When you are making jewelry out of beads the main type of bead that you are going to be using is a decorative bead. These beads are specifically designed for making jewelry but are also used for other purposes. Most of your decorative beads are a type of glass bead because of the way that glass beads look. Like all other types of beads decorative beads come in a variety of shapes and sizes, as well as in a variety of color. Depending on what kind of jewelry you are going to be making will depend on what kind of bead you will be using and what size beads you will be using.
Glass beads:
Chevron beads – these types of beads are a special kind of glass bead that was originally made for the slave trade in Africa. They are made up of many consecutive layers of colored glass, with the core being formed as a star shaped mold and can have anywhere from five to fifteen points. Also the layers of glass can be of any color, but are traditionally red, white, and blue, but can come in a variety of color patterns.
Dichroic beads – these are glass beads that have multiple layers of micro-thin metals on top of the glass.
Fire polished beads – these beads are another type of glass bead, except they are faceted and are very popular to use when making jewelry. They come in sizes from 3 mm to 22 mm. The pattern of the edges is always the same, which is why they can be confused with lead crystal beads.
Lampwork beads – these are another form of glass beads that are made by using a torch to heat a rod of glass and spinning the resulting thread around a metal rod covered in bead release. After the base bead has been formed other colors of glass are added to create numerous designs.
Millefiori beads – these types of glass beads are made of plain wound glass bead cores and thin slices of cut cane which are pressed into the bead surface. This technique forms mosaic like patterns
Pressed glass beads – these type of beads are a glass bead that have been made from a mold to give it its shape. These beads can have holes punched into in pretty much any direction.
Other types of beads used in jewelry:
Shell beads – these types of beads are made from sea sheels from a variety of different shelled fish, such as oysters, abalone, etc.
Seed beads – these beads are pretty much uniformly shaped, meaning that they are all the same shape which is a spheroidal shape. They range in size from under a millimeter to several millimeters. This type of bead is a generic term that refers to any small type of bead that is rounded in shape. These kinds of beads are most often used for loom and off-loom bead weaving, but can also be used for simple stringing or as spacers between others beads when making jewelry. The larger beads are used in various fiber crafts as a type of embellishment or are used in crocheting with fiber or wire.
Lead crystal beads – these beads have a high content of lead oxide, which makes them crystal rather than glass. Because they are crystal they sparkle more than glass beads and are often multi-faceted so that the resemble gemstones.
Faux natural beads – these beads are basically any kind of imitation of original material such as gemstones, pearls, rocks, minerals, precious metals and ivory.