Beading on a Jewel Loom

I have made jewelry for years and years, from wire wrapping, silver work, setting cabochons, and working with seed beads. I finally bought a $6 plastic bead loom called a Jewel Loom. It sure makes bead loom work easy. This is my first project and I am excited to make more items.

The bracelet is made with size 8 seed beads, a light brown, an earthy green, and an ivory. I repeated the three squares 3 times. Making just two or three squares would make fun earrings also.

I started with some grid paper, aka graphing paper. I was a little too delicate with the first few rows and did not pull tight enough. As a result there are some little loops of beading thread on the side. But once I got going, it was a breeze. A very fun little project that looks more complicated than it was.

The Jewel Loom has a metal bar that holds the plastic form while you thread the warp threads. Once you have the warp threads in place you pop out the metal bar and the loom holds the threads taut.

It's a very nice little loom, especially for the price. But.. it's a little small.

There are two methods of taking the finished product off the loom. 1. Cut the threads and weave them into the work. 2. weave a band of thread and saturate it with glue and let sit until dry.

Method 2 works for a clasp that will cover the band of glued thread but not so handy when not using that style of clasp. But method 1 on this loom is sort of a pain to try to weave in those short ends that result from making a 6" strip.

The average bracelet size is 7" and allowing 1" for clasp, loomed piece needs to be 6" in length. That left only short threads to weave up into work at the end. I'm guessing that the developer uses the gluing method.

It's workable but tedious. Very happy with it and I plan to make many more projects with this little loom. I also plan to make a larger one.