Making Jewelry by Stringing Beads on Bead Stringing Wire -- Page 24

Alternative Designs Considerations:

Sixth, some people will find that it helps them to lay out a necklace design on a bead board.  A bead board isn't required for most necklaces made with just background beads, focal bead and seed beads, but it can be helpful for more complex necklaces.  You can view a bead board at right and see how the measurements on that board will help to determine the length of a necklace. 

Finally, lets discuss the next step in complexity of necklaces.  Earlier we indicated that the simplest necklace that we recommend is just background beads and seed beads with no focal beads.  The next step up in complexity is background beads, one or more focal bead and seed beads combined into necklaces.  We discussed making this type of necklace and provided several examples with the  materials to make them.  The next step up in complexity is to replace your focal beads with a focal bead group.  A focal bead group is a series of two or more beads.  In this type necklace you replace the single focal bead with a pattern of beads.  Just like the necklace with single focal beads, you use an odd number of focal bead groups.  See the picture at left for an example of this type of necklace.  You can select that picture to view our instructions for making that necklace.  You can view another example of this type of necklace by selecting here. 

Many of these concepts may seem obvious, they probably are.  Sometimes it is good to state the obvious, because it can help a beginner to get started with the right techniques.  Our hope is that everyone will find a nugget of information that will be of value to them.