Seed beads are small glass beads that are made by stretching hot glass out into a long thin tube, slicing the tube into several beads and then tumbling them until smooth. They range in size from pea-size down to the size of a grain of sand. The most popular size used by people today are size "11." They are pictured to the left. The higher the size number the smaller the bead.

Many techniques for working with seed beads that are used today come from cultures such as Native American, African, Mexican, Egyptian and others.

Today most seed beads are manufactured in the Czech Republic or in Japan. Japanese seed beads are known for being realtively uniform in size and shape and have relatively large holes. Both types are made in a wide variety of colors and finishes.

I've written two programs for designing seed bead jewelry. There both free, so download and enjoy them!

I wrote "Beadesigner" in Visual Basic way, way, way back in 1995 in the days of Windows 3.1. It allows you to design patterns for brick and peyote stitch jewelry. It's a little glitchy (I was very much a beginning programmer when I wrote it) but it's pretty handy.

Windows only

"Seed Bead Studio" was my final project for a multimedia class I took in 1999. It was done in Macromedia Director. With this program you can learn and design jewelry in the daisy chain or huichol stitch.

Windows version Mac version

• About.com's Beadwork section
• Bead & Button magazine
• rec.crafs.beads newsgroup