Bright, bold ... beads

When most people think of beads, they picture jewelry - earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. But while beads are often used to make jewelry, they also have many decorative and practical uses.

Many fisherman use beads on their flies, for instance. The bright colors attract fish. Beads can be sewn onto purses or used to decorate picture frames, greeting cards, and book covers. Beads can even be woven like yarn into clothing.

One of the reasons beads are so prevalent is that they can be made from many different materials. Some common ones include bone, glass, metal, wood, clay, crystal, stone, and even teeth. In fact, one of the most popular types of "beads" that boys like to wear is sharks' teeth, says Mindy Brooks, editor of Bead & Button magazine in Waukesha, Wis.

"Anything you can put a hole in can be a bead," says Christy Puetz of The Bead Museum in Glendale, Ariz. "Every culture has some sort of bead they wear or use."

The art of beading has been practiced for thousands of years, and many techniques have been developed to put them together. The most basic is stringing beads onto a thin wire or thread. This is an easy way to make a necklace, bracelet, or anklet.

First, pick out your beads and supplies at a craft store or bead specialty shop. Then choose wire or thread for stringing and some sort of end clasp. Most bead shops sell clasps in silver, bronze, gold, and more affordable imitations of those.

Seed beads, which are tiny glass beads that typically come from China or the Czech Republic, tend to be colorful and inexpensive. Sometimes bead stores sell little tubes of them for only a few dollars. The total cost to string them into a necklace can add up to less than $5!

Other beading techniques involve stitches, where beads are organized to form patterns. Some common stitches include peyote, brick, herringbone, and netting. The patterns are often used on purses, clothing, and scarves.

"They're all similar in that they are a process of beads being connected to other beads, which makes beaded fabric," says Cynthia Rutledge, a beading designer in Crestline, Calif.

Peyote stitch is common in native American beading and involves interlacing, with one row of beads raised over another to create a layered look. Brick stitch is similar, but the pattern looks like bricks.

Herringbone, named after the fabric, has a different look, with a bunch of little "V's" stacked on top of one another. Netting, on the other hand, is an open, lacelike beading.

One of the best things about beading, Ms. Rutledge says, is that there are no rules. It is useful to learn about techniques, but there is no right or wrong way to put beads together.

"It's a creative process - that's what's so fun about it," Rutledge adds. "It's starting with this puddle of supplies, and in the end ... we've made something."

Beads date back many thousands of years, and were used worldwide in different ways - from storytelling to meditation to counting.

Until recently, the oldest beads were thought to have been made of ostrich egg shells in Africa, India, and China more than 45,000 years ago. But even older beads were discovered last year in Tanzania. They were made from small, oval-shaped cowrie shells and date back more than 100,000 years. This means people were using beads a good 35,000 years before the so-called "creative explosion" in about 65,000 BC, when people first began painting on cave walls and making jewelry.

Scientists think the cowrie shells were not only used as jewelry, but also as currency. The types of beads people carried or wore said a lot about their social standing and even their relationships. Today the equivalent would be wedding rings or friendship bracelets.

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