Confessions of a Bead Hoarder

I primarily use seed beads in my work. I live about 30 miles from the nearest bead store. (And its a small one!)  So if I need a specific bead, I usually need to order it online and wait.  Well, there you have the excuse I use for having such a big inventory of beads.  Nothing worse than being in the middle of a project, running out of a certain bead, and having to wait a week or 2 to get an order and continue. Of course it still happens, but not terribly often.

When I was first setting up my studio, I decided I wanted to have the seed beads out where I could see them, not organized and put away in little drawers. It is nice to be able to hold up a component next to a wall of beads and see how each color works with it.  Besides, standing in front of a colorful wall of beads is a beautiful thing!  So I used pegboard, painted white.  I have a section for each size- size 11 has the biggest area. Within these areas, they are organized by color.

wall of size 11 and delicas

*one* of my walls of size 6 and 8 beads

 My size 15s are in little plastic drawers, because they take up less room, and

I ran out of wall space.  I also like to have them within easy reach of my work table.

As I work on projects, I put the beads that I am finished with in this container under my work table,  then take care of them all at once.  Someone once suggested that this container should not be too big, so that you are forced to empty it more often.  Good suggestion I think!!

time to take care of these!!

Now for the RV storage. Remember in the last post I showed you 2 closed cabinets in the RV?  Well, taadaa!  Here are the bead cabinets opened.

Aren't they awesome??  The beads are hung in Beadsmith bead towers- they have elastic loops to hold the tubes.  They are attached into the cabinets with wing nuts, so they can be removed and taken in the house when we are not traveling, or taken with me to a class etc.   My scissors and tools are within easy reach.

I also take small amounts of various colors in these cases.  They take up very little room, latch securely (which from experience is important in an RV) and are good in a bead emergency.

Speaking of small amounts of beads (remember, I am a bead hoarder), here is  one of the ways I store those tiny amounts of leftover beads.  With an old pair of scissors, you can cut right through the plastic bead tube and shorten it.  You can store a lot of these little buggers in a small box!  When I am making small earrings or a small pendant, I go to this box and use up those lil bits of extras. 

So that pretty much covers the seed beads. For some reason, I really enjoy sorting out beads into tiny tubes and arranging them.  And really, is there anything prettier than a wall of colored beads?!