Friday, April 16, 2010

Bead strining wire and seed beads

Yes, no pretty picture for this post, and it's a short one to boot. Sorry about that.

Anyways, I recently was stringing three stranded necklace with a pendant and seed beads. I used different sizes of beads which gave the necklace a fun look. I figured it would be good to share how many strands could fit through the various bead sizes, which is handy to keep in mind while planning a design. Especially if you would need to buy supplies. (Having stuff on hand it is easy enough to quickly check what fits).

For the stringing material I was using Soft Flex, their Tranquility trio. The wire has 49 individual strands and is 0.019"(0.49mm) diameters thick.

For the seed beads I was using my current supplies, and I'm pretty sure all of them are Toho brand (the 8 might not have been).
Size 11 bead - fits 1 strand of stringing wire
Size 8 bead - fits 2 strands of stringing wire
Size 6 (aka "E") bead - fits 3 strands, with a bit of wiggle room.
(For seed beads the larger the number, the smaller the bead)

With the design I have all three strands holding the pendant, and aside from by the pendant and to finish the ends, I didn't use any crimps. The strands themselves I strung through various numbers of beads *points up*.

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