I took my first beading class Thursday at my favorite local bead shop. For those of you in the Salt Lake area, my favorite bead shop is Heart Beads Jewelry. Tremaine Fenton is an absolute doll. Of all three of my local beads shops I have consistently gotten the best service in her store. It doesn’t matter who is working, everyone has always been both friendly and helpful. One of the other things that I really like about her store is that she offers a free beading class each month. I’ve drooled over some of the classes before (as well as much of the jewelry in the case) but I’ve never had the nerve to sign up for one the classes. This month I decided that I was just going to do it and I am so glad that I did.
Tremaine helped me pick out the beads that I would need for the project. As a bead class virgin, I did not know that most people bring their own stringing materials. That meant I needed to purchase some fireline and beading needles. She had scissors at the table. Tremaine worked on a bracelet while I worked on mine and she was there to answer any questions that I had. I liked the colors of the one that she was working on so much, I decided to purchase extra beads so that I could make a second bracelet at home. She also showed me a nice little tip that I am going to share with you soon. 
I am ready for Spring. I’ve also recently purchased some new maternity tops in bright Spring Colors, so I chose to go with pink and green beads.
After I completed the bracelet, I collected up the packaging for all of the supplies that I used, as well as the extra goodies that I wanted to purchase and I paid for everything at once. I think that I am going to take the class every month. If you have a local bead shop I suggest you stop in for a peek and see if they have any classes available. If they do offer classes, be sure to ask what tools or supplies that they provide, what is included in the cost of the class and what you will need to bring.
My next post is going to be about that little beading tip that I picked up yesterday.
I have been beading for about 8 years. I initially learned how to string pearls through a course I took from the Gemological Institute of America. These days, hand knotting pearls is probably the last thing that beaders learn how to do. Now, I think the natural progression of learning things is to start with crimping, then move on to wire work and finish up with knotting. I’m not sure where learning how to work with seed beads fits in the sequence of knowledge. I am only just now learning how to do it myself. For whatever weird reason I started collecting seed beads a few years back, even though I had no idea what I was going to do with them. I think that I may have a hoarding problem when it comes to beads. Fortunately, I don’t think I am alone in that.
At any rate, I took my beads out of the little tubes that they came in and put them in to one of those little flip top containers. It was horrible. Every time I opened the container I found that some of the beads had mixed in with their neighbors. Getting the beads in and out of their compartments was also a chore. It is no wonder that I never wanted to use the seed beads. Eventually my stash of pearls and stone beads grew enough that I needed to use those compartments for beads that I was actually going to use. I found the old bead tubes (I can’t seem to throw any kind of storage container away) and I randomly put them back in.
Those beads are still in the wrong tubes and unfortunately I have no idea what the product numbers are for some of them. I am hoping that I never need to buy more of certain colors. Now when I buy new seed beads I just leave them in the tubes that they came in. Sometimes beads come packaged in little plastic bags. I move those in to new tubes, but as I do it I be sure to label the tubes with my DYMO so that I know what they are. If I can’t fit them all in a tube, I put the remainder in a little plastic bag. I label the bag with the correct number and then I write “bs” on the tube so that I know that I have “back stock” of that particular bead. It doesn’t take long to do at all, and if I run out of a particular bead I can tell just by looking at the sticker on the tube if I have more. All of my little bags of extra beads are in a Christmas cookie tin in my closet. It is also labeled “Seed Bead Back Stock”. I bet you are wondering what did I do with all of those little tubes of beads?
I hung them on a peg board! Terry and I went to Home Depot and I picked up a piece of pegboard. It was pretty inexpensive and it came in a 2 ft by 4ft piece. I had them cut it in half so that I had two 2ft x 2ft pieces. I am only using one of them. We also purchased some pieces of wood that are 2″x2″ by 8 ft. We had them cut those down in to 2ft sections. I probably could have purchased a pretty peg board that was ready to go, but I was all about being thrifty. Terry screwed three pieces of wood to the back of the peg board. One across the top, one across the bottom and once across the center. Terry thought that we should anchor it to the wall, but the two inches of wood that we needed to screw through sort of threw us for a loop, as we aren’t big DIY kind of people. So Geek drilled holes through the front of the peg board, about half way through the pieces of wood. He started at a peg hole, and made the hole large enough for the head of the screw to fit down in to it, then he put the screw down through the remainder of the wood and we screwed them in to wall anchors. That is about the best I can describe the hanging of the peg board. I pretty much left it up to the guys to do. I then purchased a bunch of pegs. I really need to take on more DIY projects on my own. I’m not ever going to learn how to do this kind of stuff if I never give it a go myself. I’m such a lucky girl to have so much wonderful help. Thanks guys!
To organize my beads, I have some of my tools across the top. The longer handled tools are hanging across the bottom. Larger seed beads and non swarovski crystals are kept to the right and across the bottom. All of my size 11s are in the middle. Size 15s are across the top to the right of the tools. I have the beads sorted by color within each category. Odds and ends also have their own areas. I have one peg that has triangle beads and another for hex beads. it is much easier for me to find the specialty beads this way. I don’t have many so it is still easy to glance and see what sizes I have.
I like to use the tubes for findings as well. I have found that they are particularly useful for headpins.
Most of my headpins are too long to put in to the Craft Mates storage containers. I used to keep them in a flip top storage container. Unfortunately they suffered from “out of sight, out of mind”. I kept buying them when I didn’t need to and ended up with way more than any girl needs.
Headpins were the first findings that I moved to storage tubes, and I am so glad that I did.
I also keep my beading needles in the storage tubes, and of course the sizes have been labeled with my Dymo.
I also keep a couple of other things on the peg board.
My smaller spools of thread are lined up on pegs, as well as my smaller spools of colored wire.
I have also started a peg for my fireline.
Once we move in to someplace with more space I will probably bring the second peg board in to the house. The plan is to devote one board to beads, and the other board to tools and stringing materials.
The pegs can be a fairly inexpensive way to store supplies. I like that I can find just about anything that I am looking for at a glance.
For now I keep the remainder of my supplies in a cubby in my bookcase.
I picked the bookcase up at my local Ikea. If you are lucky enough to live I close to an Ikea, I really recommend you check them out.
I have one set of containers that fit snugly in to the cubby that I keep the remainder of my wire in.
I also keep my macrame stuff and my soldering stuff tucked away in there. I just have to remember to be sure that the soldering iron is completely cool before I put it away.
All of my beading books are also stored in one of the cubbies, although I am running out of room for those.
My magazines are kept in Magazine File Boxes.. I have quite a bit of shelf space dedicated to these.
I have one file that I keep all of my catalogs in, and then I have one file for each of the magazines that I buy regularly.
I really need to just subscribe to them all. There are a couple of magazines that I only buy periodically (ha ha), so I have one file dedicated to miscellaneous magazines.
For the most part this has worked well for me. My problem is that there are so many things that I want to make, I have trouble remembering where I saw the pattern
To combat that problem I have started marking the projects that I want to make. Right now I just have the pages marked with little tabs. I really need to dedicate different colored tabs for different kinds of projects. That, or I need to label them for projects that I have all the supplies for, projects that I need to order for, and projects with hard to find components. I’m still trying to hammer that out, but what I do do, is move the tab to the top of the magazine if I am currently working on that project.
In this magazine, I am currently working on the “Waves of Pearls” project. I have also started a notebook for projects that I want to make. Once I mark the projects in the magazine, I enter the magazine in to my notebook.
It is pretty low tech, I just write down the name of the magazine, the edition, the page number and then a brief description (or drawing) so that I can remember what it is.
That has eliminated the need to constantly rifle through magazines so that I can find a particular project.
But what about those projects that I foolishly ripped out of the magazine? Most of these were torn out of magazines when I went home to Florida last year. I wanted to bring back the projects, but I didn’t want to tote back a bunch of magazines. My trunk was already pretty full. I just ripped out the projects and decided I’d deal with organizing them once I got home. I picked up some inexpensive 3 ring binders and page protectors. . Problem solved. I also have binders for seasonal craft projects. Not only has this worked well for me, but it is fun to pull them out and thumb through them. I love flipping through them, because it is filled with page after page of projects that I want to make. This is also a good way to store projects that you print off the internet. I have two binders, one for projects that I want to make, and one for projects that I have already completed. I just can’t seem to part with instructions.
So that is pretty much my system. I have been collecting for a while, but I have really only hammered out a system that works for me in the last six months or so. For a long time I only beaded once every couple of months, now that there is a place for everything, I find myself enjoying it once again.
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.
I didn’t get much done while Geek was home. I did however make out like a bandit at Christmas! I think that I got 8 Japanese Bead Books, and then two more American ones. My children picked out some beads for me, and I got a nifty little pc laptop to make posting to my sites go a little bit easier. I also got to go shopping for beads. I think I spent close to $600. I don’t do that very often, I was just very excited to get the supplies for some of the projects in my new books.
I think I spent two days combing over bead sites and magazines trying to decide exactly what I wanted. I did my best to be thrifty and I thought I did pretty well until it started arriving in the mail.
I have slowly been collecting storage containers, but I had yet to sit down and organize anything. Not only were my beads a mess, but I had books scattered out over 5 bookcases. I decided that I really needed to sort through things a bit. It was a frustrating endeavor but I am glad that I did it. I’m glad because now I can find stuff. I was frustrated after I figured out that I already owned a lot of what I had just purchased. So much for being frugal. It gets better, when I gathered up all of my bead books, I discovered that I had two copies of one of them. I also have duplicate copies of 4 or 5 magazines.
So I thought I’d share how I organized my bead stash. It is a pretty simple system. I think that it would make for a really long post though, so I will break it up in to a couple of entries. You will also get to see my work space which means that I am going to have to clean off my desk this evening! 🙂
