Great Online Virtual Bead Board Jewelry Designer

I have to admit that it took me a while to get “into” this next resource, but once you get the hang of it it’s actually quite fun.

It’s the Virtual Beadboard Designer over at Fire Mountain Gems. It allows you to actually choose your beads, assemble your pieces and even buy all your supplies all on the screen!

Fire Mountain Gems is one of the largest suppliers of beads and jewelry supplies in the country and they’re famous for sending out their massive catalog once or twice a year. I’ve had varying luck with the quality of beads from them and their prices aren’t always the best, but their selection is amazing and their website is really quite impressive.

To get to the Virtual Beadboard you’ll need to “sign up” for a free account. While I don’t usually like signups, I’ve found that I haven’t received any unwanted junk mail, so I think they’re making good on their privacy statement.

Once you log into the Virtual Beadboard you’re presented with a blank board and bunch of buttons across the top. It’s a little daunting at first, but here are the basic steps I use:

1. First, you need to choose some beads. You can search for beads using keywords on the left of the screen, you can browse through a menu system or you can enter a catalog number down at the bottom left corner of the board. Honestly, I use the catalog number because it’s so much easier. The keyword search gives you too many results to be helpful. I typed in “red crystal” had got 84 different beads to scroll through on the left. I typed in “blue” for the keyword search once and it took about 5 minutes to get back anything!
2. Now that you have some pieces you can start dragging your beads to the board! Here’s the key: Drag your beads to the board and drop them first. They tend to “move” around when you first drop them. After you’ve dropped one you can let go of the mouse button, then move your arrow back to it and click to pick it up again. Now you can move the bead to precisely where you wantto put it. So, you drag and drop a bead. Then you pick it up again and drag it to the exact location. The beads automatically “snap” and twist around so that their holes line up if you get them close enough.
3. If you want to delete or rotate or even group together some of the beads to move them all around you have to press the appropriate checkmark at the top of the screen. So if I want to delete a bead I put a checkbox in “Delete” then click on the bead I want to remove. I answer “yes” to delete the bead and it’s gone. Be careful! Remember to click on “Delete” again to take away the checkmark!
4. Once you’ve designed something you like you can press the “Cost Calculator” button and get a cost for all the pieces you need. You can then even add it to your virtual shopping cart and pay for it online!

That’s really all there is to it! It takes some patience and some practice, but it’s actually a pretty nifty little designer. Some other tips I’ve come up with when using the Virtual Beadboard:

• I usually ignore the wire option. I haven’t quite figured out how to get that working!
• I don’t worry about being too “precise” with the Virtual Beadboard. I just place my beads in an approximate fashion and get the general “sense” of what my necklace or bracelet will look like.
• You can save and retrieve projects later, but I typically work on one piece at a time…
• There is help online, but it’s still lacking some details. It’s worth a read if you’re going to be using it a lot, though.
• Sometimes I use it just to get ideas. I’ll have nothing particular in mind and I’ll browse through the Fire Mountain Gems catalog until I come across some neat beads and think, “What can I do with these?” I then use the Virtual Beadboard to play with some ideas BEFORE I actually buy the beads. And while I’ve often bought beads after coming up with some ideas, the Virtual Beadboard has also prevented me from buying some beads because, quite honestly, I couldn’t come up with anything that I felt was worth making. (I did this just a few weeks ago when I was thinking about buying some spider charms. After using the Virtual Beadboard for about 20 minutes I decided I really didn’t want to make any jewelry with spiders in it! )

I’ve shown this to some friends and about half of them love and half of them just couldn’t get into it. It certainly isn’t a substitute for really touching and seeing the beads in person, but it’s a handy tool if you just want to get some ideas before going out and stocking up!

Best of luck and keep on beading!

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