Beading: Understanding Seed Beads

Beading: Understanding Seed Beads - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. There are lots of different sizes of seed beads, there are actually more sizes than what I have here but this is pretty much a representative sampling. Seed beads as the number gets larger, the bead actually gets smaller—so that is an important thing to remember when you are shopping for seed beads as that it is counter intuitive and if you want something that is smaller you need to ask for a larger number, and if you want something that is bigger you need to ask for a smaller number. The sizes for seed beads are actually technically stated as the number slash aught but most people do not use that. So this little bitty one here, which is my smallest seed bead is a size 15, technically a fifteen aught, but most people skip the aught and just call is a size 15 seed bead. The next size up from that would be a size 13 seed bead which just a little bitty bit bigger but not much. Going up from that we have a size 11 seed bead and then our size 8 seed bead and there is also a size 10 seed bead that go in between the two of those. And then the biggest ones that I have on here are my size 6 seed beads which are fairly large and you can see them pretty easily as opposed to these little grains of sand over here. Seed beads are used for a lot of different things: they are beautiful just strung into simple necklaces. They make great spacers in-between beads. As well, sometimes when you have a larger bead and it will not lie nicely if you put a seed bead in between the larger bead, fixes your problem completely. Seed beads are also used a lot for bead weaving and bead stitching. And there are actually 2 different types of seed beads that are commonly available: there are Japanese seed beads and Czech seed beads. And the difference in those guys aside from country of origins is mainly in the shape. The Japanese seed beads are very cylindrical; the sides are straight so they lay against each other very nicely when you are doing a weaving project. The Czech seed beads are more rounded so they do not lie together as nicely, so they work better in weaving projects that are more open.