What to do with cheap odd shaped seed beads?

Question

My friend bought me a pack of beads from Michaels. They are in nice colors that go well together, but I noticed that they're not all the same size and shape, some are even fused together.

I'm a beginner and tried to do a right angle weave bracelet with some of those beads and it didn't look good, so I'm wondering if there is any project where I could still use them and it wouldn't be a problem.

The fused/broken ones I already threw away.

Thank you for your help!
:)

Answer 1

I had a bag of those once - some misshaped ones, some large ones, some hex beads, even a few bugle beads, all different colors and finishes and mixed together. I made an "amulet bag" in simple peyote stitch, using the cardboard core of a toilet paper roll as a form for it. Then when the body of the bag was done, I used the rest of the beads and some random semi-precious stone chips to make fringe and the neck strap for it. It came out gorgeous! These days I'm throwing random leftover beads from other projects into a container until I have enough to make another one.

Answer 2

With most of the bead weaving stitches, you want the beads to be fairly uniform in size and shape. Cheap beads are cheap for a reason. They don't cull the bad ones before packaging. There is always a certain amount of culling needed when you open a package of seed beads. Chinese beads will have the most bad or misshapen ones, followed by Czech, and Japanese seed beads will have the least amount of bad ones.

Try doing a simple daisy chain in right angle weave, you can position the odd shaped beads with the narrow end in the center, wider end to the outside making the center circle. my son used to do three-D bead work and used the off shaped beads for shaping his pieces, ie., getting a turtle shell round and dimensional.

Another use is in bead embroidery, where a line of beadwork won't be perfectly straight, it will follow curves outlining other stitched parts.

Answer 3

Feed them to you parrot