How to Pick Beads and String for Bead Animals

One of the worst things a beginner can do when making bead animals is to pick the wrong supplies. You can pick the right pattern and wrong supplies and the size and type of supplies you pick can make a big difference in how strong how detailed and how easy your bead animal is to make.

Seed Beads and Pony Beads

Seed beads are great for projects like butterflies and small creatures that are a bit more complicated and require small curves with small beads, Seed beads can be difficult to work with and require a lot of time and practice.

Pony beads are larger and good for beginner designs. Projects like snakes lizards and simple keychain designs are great uses for pony beads. Pony beads also have larger holes that make them easier to string.

Finding the Right String

Bead animals can require a different amount of support and a different amount of flexibility.

Fish line is good for flat bead animals but can be hard to string since it’s tough to knot securely.

Elastic cords are a good choice for simple designs.

Nylon thread is great support and flexibility for 3D animals.

Craft wire is even more support for 3D designs but will kink if bent too much.

Flat vs. 3D Bead Animals

Flat designs like fish and butterflies don’t need much support which is why fishing line or elastic cord is great to use.

Turtles and Dragons need something stronger because a turtle’s shell and a dragon’s body need something to hold their shape. So string won’t be enough to do that task and while dragon’s might not need shape hold thread that is if the dragon’s simply isn’t finished a dragon’s body would need wire.

How Bead Size Affects Design

Using smaller beads means a lot more detail can be put into the animals but that also means the project can take a lot longer. An easier technique that can take less time would be using bigger beads but that also means losing some of the shapes.

An example of smaller beads might be a seed bead that is a bit smaller than the rest and a larger pony bead that is a bit bigger than the rest can be used to create a lizard.

Budget Starter Kits

To create bead animals the very basic things you need to purchase are pony beads seed beads and some nylon thread elastic cord some scissors and perhaps some storage boxes and even a basic kit might have all those things. That would be my recommendation or something like that.