There are many different styles of jewelry. If you would like to learn how to make hand-crafted jewelry, first you must learn the materials used to create jewelry.
Beads are made from a wide variety of materials and come in almost every shape and size imaginable. If you will be making hand-crafted jewelry, you will likely begin to collect many different beads to use in your creations.
- Glass Beads: These are the most common beads and come in a vast variety of shapes, colors, and sizes. The smallest glass seed beads (seed beads range in size from 8 to 11) are used to fill spaces between bigger beads. There are also faceted beads and crystal beads that add sparkle to jewelry pieces. Lampwork beads are special beads that tend to be expensive and so are used as focal beads in jewelry pieces. These are only a few of the many different glass beads that can be incorporated into jewelry pieces.
- Plastic Beads: This is the most inexpensive variety of beads. They are light in weight, bright in color, and easy to work with because they do not break easily. Often plastic beads can be substituted for more expensive beads in a project if you are trying to reduce costs.
- Metal Beads: These beads are typically hollow because they are made from thin sheets of metal. They can be made from many different metal materials.
- Shell Beads: These are natural shells with holes drilled into them for stringing. They can come in a variety of colors and sizes.
- Ceramic Beads: There are a wide variety of ceramic beads, some of which can be very expensive. Ceramic beads are typically glazed to protect their fragile surface designs.
- Stone Beads: These beads are cut into many different shapes and then polished to a high shine. Look for flat stones, chunky stones, and chips of stone.
Threading Material
- Beading Wire: This is a strong and flexible wire, often coated with nylon. It comes in a variety of thicknesses and colors.
- Satin Cording: These are shiny cords that are easy to use for beading projects. Satin cording comes in a variety of colors and thicknesses.
- Leather Cording: Leather makes attractive cording for a variety of beads. Jewelry-makers like to use leather in jewelry pieces because it is easy to knot and easy to work with. Leather comes in a variety of colors and thicknesses.
- Hemp: This is the typical medium for jewelry pieces that are knotted (such as macrame). Hemp can be knotted easily and beads also can be strung between knots.
- Metal Wire: Using wire in jewelry creates strong and durable pieces. Wire comes in a variety of finishes and can be manipulated to hold its shape after you've made your piece. Wire comes in different gauges and colors as well.
- Elastic Cording: This stretchy cording is useful for making fast pieces when closure clasps are not desired. The elastic cording is simply tied into square knots after the beads are strung.
- Embroidery Thread: This is a useful threading material if colors and strength are desired. The embroidery thread is strong yet the thread remains light in weight. There are many different colors available for matching to beads.
Metal Findings
Findings are all of the metal items incorporated into jewelry pieces, including ear wires, closure clasps, rings, and pins.
- Clasps: These are used to fasten jewelry closed. There are almost an infinite variety of shapes, sizes, styles, and finishes of clasps.
- Earring Findings: There are a wide variety of sizes and styles of these ear wires.
- Jump Rings: These are the rings that are used to make connections between various parts of a piece of jewelry, such as beads and clasps or beads and ear wires.
- Head Pins/Eye Pins: These are pieces of metal wire that are used for adding bead combinations to pieces of jewelry.
- Chain: Chain links can be purchased and incorporated into jewelry pieces. The size of the links and the finish of the metal comes in many varieties.
- Crimps: These are the small tubes or beads that are used to finish jewelry pieces and keep strung beads on the stringing material. They are strung at the end of the wire and squashed to make an end that keeps the beads on the wire or threading.
Source:
- So Easy Beading by Liz Thornton & Jean Power
The copyright of the article Learn to Make Jewelry in Beadwork/Jewelry Making is owned by Kathy Hatter. Permission to republish Learn to Make Jewelry in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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