Where to begin…The term “bead bracelet” takes in a massive range of bracelets, from those with a small selection of chunky beads to bracelets to bracelets made up from weaving loads of tiny tiny beads together. Strictly speaking the latter kind of bracelet is called a “seed bead bracelet” due to the size of the beads which it uses, and it is these bracelets that I’m going to concentrate on in this post. It is really common to find street sellers and market stalls selling these types of bracelets when you go on holiday.

Seed bead bracelets not only look really cool, but personally I think that they are are a really comfy form of jewellery to wear as all the tiny beads almost form a fabric when they are weaved together. Lastly you can make these bracelets as small or as wide as you want, and once you have got competent with the weaving patterns, you can experiment and even weave names, words, and pictures into your bracelet, pretty cool huh?

To start with the basics on how to make a seed bead bracelet I’m going to introduce you to the ladder stitch. There are other stitches which can be used, but the beaded ladder stitch is probably the best stitch to use to get the most out of your beaded bracelet. Sometimes people make seed bead bracelets, or something similar at least, but they use bugle beads, however, bugle beads are for another post another day.

Back to how to make a beaded ladder stitch. Firstly you need to get a beading thread, I normally use nymo thread, but other people swear by silamide. Now get your beads. At this stage its vital to decide exactly how wide you want your seed bead bracelet to be, as once you’ve started building the ladder of beads, you can’t really go back and change it without having to start from scratch again.

For ease, I’ll say we’re going to build a bracelet which will be 5 seed beads wide. Take the first ten beads and put them on a needle with your beading thread attached. Slide the beads all the way down the needle until you have ten beads in the middle of your thread. Now put these beads on a flat surface and separate them slightly on the thread into 2 groups of 5. Fold the thread in between these 2 groups of 5 beads, so that you have both sets of beads sitting beside each other. Now post the needle back through one of the groups of 5 beads from the opposite side, giving you a small loop of the two sets of beads side by side.

Now you want to bring the needle back down through the second set of beads (sorry that’s not very clear, but you should have one set of 5 beads with thread going through it twice from where you have posted the needle through it from both sides, and one set of 5 beads with the thread going through it once – it is the set of 5 beads with the thread going through it once which I am referring to as the “second set of beads”) and once its through you can add another set of 5 beads to your needle.

The idea is to repeat the process, adding 5 beads at a time, and looping them through the set of beads right next to them, and slowly but surely a ladder of beads will form. Its difficult when you first try this to keep the ladder really tight, but ultimately you don’t want a loose bracelet as it won’t look nearly as good, and its far more likely to come off your wrist! If you are having difficulty in keeping your bead ladder tight, then you should go back through all the sets of beads in the bracelet with your needle and thread once more at the end, pulling it tight as you go. This should ensure that you have a beautiful bead bracelet.

I would also advice for beginners looking to make a seed bead bracelet for the first time that they choose beads which are slightly larger. This is just practical as seed beads are small and fiddly, and it can be very frustrating if you are not used to making your own jewellery. Using larger beads will help ensure that you get good practice at forming a bead ladder as it is much easier to string the bigger beads together. If I’m making a seed bead bracelet, however, I really like to use tiny seed beads as I think the overall effect works better, and otherwise its difficult to create that effect that the beads are like a fabric.