The Four Basic Fields That You Need To Master To Truly Learn How To Bead

The Four Basic Fields That You Need To Master To Truly Learn How To Bead

Perhaps there are lots of people who would look at this article's title, "Learning How to Bead," and write them back as silly. After all, there isn't much more to the mechanics of beading than there is to stringing snacks to place 'round the Xmas Tree, right? That, and a free beading project to work on, and you're all set. How much more is there to talk about? What else is there to talk about?

The reality, however, is that there is a fair bit more to learning how to bead than simply stringing popcorn, and this post will have a closer look at what else you need to know.

Learning how to bead required learning in four basic areas. They might seem innocuous enough at first, but on closer examination, the inescapable conclusion is that there's much more to learning how to bead than first you would think.

The four basic "disciplines" you must get good at to truly know how to bead are the following:

Mechanics

Patterning

Color Selection

Medium Selection/Mixing

We'll read through the particulars of these one at a time as a means of putting you on the route to learning how to bead.

The first step in your "learn how to bead" education is mechanics. If you don't have the mechanics down, then the rest does not matter. Fortunately, from a mechanics viewpoint, it truly is about as easy as stringing popcorn. If you can do that, then you've already gotten this aspect of knowing how to bead down, but even here, there is some subtlety. Did you know, for instance, that when stringing pearls, you want to tie a knot on each side of the stone to avoid potential damage caused by the stones rubbing against one another? Or that there are times when you only want to tie a loose knot as a "bead brake" at the end of the line you're not working?

So even where the basic mechanics are involved, there's more to learning the way to bead than you may first think. Undoubtedly, however, this is the easiest of the four disciplines to get good at.

The next discipline you'll want to wrap your brain around in mastering how to bead is the notion of patterning. Complete books could (and have) been published on this topic, and once you really get into it and start studying it, you'll quickly find that of all the disciplines, this one is the most complex and involved. Definitely the one you'll devote the most time on when learning how to bead.

Color selection is one part skill and the other part science. Art students learn about complimentary and contrasting colors as a first course, therefore are a leg up in this department, but there are several resources both online and off which will advise you through this field on your quest to learn how to bead. Don't skimp here. Proper color selection can make or break your patterns!

Finally, the last major aspect to master in learning how to bead is medium selection and the proper mixing of mediums. This is often a practical, good sense discipline (ie., don't mix cheap plastic material with your semi-precious stones!) but even here there is some subtlety to be found.

Learning how to bead isn't rocket science, and getting a free beading project to practice with is dead simple. Anybody can do it, and with practice, do it nicely. Just bear in mind that there's a bit more to it than stringing popcorn!

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