Confession time, part two

I have a lot of beads. No, really. A lot of beads. I store my beads in 18 compartment fishing tackle containers, and at this moment, I have 75+ of them. And in many cases, there are more than one type of bead in each compartment.

I'm thinking that a little spring cleaning is in order. I had a great conversation with a dear friend of mine, who is also a jewelry designer, and we talked about how different the beading world is nowadays. How it's grown up so much, how it's beginning to align itself with the fashion industry so much more. And we talked about how some beads stay in style forever, and how some bead trends are a flash in the pan. Which got me to thinking about how I have oodles of some beads, and their time has passed, or I've learned through trial and error that they're just not that versatile.

Example?

Long baroque pearls with offset holes.



Sure, they're gorgeous. And they're pearls, and I love pearls, and buyers of jewelry love pearls, too. But they're a bit impractical, except for very specific designs, like this one:



I've made other jewelry with them, but it's a challenge. Which leads me to think that a spring cleaning is in order. I think I'm going to go through all of the containers and find beads that I'm just not going to use.

That's the good thing about having a bead business as well as a jewelry business; I'll just bag up the pearls and sell them at the next few shows.