Carolina Bead Co

I had the bright idea to make necklaces for my bridal party and myself since I’ve got a bit of time on my hands before the wedding. Good because I’m saving money, bad because I have no idea what I’m doing or how much I’ll need of each thing.
Luckily for me, Carolina Bead Co is around the corner.
There’s a decent selection here, and the staff is helpful. For this specific wedding-​related purpose, while I wish there were a larger selection of pearl-​ish beads and pearls, they had what I needed to complete the set. The prices ranged depending on what you were picking out, and while I didn’t find them overly expensive, I could see how the cost could rack up easily since the strands are short– the ones I picked out were maybe 6″? Being a noob to beading, I’m not sure if this is the norm. I noticed most online sales sell in 16″ strands, but you can’t see what you’re getting until it arrives. Plus, if you’re like me and have to finish something and you’re constantly running out of beads, it’s nice to know I can just go and get more.
Overall, the store is clean and easy to maneuver, with a decent selection. I’ll likely be back again soon since I fell short on pearls for the flower girl’s necklace.

A nice, fun bead store. Carolina Bead Co doesn’t have a stock as large as other bead shops for silver, gold, or other metals, but they do have a surprisingly large selection of czech glass beads in every possible color. It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen the pony beads in the small bottles for a single price as opposed to the tiny (really tiny) small jars in other places. Of course, the jars contain the same color, so unless you use them a lot, you’ll end up with way more than you probably need of whatever color you pick. Scattered among all the typical bead supplies are some beautiful hand-​made necklaces, bracelets, earrings, to give you inspiration. Although I haven’t done a great deal of bead-​shop comparison pricing, it did appear that Carolina Bead Co is slightly less expensive on their beads than similar shops in Cary and Raleigh.