Now that you have decided to start making bead crafts or to use beads in your general crafting ideas you are going to need to look into the different places that sell beads. As you might already be aware of there are thousands of places that sell beads, so your problem isn’t going to be trying to find places that sell beads, but more like finding places that sell the beads that you want to buy. No matter what you are buying beads for there are some things that you should consider when buying beads for crafting purposes.
Here are some tips on where to buy beads for crafting.
Tip one:
The first thing that you need to do before you begin to look for a place that sells beads is to determine what kinds of beads you want to buy. Are you looking for a certain size bead, certain shapes, or are you pretty flexible with what they have? Another thing that you should consider is if you want to buy a certain brand of bead, do you want glass beads, shell beads, plastic beads, etc. Narrowing down exactly what you want when it comes to beads will help you find the right place to buy beads.
Tip two:
One of the first places that you should go to buy beads is your local craft or fabric store. Many times both of these kinds of stores will sell a variety of beads. Some places will offer them buy the pound, some will be prepackaged and you can buy in large or small quantities depending on how many beads you need.
Tip three:
Another great place to look for beads are craft shows or craft fairs. Many times if you are looking for a specialty bead and can’t find it in the local craft or fabric stores you can find the beads at craft shows or find people who can tell you where they found their specialty beads.
Tip four:
If you have a business license you should look into finding a wholesaler to buy your beads from. Wholesalers are great for business owners to buy from because they offer great prices and sell the items in bulk. It is from selling them in bulk that you as a business owner can get the lower prices. But even if you do use a wholesaler you want to have other resources available to you for buying beads. The reason for this is there might be a time or two when you don’t want to buy your beads in bulk because you only need a small handful or maybe even one or two of a certain bead so you would be wasting money buying those beads in bulk. Plus you want to have a backup supplier just in case the wholesaler runs out of your beads and it will take a few days to order more.
Tip five:
Another popular place to order beads is through the use of craft magazines or catalogs. Your more serious magazines on beading will offer numerous companies that take mail in orders so that you can have your beads shipped right to your door. In party and other types of catalogs you can also find a lot of specialty beads that you won’t find elsewhere. So when looking to buy specialty beads be sure to keep your eye out in any magazine or catalog you are reading.
Tip six:
And like everything else in this world you can also order your beads online. But one of the problems about ordering your beads online is that you don’t get to see what the beads look like before you order them, so you have no idea if they are going to be the right color. Another problem with ordering your beads online is that many of those companies that claim to be wholesalers or offer you discounted prices are only saying that to9 get your business. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t legitimate companies online to buy beads from, this just mean to be sure and do your research before you begin buying beads from a new company.