10 Tips for beginners in beading

Hi my lovely Beading People!

Today I've got 10 tips for beginners, to help you start beading!

1. Start with simpel and easy projects.
-If you start with simple and easy project, your project will have a low change of failing. This is very important because most of the time your first beading project gets you hooked on beading when it was a succes. Beading is more about 'getting the feeling of it' and less about just making things.

2. Pick something you like
-You can find all kind of free beginners tutorials on internet. Pick one you like to make, it is important that your first experience is a nice one. You want to be proud at yourself at the end that YOU made that! Make it for yourself or to give as a gift, your friends and family will love your handmade jewelry!

3. Learn the basic techniques
-How funny this may sound, even opening a jumpring has a special technique! There are a lot of video's on Youtube that show you how to do these basic techniques. Watch them before you start with your project. It helps you to make your jewelry look profecional.

4. Practice a lot!
-Every beader starts with a lot of practice pieces. It doesn't matter if you fail a few times, this is all part of the learning proces. I myself still make mistakes and I keep learning from them and I'm a beader for over 11 years now!! So don't be afraid to make mistakes, take note and keep on going.

5. Get the right tools.
-Tools are very important! The right tools will give you the result you want. Don't be scared to invest in good tools, they will go a long way and you won't regret buying them if you want to keep beading. Tools that I reccomend when starting beading are: round nose pliers, flat nose pliers, a cutting plier, small scissor, a beading mat, size 10 and 12 needles and something like beeswax to coat your thread with.

6. Get the right materials.
-Depending on what kind of beading project you want to start with, get all the materials that you need to make your project with. Most of the (free) beginners tutorials give you a full list of the materials you need. I suggest when you need a certian amount of beads to get a few more. You can loose one by dropping and never find it back (yes it happens!) or you can have a bad bead that you will have to throw out.

7. Where to buy your beads?
-For beginners I always reccomend going to a local store to buy your beads. When you are a beginner it is very important to get ín touch with the beads. You need to see and feel them in order to make a good selection. Buying your beads online has a total different feeling about it and you will have to have a good insite on thing like size, color, amount, quality and other things. If you can't buy your beads in a local store, ask the webshop owner to help you pick out the right beads or buy a jewelry making kit.

8. Don't start selling yet!!
-I've known a lot of people that just knew how to add a bead to a thread and started selling. DON'T DO THAT! Of course you can sell them to your family and friends, but don't go on Etsy and other selling sites like that. People will expect high quality when your on selling sites or fairs. I made this mistake myself (and I wasn't even very bad!) and I got customers coming back to me with tarnished jewelry, jewelry that broke and other things your not happy about to hear from a customer. This was because I didn't had the skills or the knowledge how to make proper jewelry.

9. To buy or not to buy books?
-A thing a lot of beginners do is buying a lot of beading books. I myself did it to when I started beading, but at this moment I reccomend first searching on the internet. The internet provides a lot of beginners information that is the same as in the books. I recommend saving up that money for a book that you really like when you actualy can bead. Then you can pick a book you really like and that you will really use. Because once you know the basic techniques you won't forget them and that beginners book will be an the shelf for ever collecting dust.

10. Writer patterns, photo tutorials or video tutorials?
-Most people prefer video tutorials when learning how to make jewelry. Search for these 3 types of patterns and see what you like. If you know what you like you will know what to look for in the future. This is very important because when you want to start buying patterns you will have to know what works for you. I reccomend first searching the internet, some patterns that cost money on selling sites are free at other sites.

I hope you liked my tips for beginners!

Have a lovely day!
HoneyBeads

Long lost goodies found again!!

Hi my lovely Beading and Crafty people :)

How are you today? Today a blog for the beaders. A while ago I told you that I completely lost my big project somehow, along with the winter pendant that I was to send to Beads&Buttons. But after my montlhy stash clean up I couldn't find it anywhere!! But yesterday I wanted to make something wit my polymer clay again, and there they where!!! So I'm very exited!! I don't know if I still want to send it to the beads and buttons, so that is something to think about, but of I do and they might reject me I just make a tutorial of it :)

Here is a picture of my long lost goods;

So I'm very happy that I found them back! I'm also working on a very cute cross, that I hope to upload this week. It is a very easy pendant that can also be used for earrings.
For now I will leave it at this, I will have to go to the docter in a couple of hours. I need to get the stitch out of my arm, it got a little infected (why do I alsways have these things??)  But at least it doesn't hurt or anything, so I'm fine :)

Have a nice day!
HoneyBeads

Second Channel Happiness

Hi my lovely beading people :)

How are you today? Long time no see! I'm not really a good blogger, sorry haha :) Thats a thing that I really want to change this year. Mostly I don't know what to talk about, but I have to say, I do have more things to talk about now because I started a second channel on Youtube called HoneyBeads & Crafts It's a crafting channel with all kinds of simple and easy crafts to do for yourself or with your (grand)children. I started this channel because next to beading I also like crafting a lot!

There are not a lot of video's yet on that channel, but here are 2 examples of video's that are aready uploaded:

This is a snowball made out of cotton wipes, very cut for next winter :)

This are gesso jars for last Valentine's day to light a candle in.

I have a lot more of ideas to make for this channel, but I didden't have the time to uplaod them yet. But altough this channel had kind of a slow start, I hope it will be as succesfull as my beading channel. Because what in life is more joyfull than making your own stuff?? :D

I will try to write more on my blog, maybe there will be some random things now and than. Just something to chat about :)

Have a lovely day!

HoneyBeads

10.000 Subscribers contest!!!

Hi my lovely beading people!!! :)

How are you today? I'm verry happy because I've got 10.000+ subscribers yeeaaahhhhh!!!!! :D

So because I want to thank you all for this milestone in my life and 'beading carrier' I'm holding a contest where you can win a great package of beads :D (I show the beads you can win and a surprise goodie bag in the video)

I choose the Winterglow earrings as the contest piece because this is a simple and fun project to make. It doesn't cost a lot of money to make it, you can get the materials everywhere and its a beginners project. So anyone can enter!!!

If you also want to join this contest, click on the link below to go to the contest video. Please read and hear well what I have to say, because if you don't follow the (simple) rules I can't enter you.

I hope you enjoy this contest and I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Newyear!!!!

Lots of love and huggs
HoneyBeads

Click here to go to the contest!!

(source; google/http://www.alegoo.com/)

40 free Etsy listings!!!

Hi my lovely beading people :)

I already posted this a few times here and there. But I wanted to place this on my blog to so that everyone can benifit :) I started my own Etsy shop (it's still empty so no link yet :) ) and I hope to start selling soon. I'm working hard on my own business cards and stuff like that. I'm making it all myself so I can completely disign how I want my packing material to look.

I will soon also make a video where I show my business cards and other stuff I've made, so that everyone can see that making your own issen't tat hard!

If you also want to start your own Etsy shop, I suggest you click the link below. For every person that starts there own Etsy shop through this link we get both 40 free listings!! So we both benifit! 

Happy beading!!
HoneyBeads

40 free listings!!

Ow my gosh I'm so sorry!!!

Hi my lovely beading people!

Ow my gosh I'm so sorry!!! :(

When one of you write something underneath my blogpost, I get a message of that in the inbox of my blog. Because I answered everything I wanted to delete the answered messages out of my inbox, but I accidentally deleted the posts from my blog :S

So I'm so so sorry! That wassen't what I wanted to do at all!!

So please, if you have a question post this again underneath the post! I'm so so sorry!
I feel a little stupid at this moment :(

Sorry sorry sorry!!!
HoneyBeads

A little about selling my stuff...

Hi my lovely beading people :)

How are you today?

I get many requests of people how ask me if I sell my jewelry. Because I get that question so often, I thought I should make a blog post about this :)

As some of you might know, normaly I will go to a Christmas fair once a year, but this year I won't because I don't have the time to properly prepare myself. But of course this is only in the Netherlands, so people from other country's have nothing to do with this.

I'm still working on my website, but I did not diside yet if that will be a dutch site or a intenational site. If it will be dutch only, I will create an etsy page, so that I can sell worldwide. But why wait so long you might ask?

Well that has all to do with my time, or at least the lack of it. If somebody wants a costum order, I want to be able to really take my time for that. But I don't have that time at this moment. Also I need a stash of jewelry, because I know that some people rather buy something they can already see, instead of making up there mind on how they want it to look.

Also I want my own label, business card, my own packaging and other stuff like that. I really want any order to be a present to get. And I really want my own look and feel if you know what I mean. I want people to recognize my packaging in one glance of an eye. But this takes time and cost a lot of money. But I won't do it for less.

Also I'm creating a new bead stock with only quality beads and findings. I want this not only for myself and the name I have to keep up, but also to give my customers the best they can get. Also I found out that people from other country's arren't as greedy as dutch people. They know what handmade costs and how much time it takes to make something and they respect the prizes that come with that. So if I would only be able to sell in the Netherlands, I would have to use cheaper materials than I can use for other country's. So this takes me a while before I have enough good quality materials to make and sell any request. Because as most of the people, I don't have a pile of money laying around to spend on beads (I wish I had gosh hihi) So I love to go and by quality beads, but it will take me some time.

Speaking about time, I will not have that in a while either. My son is now 2,5 years old, so I will have to wait a while before he go's to school. But when he does I will have plenty of time to bead all day. And that is the time I will start making and selling custom orders. Probebly that is also the time I will start making patterns in PDF files, so you van download them.

So I hope everything is clear on the how and why's about selling or don't selling my jewelry. I hope you understand and I will keep you updated on this subject.

Have a lovely beading week!
HoneyBeads