How to Use a Beading Board to Make a Strung Necklace from Start to Finish

Name: How to Use a Beading Board to Make a Strung Necklace from Start to Finish
Brand: Beadaholique
SKU: VID-1773
Availability: InStock

SKU VID-1773

Designer: Kat Silvia

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In this video you will see how you can use a strand of mixed gemstones and wood beads to make a strung necklace on a beading board. The beading board helps you to plan your design with ease. It's a must have tool for any designer.

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Audio Transcript

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
hi this is kat with beadaholique.com stones and the reason I'm gonna use the mixed gemstones here today is because the bead board really helps you sort of plan out your design so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna break this apart and mix it in with some metal beads and some wood beads but I'm not quite sure the design that I want so I'm gonna use the bead board to help me out but let's take a look at our board first so there's all these little extra compartments here that can hold various things I have my wire here I have a couple of bead Stoppers up here just some crimp tubes various things that I'm going to need some crimp beads there so then it also has these three channels here now let's talk for a second about the numbers that you're seeing on the outside here and on the outside these are the inches so if you look let me draw your eye back down here to the zero here so from zero to one this is your first inch and this is kind of a nice little center point of the necklace so if you wanted to make sure that a be dressed right in the center you can do that okay so let's take a look so this is one inch two three four and so on all the way up here so when it you see it at eight this is actually seven and a half inches so the eight is all the way up here so this is a 15 inch strand of gemstones and there's a reason why I haven't broken it out because I want to just sort of demonstrate to you that yes it is indeed fifteen inches along my ruler here just so you can see that all right so let's go ahead and talk about the beads that I want to use here today so I'm gonna break apart my gemstones and this is a great little technique especially if you're working with gemstones that you may have left over from a different project or if you do get a mixed strands like this and really let's say you want to use the the two tiger's eye that come in it for a different project but now you have all these extra beads left over okay well what do you do with all of this so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna find what I think might be one of the more unique beads here and I actually really like this this is probably like a leopard Jasper here so because it's a mixed R and I'm not quite sure but I think that's a really fun little focal there so if I'm gonna start with that this is the guy that I'm gonna put right into my beading board right at that zero right up there and now I think I want to start putting in some metal beads and wood beads and over here I have these great aromatic beads and they actually smell like cedar wood they're really fun and really cool and these are eight millimeter so these are a little smaller than my 10 millimeter gemstones so I think it'll add a little bit of kind of nice little space there and a nice little size difference alright let me go ahead and get that off of my strand I'm just using a just a generic pair of flush cutters here cuz I'm gonna use that with my wire later alright so I have some wood beads here let's see I think I'm gonna end up putting a couple little metal beads in between everything but I'm just gonna sort of place those up above there because that'll help me just remember that that's what I want to do and then let's go ahead and put a couple of those wood beads there so we have a nice little kind of framing that's happening so now if I wanted to let's see how it works if I try to do the same color scheme going all the way up let's see if I how much I can match a lot of these beads here and I'll put those wood beads in between and I think I'll end up putting it the metal beads in between there as well but let's just see how far I can get I might not get as far as I want to here so let's see let's add some more wood beads and this is where it's really nice to sort of visually see what's happening here my little gold spacer beads aren't gonna add too much space so I'll just kind of leave those up top there just as a little a little reminder that I wanted to use them there these ones actually look kind of fun okay so those three now I'm not sure that I have too much else that might match in my particular strand here but you can absolutely do just a totally mixed mixed strand here mix up your beads you can add more wood beads if you want a little bit more of a panel which is actually that seems like a really good idea let's see I'm gonna do one more I'm gonna do one more the wood bead then I notice I have these little rose quartz here so I think that's nice so I really like the way that's developing and it's showing me exactly how far along I am now the reason that the beadboard is so great is that I don't have to string and unstring I can just kind of move stuff around like let's say I don't want the the green down here or I want the yellow a little further out let's say I wanted to kind of move these ones and make them so they're a little further towards the outside I can kind of see how that looks and okay that's not too bad I actually like it with the tiger's eye at the front so I'm gonna put the tiger's eye there and sort of rearrange a little bit there we go I like that because I like the blue and the pink together I think that looks really really nice alright let's see what else I might have together hmm I think I'm gonna sort of set my little gemstones aside here for a minute let's see see if there's something else I want to go back to I am seeing a lot of these red beads here these are probably like a nice carnelian and you can just see even as I'm moving these around some have a little bit more design happening than some of the other ones like these to kind of tend to match really nicely so let's put these guys in there because I want a little bit more space I think all right so now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start to add a few more wood beads to each side so one two three let's see it can just kind of I'll do five because that's what I have here without breaking that next strand and I have sort of one left over okay so I think I want to see how far now all of these extra little beads here are gonna add in between all these little spaces and if you don't have enough beads you can sort of count out how many but what I always like to do is I'm gonna start in the center here so I'm gonna kind of shift over just a little bit I'm gonna start by taking my beading wire and some people like to leave it on the spool I like to go ahead and cut mine off right away bring it in my ruler here and if I want let's say let's say I want a 16 inch necklace here today I always recommend at least 2 inches on either side sometimes you can go a little bit further so let's do 15 do 16 so that's how long I want my necklace to be and then I like to add two more inches and at least two more inches and I'm gonna add another inch just for good measure just to make sure that it's gonna be nice and easy on me to do those crimps all right I'm gonna put my guide back on there and I am using the beetle on the 49 strand in the point zero eight inches and the reason I'm using the 49 strand is because I'm working with some gemstones here today and they are a 10 millimeter so they're gonna be a little heavy so I want to make sure that I have good flexibility but this is also gonna be nice and strong for me so this is what I have chosen to use for today all right so now let's start we're gonna take one of our little bead Stoppers and I'm gonna place that about two inches or so from one end get my ruler out of the way and let's go ahead and start with our Center bead let's go ahead and drop that right down there right to the center and now I'm just gonna alternate and what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna string up my beads I'm gonna add in those little metal spacers and string up this one side and see how we're it see how we're lookin these guys down here now you can kind of try to string it along you know while it's in the channel there sometimes I like to just take it out it's entirely up to you sometimes I find it hard to get it perfect and line up the holes there anyway so you wanna do what feels best for you but the bead board is really great to plan a design that way you can just sort of see how it really comes together and I'm gonna show you how we can kind of size this again without using a ruler so if you don't have a ruler at your at your fingertips you can use your bead board but I'm already really liking the way that it looks with all those little spacers in between there now you don't have to add the spacers you know if you don't want to I just like that little little flash of metal I think it adds a little something to a nice strong necklace all right so we're getting close towards the end here of adding the gemstones just a couple more all right and I'm gonna finish it off with this gemstone here all right so now if we remember our little guy in the center there now look how much it's added about the length of a bead and a half so I'm just gonna kind of push those up there for a second and now we can sort of see what our spacing looks like on this side so I actually really like that I think I'll still be able to get all five of those beads and I think I'll still do the spacers there but because I'm not quite sure what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a second bead stopper and I'm gonna put it right there on that side and then I can remove my bead stopper on this side and I'm ready to string up the next side and see how we're looking so I'm going to do that really quick just doing the same method as before and then we're gonna see where we're at okay so I've strung out my second side so this is what I have to work with now and I do like the amount of gemstones I know that I still do have quite a few down here but you know I really like what I have going on up here I like the colors I like the balance of everything so I'm gonna stick with this for now so the last thing that I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add on four wood beads onto each side and I'm just gonna add those little metal spacers in between so let me do that really quick here and I can just kind of kind of leave it up here at this point if you wanted to but those bead Stoppers are really great just to let you kind of pick it up and you can see how it's working with and some of these wood beads I just want to point out they have because they're natural they have a little bit of a kind of sediment in them so you can just sort of poke your needle through there or if you have like a round nose plier or even a beard bead core you can do that there as well just to kind of get some of that out of there but because they're natural wood that's that's bound to happen okay yeah and I'm really loving the way the metal beads are working with my design here it just adds a little something alright and I am actually going to not end with a metal bead because we're gonna be ending with a metal crimp so I just ended with a wood bead so I'm gonna place my bead stopper back on there and let's just repeat that real quick on the other side here so making sure that everything is where it should be I haven't doubled up on any beads this is a good point to just double check everything and then I'm going to be using a very basic finishing technique there's a lot of different things that you can do but because I'm going to be using some gemstones here I'm gonna be using some thread protectors so we'll go over that in just a moment ya know I can smell that cedar it smells really good I must have picked up one that was down here alright so let's just double check my design one more time let's move that remove that metal bead I thought I had one more to add so this is where those bead Stoppers come in really really handy alright so one two three four five and my design is good to go alright so now I'm gonna kind of bring it off my bead board here so I can work in front of me and I'm gonna focus on just one end here so I was talking about thread protectors and those are these little horseshoe guys here now these are really really neat to work with because you can add your clasp right onto them and let me just bring down a couple of my guys here so I have some crimp tubes that I'm gonna work with and some crimp beads so this is a crimp cover and this is what I mean where I'm gonna have that little extra piece of metal that's gonna be happening right here so I wouldn't want to do a metal bead and then a crimp cover because it just isn't gonna look right for my purposes all right so the first thing we're gonna do is we're going to string on one of our little crimp tubes here and then we're gonna string on one of our thread protectors now these are these little horseshoe things you go ahead and string it up and over and down and before we string it back down through that crimp tube I'm actually gonna slip on my little clasp here and it's gonna sit right in there so it's gonna be nice and enforced so I'm not gonna have to worry about my wire sort of fraying over time all right so now I'm gonna scooch my little crimp down so I have both of my wires in there and you want to get it fairly close to the top there with pinching so you wanted to have a nice little sort of curve to it alright so I'm going to use as around at four and one crimping pliers and we're gonna put it in that very first little notch there that's closest to the fulcrum and we're just gonna give it a nice little squeeze and it's gonna make a nice little sort of beam shape or like a little v-shape and then I'm gonna turn it 90 degrees and place it into let me get it settled in there and I'll show you place it into that second little notch there there we go just like so so I have the V that's sort of going this way so now I'm just gonna crimp it again and if you want you can use the little tip there just to sort of pinch it just to make sure that it is not going anywhere perfect alright so now I'm going to slip on my crimp cover and make sure that way there we go slip on my crimp cover and it just looks like a little Pacman that sits over top of it and we're just gonna sort of pinch that closed and down and around and I like to kind of come in with my pliers and just really make sure that it is as rounded as it possibly can be so that it looks like a nice little metal bead it just happens to have a little seam there alright just like so there we go alright and now I'm gonna take this little wire and sort of thread it back down through a bead or so and here is where I'm gonna come in with my flush cutters trim off my wire and now I set that little piece aside and we can sort of scooch all of our beads down so one side of our necklace is done so you can see what I mean about having that little metal bead there so it just looks like a round metal bead with our clasp okay so now I'm gonna flip it to the other side now here's one thing that I want you guys to be cautious about so taking a look at the whole necklace as it is here now if I took my bead stopper oops I'll take this one if I took my bead stopper and really got it SuperDuper close to that last little bead there what would happen is when I tried to wear it you can see how it's like crunching just a little bit you can see how stiff and that wouldn't really lay particularly well so one thing I want to caution guys with and this is what I like to do is I kind of like to coil my necklace make sure everyone has a little bit of slack to it coil my necklace just like this and now I know that if I put this on snugly everything will have a nice curve to it so now we're going to do that second side so that's a little tip you don't have to do this if you think it's strange but I like to do that it just sort of ensures for me that I'm not going to pull my necklace too tightly all right and on this side what we're gonna do is we're gonna add on a closed jump ring as sort of the second half of our little clasp there something for our lobster clasp to adhere to alright now I'm gonna go down through that crimp tube and this is the same as it was on the other side alright so now we're gonna kind of scooch and like I said we're gonna want to pull that down so it's nice and snug but not too snug you can see okay so I'll have enough little slack there alright and now coming in with our crimping pliers one more time so I'm sure they're facing the right way alright and giving it a little crimp and a little turn and a little crimp a little bit extra and I'm just gonna take this tail and kind of sneak it down through that would beat if I can it looks like it's gonna go down through a couple beads which is absolutely fine alright sink that down there I'm gonna come in with my crimp cover and the second side is always harder to see which is why I really try to show you the first side there just because there's a lot more a little bit a little bit tighter space here so again just sort of use your pliers and gently bring that down and bring it in there you go alright and finally I'm just going to snip off my wire there and we are all done so I have my necklace here ready to go my class with my lobster up here on once and my clothes jump ring on the other side so that is why you want to use a bead board if you're not quite sure of your design I really like the way this turned out I didn't plan this at all so I still have some extra beads here to play with and those can go into a different type of a necklace but I loved that I was able to actually match some of mine up and this is a great way to use some older gemstones that you may have or even just playing with some different sizes and different shapes so a great way to create a strong necklace using the beadsmith bead board you can get all of these supplies and see even more tutorials by heading over to beadaholique.com and if you're new here to our youtube channel be sure to hit that subscribe button below to get all the latest from beadaholique

Customer Reviews

Based on 7 reviews Write a review

Thanks for the demonstration and tips

Excellent tip regarding coiling your necklace before securing the last side of your creation, so it stays flexible. I am self taught and believe me, I will be restringing some of my first attempts. I think I will try it on some bracelet too. I had a tendency to string them too tight. Thanks

Bead board tutorial

Best tutorial I have ever seen on using a bead board for stringing beads, and I have been beading for 20 years! Great presentation.

Very Good

Well done video and good information. Thank you!

Great Info & Tips

Good explanation of how to use the board and understanding its measurement system. Also fabulous tips on how to use up all those left over beads. Especially loved the demonstration of how to keep your piece flexible when putting on the crimps tubes & wire guards.

Great explanation for use of a bead board

I liked the gemstone necklace and especially with the ceder beads. Kat is great to listen to and really easy for beginners to learn.

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