Why buy quality seed beads

The question

When I was buying my first set of beads for doing crochet work, I didn’t even ask myself “why buy quality seed beads?” The answer seemed obvious: you get more, you get a better brand, and you get a more durable product! Wrong.

The answer

The real reason you want to buy a nice set of seed beads is because these beads have good through a quality check – and are uniform in design. Take a look at the example below:

Illustration of variations in cheap seed beads.

Cutting corners on your beads can lead to uneven designs caused by size variations. Some of my beads were lopsided, some didn’t even have a hole in the middle. Mostly, there were huge inconsistencies in length or width. These beads are more difficult to work with and don’t create as nice of a design as a correctly made bead.

If you’re buying from a standard craft store, since most containers are clear, you can get a good look at the beads and see how they compare to each other. Kits that have a whole set of beads (which is where the example beads came from) may be wrapped differently and more difficult to ascertain quality from.