Bead Hole Drilling for Polymer Clay Jewelry Projects

Vid #32: Need Some Large Hole Beads? 2 Hole Beads? How About 3 or 4 or More Holes In Your Beads?

Sometimes it's difficult to find beads perfectly suited for your jewelry projects. Even if you find ones that have the right shape, color and design, there's still a good chance that the holes will be too small, too large, too few or too many. Arghhh…!

Well I have suggestion. Stop looking for the perfect bead and start making them yourself. It's easy with polymer clay.

In this tip I'll talk about drilling bead holes. First you'll need a set of bits. Since polymer clay is so soft, you can get away with using the very cheap drill bits available at any dollar store.

I find that using a power drill is too dangerous when you have to hold the beads in your fingers, so I don't even use one. Instead I make custom polymer clay handles for each of my individual bits. This allows me to easily turn the bits by hand. Very safe.

By the way, I'll share more about exactly how to make the custom bit handles in another tip.

Now the most important thing to remember when making polymer clay bead holes is to start with the smallest bit size and then gradually in steps, move up to slightly larger bits. Do this until you have the desired hole size. The key here is a little at a time.

Going straight to a large drill bit size will often tear the edges of the polymer clay bead hole, making it look very unprofessional.

>> Polymer Clay Tutorials <<

The full version of the "Enlarging Bead Holes" preview video shown above, is included in my Polymer Clay Bead Making Fundamentals Course [SEE Video #28 of 39]. In this video I demonstrate how to use hand held metal bits to drill whatever hole size you desire through your polymer clay beads. Now you can create beads with large holes, small holes, or with 2, 3 or even 4 holes.