Organised chaos

The thing with having enough beads to run an earring business is... you need somewhere to put them. And it is astonishing how many commercial "storage solutions" actually aren't.

When I was just making stuff for myself (and friends), I didn't have many types or colours of beads, so everything just went into a couple of bags. Once I realised this was going to become a business, I knew I'd have to stop doing that, otherwise it would take me so long to find everything when I needed it that it would drive me barmy. So I bought myself some of those bead organisers; you can get them from Hobbycraft (or, as it turns out, also elsewhere with a different label). I knew they were pretty good because I already had one to keep my larger earrings in. It's a clear box with 18 compartments, each of which will comfortably hold 25 g of larger beads (maybe even a bit more, but 25 g is the standard pack size for something like SuperDuos) or quite a lot more of the smaller ones. The lid locks shut with a pair of sliders, so it's nice and secure.

So far, so good, until I realised that I had a few gaps in my collection, like the pink bugles as described last week. Another one, oddly, was denim blue seed beads; it's not a colour I like, but it's a colour a lot of other people like, and will buy because it goes with their jeans. (I don't own any jeans, blue or otherwise.) I had other blues but not that specific shade, and I found I was continually looking for it, so I thought, right... and picked up a denim blue in both the 11/0 and the 15/0, both of which got used almost immediately. Having said I don't really like that colour, I will admit I made this pair the other day, and I looked at them and thought to myself "I would never wear those, but they do look jolly good." This one uses the 11/0 denim blue seed beads.

I deliberately limit the types of beads I use, because, honestly, if you don't, that way lies madness. I use 3 mm bugles (quite a lot of them); 11/0 and 15/0 seed beads; SuperDuos; MiniDuos, which are just the same but smaller; those oval Lipsi beads, which are pricey but extremely useful; 3 mm firepolish beads, which are (mostly) excellently sparkly but a lot cheaper than the bicones (I have bicones, but I don't use them often - they tend to appear as the top bead on the fractal earrings when I can't find a firepolish colour that works); 4 mm glass pearls; and of course the findings - earwires for the most part, but I do have some clips available for custom orders. And these all have to come in a lot of different colours so that I can keep up the "every pair unique" thing which is my big selling point. There is a definite appeal in having a pair of statement earrings that you know for certain nobody else has. Not even royalty is going to show up with earrings just like yours. But the more colours I have, the longer I can keep this up... even given the fact that a lot of colours are not going to look good together, thus cutting out large swathes of possible combinations. If I have, for the sake of argument, 20 colours each in the Lipsis and the SuperDuos (I think I actually have more in both), then that's 400 different combinations even before I start adding the seed beads... assuming I use only one colour of Lipsis, which I pretty much never do. But I'm not going to stick the bright yellow SuperDuos next to the metallic lava red Lipsis. I don't mind doing big and bold, but I draw the line at actual harlequin.

I keep the seed beads in their bags, for several reasons. One is that when I'm recording what I used in a given pair of earrings, it's a lot simpler to record the shade number as well as the colour, rather than, for example, deciding that this shade here should be called, say, "hot pink", but this other fairly similar one should be "neon pink". I just record them both as "hot pink [number]"; and the number is on the bag. The other beads, even the bugles, don't come in anything like such a wide range of shades. In the bugles I have just two blues (light and dark sapphire), two reds (no, that one on the left is not actually orange, and while we're on the subject the central "blue" is actually purple), and three greens (transparent light green AB, olivine, and green iris), and so it's easy to remember what they are. Everything else, apart from those new pinks which are a special case, I have only one of. But I have a lot of variety in the seed beads because they are the unsung heroes of beadwork; they may be little, but the difference they make is phenomenal. The hexagons don't use a lot of seed beads (they're mostly Lipsis and SuperDuos), but you can change the look drastically by altering the colour of the seed beads, even so. There are other reasons, largely that seed beads are a bit of a dickens to get out of square compartments when they're loose, but that is the main one. Larger beads, even the bugles, I prefer to pour into the compartments so I can instantly see what's what. At the moment I still have some in bags, but I've just ordered more bead organisers so I can deal with that (and release the food storage box I've been using for the overspill).

And there's the rub. I already have six bead organisers, and those are already precarious. Adding more is not going to help that at all. So what I really need is a bead-organiser-organiser.

I looked. I really did. I was quite tempted to get another craft trolley (I have one already, which is full to the gunwales with assorted craft stuff, plus two Bibles - an English NIV and an Italian RV2 - and concomitant devotional books, my calculator, my camera, the little gadget I use for logging into my online bank account, and so on and so forth), but I really wasn't sure where I'd put it; and I want my beading stuff to hand, by my chair. So then I looked at bags, which were all described with words like "roomy" and "capacious". Yes, well, that's relative, isn't it? They may be "roomy" and "capacious" if you just want to schlep your knitting about, but none of them was anything like adequate for a metric shedload of beads.

Well, you know me by now. If I can't find it, I make it. I ordered two metres of dark olive green organic cotton (jute would also have worked, but they didn't have any) and some thread, and I shall be making the ultimate professional bead tote. It doesn't have to be very complicated, just large enough to hold all the organisers, with a separate pocket for my beading board (and maybe another one for thread and scissors in case I ever need to take it anywhere). Very soon I shall no longer have to be annoyed by organisers tipping over when I move the one on top. (Not that it really matters if they do tip over, because the beads can't move between the compartments; but the organisers tend to slide under the chair, and then I have to scrabble for them.)

It does occur to me that I am extremely fortunate. I can get my entire manufacturing inventory into a single bag, even if I do have to make it specially. I wonder how many other people can say the same?