Here you can find instructions how to bead bead animals and how to read bead animal patterns.

There are two ways to present a bead animal pattern:

In bead patterns, every row of circles presents a row of beads. Different colours indicate beads of different colours. Beading is done in the following way:

1. Add the beads of the first row at the center of the string (one white bead in the example) (Picture 1).
2. Add the beads of the second bead row to the one end of the string (two white beads) (Picture 2).
3. Pass the other end of the string through the beads of the second row from the opposite direction (Picture 3).
4. Tighten up to get beads close together.
5. Add the next row of beads to the one end of the string and pass the other end of the string through them (Picture 4).
6. Tighten up.
7. Make sure that the rows of beads are like in the picture 5 (every second up, every second down). With metal wire, you usually need to shape bead rows like in the Picture 6 to make bead animal roundish, not flat.
8. Continue adding beads according to the bead pattern.

Finishing the Beadwork

Leftover wires can be fastened off in two different ways. You can twirl them together, cut off and hide the remaining end in the bead animal (1). Other possibility is to fasten off each end of the wire separately (2). Thread them a couple of times through the previous row as depicted in the picture, and cut off the extra wire.