It wasn’t until I was about done cleaning out and organizing my bead board case and my “recent” (haha) purchases that it dawned on me… I should have taken before and after pictures. You see, I have a very bad habit of leaving small remnants of beads from my projects on my bead board or in my case, with the excuse that I might need one of the same beads soon or that I’ll just go through everything and put it all away after I’m finished with the next project. Until a few weeks ago I had two bags full of mixed up beads, charms, stringing material, and tools that my husband and I had picked out to use for our wedding jewelry last April to go through. Then in my bead board case I had leftover beads and headpins that I hadn’t put away from dozens of projects over the last 3 years along with miscellaneous thread cuttings, and hundreds of tiny seed beads littering the bottom of the case.

It took me quite awhile to figure out where to put everything and get all the seed beads sorted out from the thread and bits of wire clippings….needles to say I gave up on separating all the seed beads, now I just have a little bag of mixed beads. Finally my bead board and case are completely empty for the first time probably since I started keeping the board in a case, which would be oh 4 or so years ago. I did remember to take pictures of the final result though, so hopefully if I do start to get lazy in my clean up again I can look at the pictures and remember how nice it is to be organized.

And here are a few pictures with the board and the newest piece I made. It’s a bracelet made with Swarovski Crystal, Sterling Silver beads, Sterling Silver bead filigree bead caps, Gold Filled Beads, Gold Filled Bead Caps, and Swarovski Crystal Pearls on sterling silver colored wire with a Sterling Silver Lobster Claw clasp. I tried taking some quick pictures of it by itself, but it is really hard to take pictures of because the light reflects off of it at so many different angels. I’ll try to get some better shots of it up soon.