Bling is all the trend nowadays and beaded tapes can be the ultimate in bling. If you want to bring in that 2000s flashiness that is all the rage now, incorporate these shimmery beaded tapes in your fashion. They can also look understated and elegant when made with subtle colored beads and used as trims in all the right places. Other than embellishing clothes, beaded tapes can be used to make jewelry like chokers, bracelets and even to decorate fashion accessories like shoes, bags etc.
These bead tapes are very easy to make, though they look very complicated. They are made on a wooden beadweaving loom so you will have to Learn to make your own beaded tape on a wooden beading loom
What do you need to make Beaded tapes?
You need a wooden beading loom ; Other than this you also should have a thin and long beading needle and the seed beads to do the bead weaving. Beads should ideally be uniformly made – ie all of the same sizes.
If you want to make long beaded tapes, you will have to get the kind of bead weaving loom that can be extended; for medium-sized tapes, inexpensive beading looms with fixed length would do.
This bead making is basically a weaving technique – you will be tying warp threads on the loom and the beads will form the weft.
Quite easy to do once you get the knack of it. And after some time, it comes as second nature.
Related post : Bead styles and their names
5 easy designs for making the beaded tapes
Design 1
Who doesnot love a heart. You can make beaded heart design this way.
Related post: Heart shaped patchwork block.
For a design of 9 beads you will have to stretch 10 warp threads on your beading loom. And then take 9 beads on your needle for every row (Weft)
Take the beads across the warp threads, inserting each bead inside the gap between threads, by pushing the beads from under the threads using your forefinger. You can learn more in detail on the above mentioned page on beadweaving on a loom.
Insert the needle through the beads (the beads should be projected above the warp threads when you insert the needle)
If you follow the pattern, in no time you will have a beaded tape with nice heart motifs.
Design 2
This is an arrowhead design. If you make it in contrasting color the shape will stand out better. With similar colors, the effect is subtle but pleasing.
This design is not as easy to do as the heart because each row involves changing the pattern. So you have to pay a little more attention. No watching serials as you do it, that is all.
But it is worth the effort, don’t you think?
Design 3
Design 4
Design 5
How to design your own beading tape patterns
Designing new beaded tape patterns is quite easy if you have chart paper with grid lines or simple beading papers with grid lines or even MS Paint on your computer and you have some time to spare to rack your brains for new patterns. Cross stitch patterns make great beading tape patterns.
Designing the grid lines on MS Paint
Open paint and make a rectangle as in the picture below.
Now select this table with your select tool and press the copy button.
Now select the transparent selection option.
And then paste it. Now you can bring it close to the other existing rectangle.Align the edges.
Continue doing this – making tables, then copying it and then pasting them together until you have a big enough table with vertical grid lines.
Select the whole table and then paste it again.
Now press the rotate option. Rotate to 90 degrees. You will get the vertical lines of the new table to turn to horizontal lines.
Align them to match the existing square.You have nice gridlines which can be used for designing the bead tapes.
Select the fill button and fill each grid with the color you want for each of the beads.
Are you now up to designing and making your own beaded tapes?
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