A bezel is a little cup of peyote stitch that holds a stone. It starts as a ring of Delicas laid round the stone, and smaller size 15 beads then pull each round in over the front — and, once the stone is in, over the back. Nothing is glued. The stone just sits in beaded tension, like a pie crust it could climb out of if you weren't careful.
The stone of classics is the rivoli: a round crystal with facets that come to a point in front and behind, and no hole — which is precisely why it needs a bezel to wear. The same stitched cup holds a flat-back cabochon just as well; the fit rule below is written round the stone's widest part either way.
| Item | What to get | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| The stone | A rivoli, 12 or 14 mm for a first one | The chart gives the ring count for every size from 10 to 18 mm; the stone itself is bought separately from the beads |
| Delicas | Size 11/0, one color for the ring | Their even cylinder shape makes a neat ring round the stone |
| Round seed beads | Size 15/0, one or two colors | Smaller than the Delicas, so each round pulls in tighter over the stone |
| Thread | About 1 m (40 in) — Nymo or FireLine both work | Enough for one bezel, tails included — the whole thing is worked on one thread |
| Needle | Size 10 or 12 beading needle | Size 10 is the tutorials' pick with Nymo; whatever threads your thread and passes the size 15 rounds |
| Extras | Scissors | That's the whole list. No mat, no tray, no hoop. A bezel fits in a matchbox |
This table is the app's stone table, which follows the chart for open-back peyote bezels published by Artbeads. Perles & Co's own counts run a few different — they give 32 Delicas for a 12 mm stone and 44 for an 18 mm — and that disagreement is not a bug: the counts vary with your tension and with the exact beads. So treat the table as a starting ring and let the fit check below have the last word.
| Stone | Delicas in the ring | Round 3 (Delicas) | Rounds of 15/0 on the front | Rounds of 15/0 on the back |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 mm | 26 | 13 | 2 | 3 |
| 12 mm | 30 | 15 | 3 | 3 |
| 14 mm | 36 | 18 | 3 | 3 |
| 16 mm | 42 | 21 | 3 | 3 |
| 18 mm | 46 | 23 | 3 | 3 |
Two things the table quietly assumes. First, the ring is always an even number, because those beads form two rows at once — round 1 and round 2 — and each gets half of them. Second, the size 15 rounds pull in over the stone, front and back; that's what turns a flat ring into a cup. In the app the ring may be set anywhere from 20 to 60 Delicas (even) and the rounds from 1 to 5 on either side, which leaves room on both sides of every published count.
| Symptom | The real cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The ring sits away from the stone, gapping | Count below what your tension wants — counts vary with tension, remember the two published charts disagreeing | Add or take off beads in twos, keeping the ring even, until it wraps the stone's widest part snugly |
| The stone wobbles or rattles in the finished cup | Some rounds worked looser than others | Firm tension on every round; hold the stone with a finger during the back rounds and check each round as it seats |
| A hole in the middle of a round | A place was skipped — every place needs a bead, because each round stitches through the round before | Undo to the bare spot and rework; the thread path unravels cleanly back round the ring |
| The front rounds stand proud instead of curving over the stone | 15/0 rounds not pulled tight — the curl only happens under tension | Snug each bead as it seats; the small beads make the cup only when the thread is pulled |
| Ring count is right but round 3 lands crooked | Missed the step up at the end of round 3 | The step up is not optional theater — it's what turns a flat spiral into stacked rounds. Go back through the first bead of the new round and continue |
Plain arithmetic on the app's own chart counts, for a 14 mm rivoli: the ring is 36 Delicas and round 3 adds 18 more, so 54 Delicas in all. Six rows of 18 size 15 beads — three on the front, three on the back — come to 108. With the shopping list's 10% spare that's 60 Delicas and 119 size 15s — about 0.3 g and half a gram at the shopping builder's per-gram figures. One tube either way swamps the whole project; a single tube of 15/0 holds many bezels' worth.
One quirk to know before you shop: the app colors bezel charts with Delicas, and then names the closest Miyuki 15/0 color for each of the small rounds — so the shopping list shows the two bead types separately. The shopping-list builder does the same math in the browser: add a line with the Delica count (11/0, 200/g), a second line with the size 15 count (15/0, 250/g), and it applies the spare, the grams and the tube counts in the shop's real sizes. In the app itself the Supplies tab does all of it straight from the bezel chart, including the 15/0 substitution, and names the thread with the "about 1 m per bezel" rule already inside it.
And a note on what this method doesn't cover: bead-embroidery bezels (a stone glued to a backing with a stitched base) and brick-stitch edges around a backing are a different family, and the app doesn't chart them — this page and its counts are for the stitched open-back peyote bezel only.
If the flat stitch behind all this is still wobbly, the peyote guide rebuilds it from row 2 up. For the words you just met — bezel, rivoli, even the glassy finishes — the glossary has them, and the app charts a bezel for any stone size, then reads the chart round by round while you work.