Making beaded jewellery is a lot of fun, but one of the major challenges is keeping all of your little tiny beads organised. When you are a jewellery maker, you will have a lot of different little beads along with metal clasps, pieces of wire, decorative baubles, necklace chains and much more. These little items can quickly become disorganised and can turn into a big mess if you are not careful. This will make it much more difficult for you to complete your jewellery designs and find the materials that you are looking for. You don’t want to spend more time looking for the right beads than you actually do working on your jewellery!
Also, having disorganised beads means that they are more likely to fall on the floor – which can result in your beautiful beads getting caught by the Hoover and wasted!
So how can you keep your beads more organised? The trick is to develop a system that works well for you and then stick to it. Here are some tips to keep in mind:
Buy a Large Enough Storage Container
There are plastic containers out there that are designed for storing beads and have a lot of different little compartments within them. These are great, because you can store all of your beads and gemstones within them and organise them by size or colour.
Invest in Plenty of Small Plastic Baggies
Little clear plastic sandwich baggies are fantastic for helping to organise your beading work. You can use them to keep your smaller projects separate while you are waiting to sell them. The bags will protect the jewellery by keeping the dust off and also make sure that no small pieces are lost or damaged. You can keep them all together in one of your drawers or boxes, with a label on the box of course so that you know where they are.
Label Everything
Another item that will really help you when it comes to organisation is a
labeller. This will allow you to label the different boxes of beads so that you can quickly see what they are without having to open them. This will help you when you are looking for a specific type of beads to complete a project, so that you will not have to look through all of the boxes to find them.
You could even use your labeller to label your plastic bags with your completed projects to sell in them, so that you can keep track of quantity and price.
Set Up a Designated Beading Area in Your Home
Sometimes the main obstacle that prevents jewellery artists from being more organised is because they don’t have a designated space in their home to work on their projects. Perhaps they start beading on the kitchen table, only to have to clean up in a hurry because dinner will soon be served. This usually involves hastily stuffing everything away rather than keeping it in a well organised and laid out fashion.
If at all possible, find a comfortable spot in your home where you can enjoy relaxing and working on your beading work. This will allow you to set up a permanent “home” for all of your supplies so that you won’t have to tuck them away when you are not working on them. It will be a lot easier to keep your supplies organised and together when you have your own designated bead making space.
A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place
Once you have set up a system for keeping your
beads organised, it is important to make sure that you follow the system and put everything back where it belongs. It is no use having a well organised and labelled tray for your beads, if you simply throw all of them into the tray at the end of the day without any regard to colour or size. Get in the habit of putting your beads back in the right place at the end of the day, which will help you to stay on top of your organisation.
Getting your beads organised will take a lot of work at first, but as long as you can stay on top of it and keep putting them back where they belong your beads will stay organised. This will save you a lot of time and hassle, which will mean that you can spend more time working on your jewellery designs.
George Torres is a freelance writer and part time jewellery designer. He sells his designs online as well as on the weekend at his local Sunday market.
