are very useful. You can fix crimp covers into the extra spaces, and they look just like another silver or gold bead!