Choosing the best materials for your design
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Choosing bead stringing materials for your project…
Some people have strong preferences for the bead stringing materials they prefer to use when making their jewelry. I recommend playing around with different materials to find what you like using, but I thought I would share my thoughts on my preferred bead stringing threads. Please note that this blog post contains affiliate links.
I was inspired to write this post after finding this broken bracelet…
This bracelet was made from elastic thread tied to a jump ring at each end. When I found it, the elastic had broken or come undone at one end and there were beads spread all over the ground. I picked a few up to see if I could reuse them.
1: Beading elastic
Here’s where I introduce the first stringing material that I’ll be discussing here, clear beading elastic. There are a few pros and cons to using elastic, one pro is that it is easy to secure the ends closed and that elastic beaded bracelets are easy to put on, they stretch over your hand so you don’t have to fiddle with any clasps. A downside (a big one in my opinion) is that elastic isn’t very hardwearing or sturdy. Elastic stretches out and loses its elasticity over time, it can also snap or untie easily, so you end up with the situation pictured above.
If you want to try out beading on elastic, you can follow our tutorial for making a beaded elastic bracelet here. If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, I’ve got some more bead stringing information for you below…
2: Tiger Tail wire
Another material that I often use for stringing beads is tiger tail wire. Tiger tail is a metal wire coated with nylon. It is flexible and can be bent into shapes. I find tiger tail wire a much stronger and sturdy material for beading compared to elastic. There are also a couple of cons to using tiger tail, you need a few more materials and tools to use it, and if you crease it, it is hard to get it back to its previous shape.
I have LOTS of tiger tail tutorials, so here’s one of my favorites that you can try out.
3: Nylon thread
A third bead stringing option is using nylon beading thread. This method is probably the most traditional and is useful when you are using delicate bead materials like pearls. Thread allows you to create knots between beads so that they don’t rub together on each other, knotting also means that if your piece does break, the beads won’t fall off and fly everywhere!
The downside of bead stringing onto nylon thread is that it can be a bit fiddly to work with and you need to use a needle to add beads to the string. Here’s a tutorial that shows you how to create a simple beaded necklace using nylon string.
Which bead stringing material do you like best?