How to do Circular Brick Stitch Bead Weaving around a Bead

SKU VID-0071
Designer: Julie Bean
Learn how do the bead weaving technique circular brick stitch around a round bead. This creates a very uniform and pretty piece which can be used as a part of a necklace, earring, or bracelet or can be used as a button or medallion.
Audio Transcript
Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi this Julie with Beadaholique.com today I'm going to show you a bead weaving technique and that's gonna be the circular brick stitch around a bead you can see in this bracelet. So here's a really good example of it I've got two buttons which has essentially created using the circular brick stitch around eight-millimeter pearl these are size 11/0 czech glass seed beads and I've actually gone and embellished the circular brick stitch with just a decorative edge and I'll show you in a second video how to do that edge but for the first video I really want to concentrate just on making the circular brick stitch around a pearl what you're going to need any eight-millimeter round bead. You want it to be perfectly round you could do a faceted bead. It's going to have a different affect. It's going to cause your bead weaving to have a staggered appearance You need some seed beads in size 11/0 in czech glass this is antique cream pearl and I have another size 11/0 which is gold super metallic it has a nice matte finish to it you need a size twelve beading needle you need some beading thread. I have a Nymo size D you need a pair of scissors and that's all you need to start with so what we're going to do first is cut yourself off a length of threads make it about four feet long and the amount you need is gonna be based upon how many of those circular rounds you want if know you could be doing quite a few of them you're going to want a lot more thread you can always add more thread later though by tying it off and adding a new thread I'm just going to thread my needle on here and I'm going to put one big on which is what I'm going to be beading around pull that towards the other end leaving a tail of approximately seven inches what you want to do tie a surgeons knot right over the edge of your bead a refresher on how to tie a surgeons knot. It's easy. Just do a simple. Over, under take our thread go over under once and then under a second time pull that real tight you can see right here we have the thread arching across the bead I want to pull that so the not is up buy the hole take my needle with my thread on it I want to go back through the bead pull tight and I actually just slipped that knot into the inside of the hole which is what I want do because now that knot is gone take my needle to the end push it through the hole, pull it take my needle this is the bridge, the thread that we thread that already tied off go under pull through loop back around into that loop pull tight so now you can see I have a bridge thread all the way around on both sides I've positioned it so that they're lined up pretty evenly. You can manipulate a little bit but you don't want those two threads to be next to each other so now we're gonna start our bead weaving and to do that I make it so I have a little thread to work with as possible to begin with in terms of the length. Makes it a little bit easier in beading I'm going to pull it down so my tail is near my bead going to make my stitching easier pick up two size 11/0 onto my needle take the tip of my needle, put it under the arch way under that thread on one side, pull position these so that they're flat, they're not stacked take my needle and go up through that second bead and pull tight so that my first stitch take another size 11/0 of the same color go under that thread pull through and back through that bead pull tight sometimes I find it does help to actually hold this tail just as a way of positioning the bead keep doing that all the way around my bead until I meet up over here on the other side. I just completely my first row almost around the pearl and I've got just one more bead to go add that bead right now. As you can see it's all lined up uniformly around on the pearl add one more bead the same way you've added all the others ones. Go under the bridge pull tight go up through that bead again pull tight I got pretty nice bridge between each of my beads. I'm going to use that bridge to string my next row. however right now I'm missing a bridge between that first bead I strung and the last one of the row so i'm gonna go down through the top of that first bead pull tight go under the bridge pull through and back through that last bead strung to create a nice solid so everything is nice and secure and now I have a nice bridge that can follow between all the beads to start the next row so for the next round of beads go ahead and go to a different color than I have a pearl color pickup two beads and we're gonna take a needle going under that bridge which we just created pull it through you want your beads to stack like that. You want them to be side by side just help them along a little bit pull tight. By doing that you created a bridge you can use in your next layer next row so now we pick up just one bead go through the next go under the next arch couple quick tips here I want to show you what I'm doing sometimes you have to make a decision. You could go ahead and bead again under the same bridge way or the one next to it just do what looks right to you. You don't want your bead stitch to have large gaps between them. So you're not going to go one bead per bridge. Sometimes you might have two beads on a bridgeway sometimes you might have one you're just going to do what looks best to have a nice even layer, a nice even round so then you're going to pick up a bead go under the bridge that looks the most appropriate to you which is the closest and then I'll I want to show you I'm pulling my thread away from the beads. I'm not pulling my thread in this direction and pulling it I'm right handed so I'm pulling towards my right and that's helping to get that bead to lay up nice and close to the previously strung and let me show you that again. Here's a good example where I have to make a decision do I go through this bridge way or do I go through this way and I'm actually going to chose the second one I'm going to pull my thread towards the right so that bead will sit next to previously strung you can see now it's laying up right against them keep beading until you end up again where you started and then I'll go on to the next level and here's an interesting point which happens a lot actually I find while doing circular brick stitch you can tell that there's a little gap between the first bead and the second row and then the last bead strung and it looks like it's maybe just big enough for another bead but I don't think it's going to be, so let me show you another what another bead would look like put that bead onto my needle, go under that thread bridge back through and now I'm going to if I were to actually going to bead this one I would go back up through that bead and pull tight but look what's happening we're getting a little bit almost like two colliding mountainsides they're just pushing up against each other and I don't like that. I want it to lay really flat so I'm going to go ahead remove this bead. I don't want that in there You'll find you're actually faced with that quite a bit. It'll look like it's just barely big enough You'll have to make a decision if you're going to go ahead and add that bead or not and 99.9% of the time if you're debating I say don't add that bead now look a lot better in the long run so even though I have this large gap I'm going to go ahead put my needle through without a bead on it through that first bead in the second row watch what's gonna happen pull through pull tight and look for the most part that gap just disappears. It's going to disappear even more when I go ahead go under that bridge which is beneath those two beads pull tight flip this guy around back up through that bead I just strung and pull you can see that pretty much evened itself out. I still have a really nice circle shape. I don't have those two bead coming to a point like this which is what I really wanted to avoid I'm going to start my third row Your going to do as many rows you really want for your pattern. So there's really no rhyme or reason. I mean I could stop at this. It looks beautiful. or I can add another ten rows. Just really a matter of what is going to work with your design Before I sign off I do want you to know that gap that we just talked about before where we were deciding whether we want to add another bead not If that gap's too large and then you try to create that bridge of threading pull it, you could end up making your beadwork concave and make it kind of form into a circle which is actually a effect which is quite nice but if you're not wanting that effect you are gonna have to carefully judge if you do want to have that other bead or you just want to have a little bit of a gap and form that bridge over. So it's something that you'll kinda get a feel for and as you're doing more bead weaving it'll come naturally and you'll be able to see whether you wanna add that last bead or not so continue on adding a bead at a time going row by row. As many rows as you want and then when you get to the point where you're ready to end your bead weaving you'll just tie off your thread and weave the tale back into the bead work as we show you in another video by Beadaholique.com and then speaking of other videos if you want to stay tuned I'm gonna show you in a separate video how you do this decorative edge so the interior part the first three rows is just circular brick stitch and then there's a really simple technique to just add the pretty little scalloped edged with the smaller three millimeter pearls so that is how you do the secular Circular Brick Stitch Bead Weaving around a Round Bead

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