How NOT to make Bead Soup

Bead Soup - it's a great thing - there's a lot of fun things you can do with bead soup.

You know what bead soup is, right? - It's all those leftover beads, different sizes, shapes, colors; leftover from previous projects, waiting to make themselves useful in some way.

Beadweavers, especially, have a unique type of bead soup, because it tends to be chock full of those teeny-tiny little beads - you know, the 11s, the 15's, the delicas, the Charlottes.

And people manage their bead soup in different ways - some just dump it all into a big tub, or bag, and use it randomly.

I, with my advanced OCD (that's AOCD, to you lay folk), have to organize my bead soup - both by color, and by size.

So I had (HAD) about 10 little tubs, each separated compulsively by color, made up of the beads generally smaller than 4 mm.

And about 10 large tubs, again separated by color, containing all those extra beads over 4-6 mm.

This was working SO well for me, until about 11:45 this morning.


When the shelf, in my BRAND NEW cabinet, where I had carefully,. compulsively stowed these tubs, decided to collapse while I had the cabinet open -

And this is the result.

Thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands of beads, spilled all over my back room.

And quite a few naughty words shrieked when those beads dumped on my feet.

It took about an hour to scoop all these up - we used a dustpan, and just dumped them into a big box, and I'll undoubtedly be bringing that box home with me tomorrow night to sort, because it is driving me insane that they are now comingling.

I WOULD have brought them home tonight, except that tonight I have to do the monthly sales tax report AND price out all the new beads I bought yesterday from the traveling bead vendor.

What a fantastic way to spend Valentine's Day!



This is a nice shot of the gorgeous sun-catcher/ornaments that are displayed on the door to my shop - they are all made by the extremely talented Mike, of GimmeBeads.

Here's a set they have displayed in their Etsy shop.

Nice, nice work -

Happy Valentine's Day - I hope you are having more fun than I am!

Before and After

In my shop, there was a mannequin, who very helpfully displayed various necklaces. We would change her shirt with the seasons, and match her jewels accordingly.

But I got tired of looking at her, and decided to make a change last week.

Hobby Lobby, one of my favorite places, put all their floral stems and other flower-arranging stuff on sale @ 50% off last week, and I decided to put together this flower arrangement. It turned out to be much bigger than I had anticipated when I was buying all the stems, and when I looked for a place to display it in the store, the perfect spot was where Ms. Mannequin had been, so I decided she just had to go. I put my flowers there on a cute little table. I put a beautiful art glass fountain below it, and now I have the peaceful sound of trickling water all day.

And if you look closely, you can see my gold spiral necklace on the black wicker bust display.

I love the new look!