Seed beads are used for all sorts of beading projects – jewellery, cards, accessories, clothing, models etc – and are vital if you want to seriously get into beading.
But lots of people don’t really know them by name. They are the teeny tiny beads you get in tubes, or packets or little zip-seal bags. The ones where you can lose them really easily like grains of sand.
Seed beads come in a huge variety of colours and shades; in fact you can probably get hold of them in pretty much any shade of any colour if you look hard enough.
You can get seed beads that are made of transparent coloured glass (so you can see the thread through them), opaque glass, plastic or metal.
They are often used as ‘buffers’ or spacers with bigger, more prominent beads. You can find bracelets or necklaces with two or three accent beads (glass, wooden, Swarovski beads etc.) and the rest of the bracelet being one or two colours seed beads.
Bead weaving (like bookmarks, bags or accessories) are generally made with seed beads, because of their size.
It’s usually a good idea to keep a well stocked supply of different coloured seed beads, so that you can complement any other beading project should it look a little plain.