Beading Tips

Beading Tip #5

When buying beads for a particular dress, please bring the dress along to get an exact matching beads. Even when you know that your dress is blue, there are a numbers of beads with different shades of blue. You'll get confuse on which shade of blue is your dress.

Beading Tip #4 

I always buy my beads in bulk,at least 100g for each color and most of the time 450g (~1 lb). At first I was using the disposable rectagular plastic food containers to store the beads, but I still need to spend lots of money on the containers, since I have hundreds of bead types and colors) So, I came up with the idea of storing the beads in plastic disposable 500ml mineral water bottle. Transparent, stored vertically or horizontally, cap tightly fit to avoid spill, and most important, FOC. I just ask my colleagues at work to donate their bottles once they finished drinking the water. I wrote the bead number on the body, cap and bottom of the bottle. But this idea is only applicable for large quantity of beads. It's pretty pathetic to see 10g of beads in 500ml bottle. (Zai, 13 Feb 07

Beading Tip #3 

Lots of people ask me what's the difference between Toho and Matsuno. Here are some pointers:  

~Toho is more expensive than Matsuno due to higher quality (Malaysian market price for Toho is RM4.60/10g).

~Toho beads' holes are larger thus multiple threading is possible and easier.

~Due the above feature, Toho beads are lighter, thus you get more beads per gram.

~Toho hex (2 Cut) beads is smooth at the end (not rough compared to other brands) and shorter in length. 

Beading Tip #2 

Raised Food tray (the one that has legs and usually used for breakfast-on-the-bed) helps to prevent back injury due to stooping so low, so many times to pick up the beads. Put all the beads and tools on it. Very portable. You can make it stand on your lap and bead while watching TV or watching sunset on the patio (multitasking at the highest level). Tried and tested. Plastic food tray available at Ikea for RM25.(Zai, 18 Jan 2007)

Beading Tip #1

Try to use the same brand of beads for a project, especially for Hex (2-Cut) shape. This is because Toho and Matsuno's Hex beads have different length. This is very important if your design requires high precision such as multi-layer Manik Beriring design. Even Round Toho and Matsuno beads are different slightly in shape. Reason: each company use different machines to make the beads. (Zai, Jan 16, 2007)