OMG, cabs!

Remember when I said I was trying to put all of my beads and supplies away in a nice, organized fashion? Here's some photographic proof! My cabochon collection was spread all over the place -- some were in a divided plastic box, some were in the same hardware drawer system as my focal beads, some were just lying around in the baggies they came in. Not acceptable at all!

When I started this current quest for organization, I put a lot of my cabs into a flat box designed for storing craftbooking doo-dads or other small crafting supplies. I decided that was perfect, and JoAnn's is having a big storage sale this week, so I went out in search of more. They didn't have the exact same box, but they did have a little three-drawer unit, and that is where all of my cabs and rivolis will now be stored.

This isn't even all the cabs... the black and white ones will go in a separate drawer, because they wouldn't all fit in this one. And I know there are more cabs hiding around the house. And then there are the cabs that are already glued down to be embroidered around, or that I've been actively matching beads to for large projects.

Buried in beads!

I'm currently in a battle against bead clutter. I have beads in at least three rooms of the house, and they're not particularly organized, and I keep having trouble finding what I'm looking for while working on projects. Then I go out and buy MORE beads, which just makes things worse.

So it's time to spend more time beading, and putting beads away, and getting rid of excess beads. It's time to stop putting off major projects, but to also work on some smaller, easy-to-sell projects. It's time to organize, and condense, and get a better grasp on what I have and what I need more of.

In the following weeks, you should see a lot more new jewelry on this blog, and a few new listings in the Etsy shop. And I might even do a bit of vending this Autumn. GASP! Stay tuned.

Cleaning and organizing, what fun.

So, I'm working my way through the mountains of bead clutter. I've got a lot more beads now than I did when we moved in here 6 years ago. I can't even remember how I moved them last time, but I don't recall it being much of an issue. This time around, it's my main concern. I want everything to go as smoothly as possible, so that I don't have too much beading downtime after moving in.

It's amazing how many half-finished projects and leftover beads I have lying around. I'm such a beading slob! One of my goals is to stop being like that. I need to make a better effort to put everything away when I'm done with a project. It will make my life so much easier, and keep my space so much prettier.

While I'm doing all of this practical cleaning, I'm also daydreaming. I'm going to have a lot of space in my new beadroom, and I'm wondering what I want to fill it with. Do I want to buy some sleek crafters cabinets? Do I want to hunt down a cool old apothecary, typesetter, or watchmaker type desk/cabinet dealio? Or do I want to buy things on the cheap at the thrift store, and use all the extra money for more beads?

Although I always like the idea of more beads, I find myself jealous of people with really cool workspaces. Sure, the desk that I found by the dumpster is great and has served me well for the past 5 or 6 years, but it is pretty boring looking and only has two drawers and one cubbyhole. And the plastic iris carts that I keep most of my beads in are effective, but there's an awful lot of wasted space in the deeper drawers and again, they're boring.

We'll see what I feel like after I've been in the house for a while. To start with I'm going to take my dumpster desk and my iris carts, and see where I want to go from there.

I've got to take some pictures.

Okay, maybe tomorrow I'll clean the gigantic stack of books off of my kitchen table and actually have room to photograph some new jewelry. Seriously, I think there's more than 20 books in that stack. Mostly it's the various gaming books that we cart with us, depending on what game we play. This is why I throw myself off balance whenever I pick up my messenger bag... those sourcebooks are HEAVY!

Today the flippie boxes that I ordered from Out on A Whim arrived, so I got to put away some more beads and rearrange my collection a bit. I didn't quite finish the job. The lids were pretty tight on the little flippies and my fingers started to hurt after a while of tugging them apart. I actually managed to buy more boxes than I needed, so I'll have excess storage for a while. Of course, I still have a lot of larger beads (8mm mostly, and weird shapes) that don't fit in the flippies, so I need to decide where I want to put them. Currently they're all in drawers, sorted by color, still on their strands, but that's not the best solution. I don't tend to think about the beads in those drawers, and when I do use them, I don't use an entire strand, and then I have to tie a knot at the end, and it's just sloppy.

Going through my beads, I realized that it's about time that I did some more "strand collages" or something else which will allow me to use up some miscellaneous beads. It's really just not worth keeping 8-10 beads around when I'm not ever going to restock them!

Mainly, though, my muse wants to play with those new keys, which means I've got to clean them up. I think I'll try the Naval Jelly that Chris used to de-rust his axe. This will be an adventure for me. I'm used to trying to clean up silver, not steel!