10 Tips for beginners in beading

Hi my lovely Beading People!

Today I've got 10 tips for beginners, to help you start beading!

1. Start with simpel and easy projects.
-If you start with simple and easy project, your project will have a low change of failing. This is very important because most of the time your first beading project gets you hooked on beading when it was a succes. Beading is more about 'getting the feeling of it' and less about just making things.

2. Pick something you like
-You can find all kind of free beginners tutorials on internet. Pick one you like to make, it is important that your first experience is a nice one. You want to be proud at yourself at the end that YOU made that! Make it for yourself or to give as a gift, your friends and family will love your handmade jewelry!

3. Learn the basic techniques
-How funny this may sound, even opening a jumpring has a special technique! There are a lot of video's on Youtube that show you how to do these basic techniques. Watch them before you start with your project. It helps you to make your jewelry look profecional.

4. Practice a lot!
-Every beader starts with a lot of practice pieces. It doesn't matter if you fail a few times, this is all part of the learning proces. I myself still make mistakes and I keep learning from them and I'm a beader for over 11 years now!! So don't be afraid to make mistakes, take note and keep on going.

5. Get the right tools.
-Tools are very important! The right tools will give you the result you want. Don't be scared to invest in good tools, they will go a long way and you won't regret buying them if you want to keep beading. Tools that I reccomend when starting beading are: round nose pliers, flat nose pliers, a cutting plier, small scissor, a beading mat, size 10 and 12 needles and something like beeswax to coat your thread with.

6. Get the right materials.
-Depending on what kind of beading project you want to start with, get all the materials that you need to make your project with. Most of the (free) beginners tutorials give you a full list of the materials you need. I suggest when you need a certian amount of beads to get a few more. You can loose one by dropping and never find it back (yes it happens!) or you can have a bad bead that you will have to throw out.

7. Where to buy your beads?
-For beginners I always reccomend going to a local store to buy your beads. When you are a beginner it is very important to get ín touch with the beads. You need to see and feel them in order to make a good selection. Buying your beads online has a total different feeling about it and you will have to have a good insite on thing like size, color, amount, quality and other things. If you can't buy your beads in a local store, ask the webshop owner to help you pick out the right beads or buy a jewelry making kit.

8. Don't start selling yet!!
-I've known a lot of people that just knew how to add a bead to a thread and started selling. DON'T DO THAT! Of course you can sell them to your family and friends, but don't go on Etsy and other selling sites like that. People will expect high quality when your on selling sites or fairs. I made this mistake myself (and I wasn't even very bad!) and I got customers coming back to me with tarnished jewelry, jewelry that broke and other things your not happy about to hear from a customer. This was because I didn't had the skills or the knowledge how to make proper jewelry.

9. To buy or not to buy books?
-A thing a lot of beginners do is buying a lot of beading books. I myself did it to when I started beading, but at this moment I reccomend first searching on the internet. The internet provides a lot of beginners information that is the same as in the books. I recommend saving up that money for a book that you really like when you actualy can bead. Then you can pick a book you really like and that you will really use. Because once you know the basic techniques you won't forget them and that beginners book will be an the shelf for ever collecting dust.

10. Writer patterns, photo tutorials or video tutorials?
-Most people prefer video tutorials when learning how to make jewelry. Search for these 3 types of patterns and see what you like. If you know what you like you will know what to look for in the future. This is very important because when you want to start buying patterns you will have to know what works for you. I reccomend first searching the internet, some patterns that cost money on selling sites are free at other sites.

I hope you liked my tips for beginners!

Have a lovely day!
HoneyBeads