bead shop deep dive/recs

greeniegrave 6/24/2024 01:41 am 64

hello what's up hello what's up hello what's up! i've looked into a bunch of different bead websites and i wanted to share what i've learned. take all of this with a grain of salt, because i only have personal experience ordering kits from amazon.

everybody has heard of beadtin; they've got every color under the sun. they typically sell standard pony beads in quantities of 100 or 500, and other shapes/novelty beads in other quantities. however, while i was doing some digging, i found that they are known to short customers on beads and have bad customer service.

i briefly looked through pony bead store; they have a good variety of pony bead colors, but not that many shapes (your standard hearts, stars, etc). they seemed to have more color mixes than beadtin, and i liked the variety/themes of those.

i heard about jolly store crafts through reddit. they have a decent variety of alphanumeric beads, and they sell beading tools which i haven't seen on other sites. what they lack in color variety, they make up for in shapes and styles. they even have mood beads? like the ones that change color? i haven't seen those anywhere else.

i have seen in a few comments online that beadtin, pony bead store, jolly store crafts, and creative wholesale are all supplied by the beadery, and that beadtin has the biggest color variety because they get colors made specifically for them. the beadery has lots of other craft kit things too, things that you could make into beads if you had a drill or otherwise put on bracelets. but their bead selection is great, they even have letter beads with diacritics! i've never seen those before! i'm working on 3D printing my own, but these will do for now if you're in a pinch.

when i was looking for the beadery, i also found beadery products. i think their website is a bit harder to navigate. on their homepage they say that they sell products from the beadery, and that they're a subsidiary of creative wholesale distributors, which is worth checking out because they have a huge variety of crafty stuff.

as for quirky bead shapes, etsy is a great place to look. beadandcraftstash has a nice selection of clay beads and fun charms. madisonbeadshop has lots of cute shapes and designs, and their seasonal stuff seems nice.

i think it's really interesting to see how the bulk bead suppliers are connected. most of the places are in the US and have phone numbers listed in their contact information, so i kinda want to call and ask them some questions? or maybe visit if i'm ever near them?

speaking of suppliers in the US that i could contact, i wanted to leave a link to elastic cord and webbing. that link goes to their page on elastic string and thread. it seems like they sell in super mega bulk, and i'm wondering if it's actual elastic thread or if it's some kind of flat elastic. i found this website while i was trying to research crystaltec string, which i'll post something about later.

i hope to update this post if i ever purchase from any of these websites!