Perhaps there are more than a few people who would read this article's title, "Learning How to Bead," and write it off as absurd. After all, there isn't much more to the mechanics of beading than there is to stringing snacks to place 'round the Christmas Tree, right? That, and a free beading project to work on, and you're all set. What more is there to say? What else can there be 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 take a closer look at what else you need to learn.

Learning how to bead involved learning in four primary areas. They might appear innocuous enough at first, but on closer inspection, the inescapable conclusion is that there's a lot more to learning how to bead than first meets the eye.

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

Mechanics

Patterning

Color Selection

Medium Selection/Mixing

We'll go through the particulars of these one at a time as a way of putting you on the path to learning how to bead.

The initial 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 simple as stringing popcorn. If you can do that, then you've already gotten this feature of learning how to bead down, but even here, there is some seductively. 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 each other? Or that there are times when you only have to tie a loose knot as a "bead brake" on the end of the line you're not beading?

So even where the basic mechanics are involved, there's a lot more to learning the way to bead than you may first think. By far, however, this is the easiest of the four aspects to master.

The next field you'll want to wrap your brain around in mastering how to bead is the notion of patterning. Complete books could (and have) been written on this topic, and once you really get into it and start learning it, you'll quickly discover that of all of 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 one part science. Art students learn about complimentary and different colors as a first course, and so are a leg up in this section, but there are several resources both online and off which will advise you through this discipline on your quest to learn how to bead. Don't skimp here. Proper color selection could make or break your designs!

Lastly, 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 area (ie., don't mix lower quality plastic with your semi-precious stones!) but even here there is some subtlety to be found.

Mastering 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 well. Just bear in mind that there's much more to it than stringing popcorn!

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