As a beading enthusiast, you’re always looking for the best ways to take your jewelry projects to the next level. From personal heirlooms to whimsical and quirky statement pieces, there’s always the next jewelry project to look forward to.
For every beader who is attached to her trinkets, it’s essential to know the most effective ways to simplify beadwork. With this, here’s the second part of our jewelry hacks.
- Bead soup stash for leftover beads. Once you’re done with a project, you might have some leftover beads. With this, it can take quite some time to clean up your bead mat by arranging all of the beads in their correct storage boxes. A bead soup stash would be the perfect solution! Sweep your leftover beads into the bead soup stash after you’re done with a certain project as this can save you plenty of time.
- Label your bead storage trays individually. If you’ve been beading for years, chances are you value your beads so much and consider them your precious treasures. You also like to store them in a box with individual compartments to locate them easily. While this idea is good, it’s not that practical for remembering the sizes of your beads, especially the tiny ones. So, label your bead storage trays individually for you to identify the sizes. You can also arrange your beads in their original plastic sachets or tubes. This might not be that attractive to look at but this will definitely keep your beads in place.
- Correct a mistake in your work. Isn’t it disappointing when you’re doing a peyote stitch bracelet and you have a missing stitch right after you’ve completed your work? Having a missing stitch can definitely affect the look of the entire piece. To solve this, take the needle off the thread and pull the thread back through the beads to undo your work. Do this repetitively until you reach the mistake.
- Minimize many tool marks on your wire. When it comes to wires, overworking them with jewelry pliers can make the wires weak and look all wrong. This can be a bit pricey especially if you’re utilizing precious metal wires like gold or silver. Have some extra time to practice what you want to make on an affordable copper wire first so you will get the process right on a costly metal wire. You can use products like Tool Magic to varnish your pliers to make the tips soft and smooth.
The struggle is real, but we can make jewelry-making simpler and easier! Jewelry work shouldn’t take too much time of your day so make use of the jewelry hacks above to lessen the load.
Do you have other hacks that can simplify jewelry-making? We’d love to know! Make sure to put them in the comments below!