I received a Twitter request for some assistance from an Etsy Seller. Now, our sister company Designs by M'Ayanna is an Etsy shop and I always like to help others whenever possible. Seller Bethenia asked me this: " Can you recommend a website for someone who knows absolutely nothing about beading/jewelry making but wants to start?"
I'm a self-taught beader and stringer, so it was an interesting question. I've picked up patterns and techniques from all over the web, through books and magazines and even other crafters. By no means do I consider myself an expert, just some who loves this stuff. That being said I thought I'd give it a whirl!
First off I want to establish that beading and stringing are related, but not identical, ways to make jewelry. For starters, below is an example of simple stringing, where beads mostly of the same size are strung in a simple one-or two strand pattern.
Now here are few examples of bead weaving. These are simple designs because they contain a single stitch pattern repeated over rand over.
About.com seems to be a good starting point. They cover the basics of beading/stringing, tell you about the tools you'll need and offer some patterns to try. They are not personally trying to sell you anything, like many of the other sites I found. This will take you to a page with links that should answer many bead weaving questions. There are also stringing tips and techniques here plus some finishing techniques http://beadwork.about.com/od/beadingstitchtutorials/u/user_path_basics.htm#s3
So I hope that answers your question and I wish you the best of luck!
Remember to leave your own review, just join us and post!
Pat K.
The Jewelry Craft Shop http://twitter.com/#!/JewelCraftShop
3 comments:
This is a test entry.
This is the comment from Bethenia. She was having a little trouble posting. I've copied this from Twitter DMs.:
WOW!!! Thank you so much for all the work you put into this! I didn't expect you to write a whole blog post. I thought you might pass a link to me and then be off but wow!
I had searched online for sites but, like you mentioned, most of them are just trying to sell something and I know so little that I didn't know what they were talking about in the instructions. I think my biggest problem was just not knowing the terminology.
For example, I keep seeing the word "findings" and I don't know what it is that people think they are finding b/c everything I find tagged as that looks completely different to the point that I don't even know if I really found a finding!
Also don't know the different names for the beads and now you say "finishings". My first thought at what that could be is maybe the clasps and things that connect to the clasp to finish it off with a flourish but I'm probably wrong.
I ordered some beads online and have a good idea of how I want to string them but some of the beads are open circles with the stringing hole on the sides (so like the circle sits flat on the wrist and the string is seen in the opening) so I don't want a piece of ugly string to show through I'd like some kind of wire but the holes are so small. So I was kind of lost.
Thank you so much for your help! I am now following this blog too. By the way, I absolutely love the background! Do you have an Etsy shop or facebook fanpage too? I am off to look at the link now. Thanks again!
Amazing how simple it can be to communicate with people and have them understand a certain topic, you made my day.
Jewelry store
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