The truth is I am a messy messy beader. Here is a typical tour around the studio of bead trays.
This is actually a current tray, the making of the third color way for Aelia's Beading by the Bay project.
As I try and abandon combinations of colors, I push the beads to the side and spill out the next choice, those two front little piles are the winning combination...
This is left over from Charming, a book project
This was a play day I had a while back, a project yet unrealized, but man I love these beads together, they make me happy
Oh, another book project, finished except for a clasp....
I see people with little neat piles of beads....I get the efficiency of it all....I just don't bead that way and I see it unlikely to change.But I do have some organization skills. Jeannette introduced me to Talenti gelato and sorbets, and the plastic tubs with screw on lids make brilliant seed bead storage. I'm trying to eat my way through enough containers to store my rather large back stock of seed beads.
So what about you, messy or neat? (Katie I already know you're neat, Liz I suspect is somewhere in between....Lisa? Ellen? (I'm guessing neat), Terry? Ingrid? Bev? Karen? Gabri? Jamie?) Inquiring minds want to know.
So what about you, messy or neat? (Katie I already know you're neat, Liz I suspect is somewhere in between....Lisa? Ellen? (I'm guessing neat), Terry? Ingrid? Bev? Karen? Gabri? Jamie?) Inquiring minds want to know.
53 comments:
I'm definitely a mess beader chaos .... just the caos inspires me. I admire those who manage to keep the beads in order to be organized, but unfortunately not by me..
Marcia, I had to laugh. I hoard those Talenti containers and organize all my tubes. Thought I was the only one who had discovered them...
So I guess that means you won't be sending me yours heh? Only so much gelato I can eat....
MESSY!
I must have my stuff at hand and visible. Also, my penchant for layered patterns and colors means there is a good chance my studio looks messy even when it's neat!
(but I love nothing more than spending a long day organizing the mess!)
I'm a really messy beader and love the inspiration that comes when the original project is done and the mess is left. I always try to do something small from the leftovers.
Neat at the micro (project) level but messy at the macro (top of my workspace) level. I started using project trays when I read one of Kate's posts, and that's helped, but honestly, the top of my workspace is usually a disaster. I'm pretty obsessive about keeping my beads separated in the tray, probably because I'm a new beader and it still takes a lot of concentration for me to get it all right.
One Woman, I love that theory....I could make a lot of small projects from left over trays.
I am somewhere in the middle. I like my beads to be in neat little piles on my tray to work and always put the beads back in their containers when I am done or packing up the project to be finished at another time. Where I am messy is with the bead containers. Rarely do they end up where they belong. I have bins of beads that need to be sorted and put where they belong - LOL!
I keep my work tray fairly tidy but my bead box is another matter. I do have my containers coded by type and colour but frequently am too lazy to find the right one and just chuck the beads in the nearest box.
Messy, then neat, then messy.
I am happy to help you eat your way to more bead containers!
Definitely start out neat and then they all just meld together. I love looking at the beads on the mat when they are mixed. It gives you a sense of the finished product.
Messy when I'm working...oh wait...messy all the time. I do pick up what is in my tray & make more things from the same beads...probably why I seem to always work in the same colors...too lazy to put things away.
I am messy while I am working, but like my desk(work area) clean others. I will admit to it not always being organized, especially after bead shopping. It can take week to organize and put up the new beads.
I love that you already know my answer before asking...you know me so well :) you probably also know that I'm dying to help "clean up" your trays for you!
I've been known to separate bead soup that I purchased as bead soup so I can get to ONLY what I need out of it :)
What a great bonus to your bead storage! I love that gelato. I am a very messy beader and don't see any change any time soon.
Ann
http://mycriticaleye.com
I am very neat when I stitch, but I make an unholy mess when I work with wire and jump rings and such.
I just discovered the Talenti gelato at xmas! I wish I didn't love it so much but I too, noticed what a spectacular bead container they make. Oh and by the way, I am very messy!
I'm more of an organized chaos beader; my bead tray looks like a mess but I have it organized enough to package all the seed beads back into tubes when I'm done with a project. I'm curious about your methods; do you sort your seed beads when you're done with a piece, or do they go into a bead soup?
Cindy, you don't really want to know the answer.....I pour them all into a tall vase....well I pick out the expensive stuff first, and I make a 'repair kit' with a few of the beads in a ziplock and toss it in a drawer and then....I pour them all into a tall glass vase
Kelly, yes I wish I loved the sorbet more then the gelato....
I am so organized with my bead storage and with my beading trays that it borders on OCD...bead soup drives me crazy and I will spend hours separating it out!
I always have neat little piles of beads on my project tray...and I even cover them with a spare bead mat so the piles don't get all mixed together when I put it aside for later!
I love seeing the inspirational chaos on your bead trays though! It is beautiful and I know the amazing things that come out of that chaos...but my first instinct is to "clean" it up for you! Haha!
I'm messy... one look at my work station can confirm that lol I got really tired of having to grab the tweezers to sort out all the different beads when I was finished with them though so I bought a couple painters palettes, the ones with the little dips and hollows for paint and use them for my seed beads...not that it helps much lol
Well, I'm sure the vase is gorgeous in and of itself, and it sounds like an ideal source for bead archaeology. Imagine looking through each layer of bead soup in the vase, representing each project in chronological order, seeing how your bead and color choices change over time... It's fascinating just to think about it!
I feel so much better now! I'm a really messy beader and have lots of project trays full of starts or ends but I've always been so embarrassed by it that I take another 'proper', tidy tray when I go to my beading group!
I do love sorting piles of beads though when the mood takes me. (Usually when I'm putting off something else that I don't want to do!)
Katie meet Tia, Tia meet Cindy, Cindy meet Katie....I think you have very similar beading habits!
Definitely messy! I have tried being neater but it doesn't work for me. My beads start out in tidy little piles but always end up in chaos on my bead mat. Think I am like that anyway - in my day job my desk is always in a state of 'organised choas'; but I know exactly where everything is. So beading is also organised chaos for me!
I would say that am a messy beader. I have all sorts of things on my bead board. And many Ufo's.
I would say that am a messy beader. I have all sorts of things on my bead board. And many Ufo's.
I am coming out of the closet and confessing I am a messy beader! I need things out and about my work area to be inspired. I think it's time to create a little chaos on my bead table.
messy,neat,messy messy messy...such a great post and I am going to look into those Talenti containers.
I started a whole blog about this last winter, The Messy Beaders' Club. I tend to keep my bead piles neat when I'm working on a project, only because I like to put them all back in the same tube, box or bag. But that's where the neatness ends. I then toss the bead container into a drawer or a bigger bag, and that's it. I have to rely on my memory to remember which beads got tossed into which bags or drawers... It really isn't the best system around!
Definitely neat! Neat plies on my beading tray. Put them back when using other colors and even put the tubes back in the right drawers!! Yak, sounds rather OC.
mmmmm...
Do like the bead soup on your colorful tray, Marcia.
Maybe I have to force myself and make some soup myself.
Dolla you won't be sorry.... I currently have a caramel cookie crunch to finish, but so far my favorite gelato has been the black cherry and the favorite sorbet the blood orange.
I do find the look of beads mixed up on the tray appealing....I am a little neater about how I store my beads, it's just the trays that are messy which seems opposite of the neat tray girls.
I'm not sure which Karen you were asking for a response from, but I'll jump in. I'm definitely a neat beader. The only thing that's messy are the left over beads from kits. The left over beads just seem to pile up in their little baggies. When I can't stand it any longer, I sort them by size into my organized bead boxes. But, they don't get their own little individual boxes unless there's a sizable amount. I think this fear of chaos is why the idea of doing a freeform piece makes me break out in a cold sweat. :)
I try to be neat, and it works if I have precise colours and sizes to work with. Let me design my own, however, and chaos ensues. Piles of beads everywhere!
Maravilloso.....
Messy messy messy!
I tend to be a neat beader only because I do not have a bead room....boo hoo...my house was built in 1826...is very funky and is packed with antiques, folk art, black dolls, celluloid toys and vintage show posters, just to name some of the madness....since I am organized with all of that, it tends to spill over to my beading....I do love those plastic photo boxes for my class projects...don't have too many of yours in there, Marcia....always seem to finish yours...and can never do just one color. Love your new pallett for charmed....your blog does make me smile....would love to see you sit and bead one day!
Oh my heavens! The messy took my breath away and then made me shudder. Put me in the column of neat beaders. I like my nice neat little piles, which I pick up when I'm done with that particular color.
Realistically, this comes from having cats, who may or may not understand "Stay off the bead table!"
When I'm putting together bead embroidery designs, my worktable is a mess. The happy accidents lead to some striking pieces. But every day... I'm still shuddering! As well as being entranced by the play of colors.
Tia and Cindy - I think it was last year (?) that there was a discussion on Facebook where I and a couple of others offered to come to Marcia's and "help out" by sorting the vase out for her :o) Just hearing about it gets me twitching to get on a plane and go give her the "help" her vase so desperately needs (in my opinion, anyway...) :o)
Definitely messy. I try and keep the accent beads to one side for rehoming afterwards, but often it doesn't happen. The seedies get scooped together, and put in a spare empty tube, then I have various soup recipes of combinations I know I like!! When I want soup I pull one out and 'season it' with anything else I need to (say) match a focal bead.
I totally missed this post yesterday. I am a neat tray girl ONLY because all too often somehow the vacuum finds that stray thread and 6-7 inches of my work is sucked into oblivion because if you don't know this I will tell you that once fireline gets on the beater bar all the beads are split in two. Since I have an extremely limited stash a neat tray means no lost beads. LOL
Hi Katie, that sounds like a great idea! I'm in the San Diego area pretty frequently as it is, so maybe we could have a vase-sorting party someday ;)
I'm generally messy, I have UFOs tangled together or mixed in the bead storage, mixed collections of bead tubes and bags waiting to be put back to storage... I don't use a tray though, I have lids from old seed bead boxes that I pour the beads on (the store where I got my first beads from, had their own boxes). I do have to put different types on the same lid when I don't have enough of them, but I do try to keep them to their own sides, so it won't take hours to put them back into their tubes or bags. I travel with my projects, so I have to re-bag the beads often. I use take-out and ice cream containers to haul materials where ever I go.
Putting beads in a vase O_O I... I... what... no...
I tend to reasonable tidyness LOL. I'm not completely organized on the tray, but things don't overlap much. I keep my stash organized by bead size rather than color. However, when I'm designing I will pull out tons of beads from the stash. I try to get the ones I"m not using back pretty quickly tho.
I am a super messy beader!!!!
Well Marcia, I too missed this post at first - the Christmas and New Year's holidays messed up my computer time! - but you guessed it.
I start out organized, and I store my supplies in a very organized manner(although waves of projects do build up and have to be sorted out every few months).
On my beading surface - I use Vellux mats, and stack them on top of each other at times - I pour out each group of beads somewhat separated, but when they blend and mix I really enjoy the look.
I do put them all back in their respective containers at the end of the project, though.
It's my usual life dichotomy!
Ahhh, messy. Or neat? I have organized chaos. My current project is usually fairly neat, but I know am a stacker. I don't put things away. They just pile up. I do use project bags (picture pencil cases) to keep your projects together.
Yup, messy and neat. That's me...
Hi Marcia,
Back home after a trip to Barcelona, have you ever been there ? It's a great city and in the winter, the light is very special, warm and beautiful.
I'm a rather neat beader, I can't help it ! I need some kind of order or I get confused and I completely mess my work. But I also have to admit ... I love to sort my beads by size, colour, type ... It brings me so much joy. My boyfriend says I'm a freak, I'm not I'm passionate that's all :o)
Kind regards and happy 2012 to you and all our readers !
Ingrid
Messy. Very very messy. I do use project trays, though and love them but all of the neat beaders would go into seizures if they saw the mess I make when doing any type of crafting.
Im just been beading for four months and what i realized its that is not about being messy or neta, its all about enjoying it, when you love beading anything else matters.
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