Jewelry Making

If you are using large quantities of smaller beads, you’re probably going to want to figure out some way to contain the beads such as a beading tray. When we first started out making jewelry, we didn’t really have any type of workstation for beading. So most often, we would simply dump out the beads we needed onto a smooth surface like a desk or table - and away we would go. This actually isn’t so much a problem - it’s the cleanup that can be tough, especially if your beads accidentally get mixed up on the table.

In addition, those round beads tend to have a mind of their own and we’ve ended up more than once with a shower of them on the floor after they rolled off the table. You can alleviate this by putting some sort of coarse fabric under the round ones so they don’t roll as much. But we found that using a beading needle (or simply the end of some beading wire) to pick them up through the hole got to be difficult because the end of the wire or needle would often “catch” on the fabric - especially if it was fuzzy.

They do sell a number of beading trays and devices that you can use. One quite handy tray, which is meant for necklaces, contains a circular form for you to place the beads in so that you can see the order before stringing them, and several sections for you to place loose beads in. Another one, which we actually use sometimes for seed beading, is a harder plastic rectangular tray with straight sides but no compartments. You place a large amount of small beads in there, and in the corner of the bead tray is a little hole with a screwcap on it. Cleanup for this tray is quite easy - you just tilt the tray so that all the beads run to the corner with the screwcap and then unscrew it over your seed bead container. The beads run right out into the container.

Continue reading “Ideas for Beading Trays” …