Create a Functional Work Space for Beading

I think it is really important to have a comfortable spot to do your beading. One of the projects that I am currently working on is long and tedious. If I had to do it at the kitchen table I know that I would never finish it.

We live in a small apartment so there isn’t a lot of space. I’d love to have my own craft room, but in order to do that one of us would have to sleep on the couch. Instead, I have my own little nook in my room. It isn’t too fancy, but I am really happy with it.

I don’t remember where we got the desk, but I do remember that it cost just about $100. The shelves and the supports that they sit on came from Home Depot, and I picked up the picture from Ikea.

This is what I see as soon as I walk in to my room so I try to keep it as neat and orderly as possible. Clutter just really stresses me out.

I have two different kinds of lighting on my desk. The lighting that I use most of the time is the Natural Spectrum HappyLite. It is like having a little bit of sunshine on the cloudiest of days. The light simulates natural sunshine, which can help treat S.A.D. (Seasonal  Affective Disorder)  I don’t use it for its therapeutic benefits. I use it because it is a bit like sitting in front of a window. I’ve got crummy eyes and I prefer to not strain them if I don’t have to. More on that in a second. I also have a little candle on my desk. It is in a tin next to the lamp.

The other lighting that I have is a Heavy Duty Fluorescent Magnifier Light. I don’t use it very often, but I find it to be very useful when sewing seed beads and threading needles.  The magnifier light is fabulous if you need to put in long hours of beading. You may not even realize how hand you’ve been straining to see until you give your eyes a rest with the magnification.

I also have a little mirror on my desk. I got it at Ikea for $10. It is handy to have a mirror at your work station. I like to try things on as I go to make sure that things hang correctly and this saves me a trip to the bathroom. This one magnifies on one side. I’ve never really used that side until yesterday when I got my contact caught up under my eyelid. True Story. It really can happen, although they don’t get very far. At any rate, my $10 mirror saved me from an expensive trip to the eye doctor.

I have a couple of different kinds of storage containers up on my shelves. I’ve been hoarding beads for close to 8 years now, so I’ve had a long time to collect storage containers. First I want to tell you about what I don’t like to use…

You will notice that I don’t have very many beads in this container.  I believe this is one of the first containers that I ever purchased. It is  a huge pain.  It is much better to have a storage container that has individual lids for each compartment. There are a couple of problems with this kind of container. First off, there is generally a small gap between the top of the compartments and the lid. That means, if your cat accidently knocks it off your desk, there is enough room for small beads or findings to mingle. I think that sort of defeats the purpose of separating them in the first place. It is not that much of a problem for things like larger beads. The other problem is getting the beads out of the box. If the compartments have individual lids, you can just open the one you want and dump them out. It will take two seconds to do. With this kind of storage container, you need to scoop the beads out of the compartments. Ditto for putting the beads back in to the box. You have to pay attention that they don’t accidentally end up mixed in with their neighbors.

I don’t like to throw things away though. I still have several of these kinds of containers. I have a few larger items tucked in to this one, but the rest of my flip lid containers are filled with stringing materials. If you can find one with big enough compartments it is a great place to store carded silk, needles, nail polish and spools of thread. I can’t believe I actually took seed beads out of their tubes to store them in one of these containers. What a nightmare that was!

I am pretty sure that this photo is distorted. My editor doesn’t like long photos. At any rate, this is my preferred way to store crystal, pearl and gemstone beads.

This is a Craft Mate Storage container and it opens like a book. It is perfect for shelf storage.

Once you open it up, you will see that it has 28 compartments, each with their own lid. The purple ones on the shelf have storage on both sides. They are spendier but you get twice as many spots to stash beads. I have several of these books and have separated my beads by color or bead type. This book contains all of my blue and green gemstone beads. I also have some for crystals, silver, pearls, glass and other colored stone beads.

Each row of beads slides out easily. The beads are easy to see and each compartment has a lid.

The lid flips up and then you can just dump them out. The *books* store nicely on a book shelf. I have labeled each of mine with my DYMO Label Maker so that I can easily tell what is in each book without having to look through them.

You can find the craft mates at Joann’s online, but make sure you sign up for their coupons. Why pay full price if you don’t have to?  You can sometimes find them at Michael’s, but they never seem to have the one that I want.

I have heard of people using both film canisters and ice cube trays to store beads. If you happen to have them on hand it is a very economical way to keep your beads separated. I’ve tried both. I didn’t like the film canisters because I couldn’t see the beads. It took me forever to find anything. Also, I had dozens and dozens of film canisters rolling around in a drawer.

I think the ice cube trays would probably have worked better if I did not have cats and children. I loathe having to separate beads out for the third or fourth time, just because the cat wants to get to the window sill.

My seed beads are stored a bit differently. I’ll go in to that a bit more tomorrow, but since I am talking about shelf storage there is another type of container that I want to cover. I actually discovered these just yesterday. I picked up some seed beads at my local bead shop so that I could make some earrings. When the girl checked me out, she asked if I wanted to donate the tubes that the beads were in back to the store. I told her “heck no, I’ve learned about storing seed beads the hard way, I keep them in the tube they came in!”. She then asked me if I had seen the new way to store seed beads. There are nifty little plastic boxes that look a little bit like tic tac boxes that can be used for bead storage. I think that the set she had was $11.95, but I think the boxes were a bit larger. I told her that I would think about it. I knew I was going to be posting about bead storage, but I didn’t want to drive all the way back up to their store, so I checked out the chain stores. I found something very similar at Joann’s.

The little tic tac boxes fit neatly  into a  flip top storage container. I think that these would be great for storing seed beads. You can fit the container on to a  shelf. It is easy to see the contents as well, so finding what you are looking for is a snap. The one down side I see to this is that I’d either need to get larger containers, or split up my beads. I purchase some of my beads in a larger quantity and I have this problem with *out of sight out of mind*. I need all like items to be stored together and I think that the craft mates and the tube storage work better for me. However, since I have these I will use them. It is a great way to organize all those little eyelets and brads that I have for scrapbooking.

I had hoped to have this entry up earlier today, but I forgot that I had signed up to take a class at my local bead shop. It is the first class I have ever taken in a bead shop and it was tons of fun. I made a really cute little bracelet. I should have it up by the end of the weekend. Tomorrow evening I will show you how I store my seed beads, as well as how I store both my full magazines and patterns that I have foolishly ripped out.