beading loom bee

[agloriousday.livejournal.com]

Hi. I bought a beading loom recently, and I'm stoked at how awesome it is and how much I can do with it.

I made a bee bracelet:

I'm pretty proud of how awesome my own bee design came out. I want to make a bunch of biology-related bracelets and chokers now that I know how.



I have a couple questions, however. While I get the whole beading of the design part, I haven't found a good way to finish things on a loom. What do I do with all the strings? How can I make sure that when I tie them up, that they don't untie and ruin my piece of work? And most importantly, how the hell do I make something on a beading loom with a clasp??

When I realized how difficult it was to make a clasp, I did this:

Yeah, that's two balls fitting into one loop, and hoping to god that it stays together like that all day. No, I have no idea what the hell possessed me to think that it would work. So far so good (minus ugly).

I was also thinking about making a stretchy bracelet on a loom, but that's beyond me. What could I possibly use to make it stretchy? Can I just make the loop stretchy? Is there anything that thin that could work?

Also, I googled up a bunch of free beading loom designs, but haven't found much of anything I liked aside from this one Ukrainian lady's cross-stitch pattern page. Anyone know of any good beading loom pattern websites?

Help! <3<3