Design handmade beaded jewelry that exceeds the average

For your handmade beaded jewelry beat the usual threading and stringing kind of jewelry.

There are many more ways of putting beads together.

Why just string some beads when you can pull-off a work of art?

Jewelry has loads of easy techniques to arrange beautiful beads.

Great handmade beaded jewelry blends the attractiveness of natural stones plus the classy craftsmanship of jewelers.

You can make handmade beaded jewelry to rip-off sales.

Take your beads to the bench and start working with maximum inventiveness. The sky is the limit!

To start with, let me show you five basic ways to blow-up your beading skills.



No, you don’t need soldering equipment.

All you need is a nice collection of all types of natural beads, drilled and not drilled: round, oval, discs, cabochons, nuggets or even small geodes.

Cold connections

Cold connections are a way of joining together parts of jewelry without using soldering. It’s an easy and effective way to put together handmade beaded jewelry.

The simplest way of assembling together drilled beads is by using jump rings and eye pins. Although the most simple and blatant of all cold connections, it works.

Just slide a drilled bead into the eye pin, close tightly the other end with a small loop and connect it to the next bead with a jump ring. You can make slick variations by adding handmade wire components, metal beads, charms and other components.

Another widely used technique is to join two parts together with a rivet. A rivet is a metal pin that fits through the holes of the parts being joined and then each end is hammered on itself until it locks in place.

You can even shape the nail head that will be seen to add interest.

You can also use rivets to join rotating parts of a design. You can connect two pivoting parts with a rivet; just make sure to use a harder metal or alloy in your rivet so that it stands wear and use.

You can try tabs and staples. Tabs can hold a stone by means of bending a strip of metal over the stone. Bending can be done with pliers and finished by using a mallet, if it’s necessary.

Tabs can and should become a design element of the whole jewelry piece. You can shape tabs into any form, you can texture them, pierce them and fold them.

Wire wrapping

Wire wrapping is a versatile and creative way of joining together parts of jewelry. It’s very useful for holding stones and gems that have not been drilled because of its innate beauty. A successful wire wrap can be a highly decorative as well as functional jewelry element. All you need are a basic set of pliers, wire cutters and an assortment of wires in different gauges.

Setting

The basic bezel is a fantastic and quite easy alternative to set cabochons.

A bezel is a band of metal that surrounds the stone and is pressed over the stone’s edge to keep it in place.



The crucial purpose of the bezel is to securely hold a stone in place, but it can be adorned and embellished in many ways.

You can also use the basic bezel concept to set irregular shaped objects, such as fossils, flat pebbles, disc shaped beads and even found objects.

However, be aware that not all kinds of gemstones can be set. Some are very soft and may not stand the pushing of the bezel. You can see more details about this in the gemology section.

You can creatively start blending the mechanics and engineering of the setting method with the tabs technique to expand your alternatives.

Knotting strands

Traditionally, pearls and gemstones have been knotted as the best and most elegant way of stringing them. It is of course the classiest and stylish way of making handmade beaded jewelry.

The small knot between each bead or pearl prevents any erosion caused from rubbing against each other.

In case the necklace is broken, it also keeps them all from rolling away.

Use special silk twist exclusively made for knotting.

Although it’s hard work and requires practice, if you learn how to properly knot pearls then you’ve done a great investment for yourself.

Knotting is quite a specialized know-how that is priced per inch. But the professional quality that knotted handmade beaded jewelry has is worth the time and effort.

Stringing

Stringing beads is obviously the most popular course of action. There are lots of jewelry findings and tools to aid stringing beads, and we have talked about them in another section.

You can create single strands of beads, using uniform sized beads or different sized beads. There’s also the tassel type of necklace. You can also try making multiple strands with graduated lengths or equal lengths; as well as braided multiple strands.

Putting together handmade beaded jewelry is about being resourceful with the materials and tools you have at hand.

Don’t limit yourself to the wholesalers supply.

Stretch your own limits, raise your imagination and get working on these basic techniques to make beautiful handmade beaded jewelry.

You’ve got the talent and the ability to do it.

Now we can get into the details of gemstones and gemology.

Did you know that if you leave a gemstone necklace for a couple of weeks where sunlight hits it, you’ll probably come back and discover that the color in beads has faded?

Or, did you know that setting opal beads is tricky because they tend to shrink or expand, depending on climatic differences?

Go from Handmade Beaded Jewelry back to Gemstones

References used in this section: Ganderton (2005); Le Van (2005); McCreight (2004)