Stash-o-rama!

When I sat down to do my taxes this past spring, it occurred to me that my bookkeeping systems needs a lot of work. One of the things that needs the most improvement is my materials inventory, which is inaccurate at best. I know that if I want to fix things, I’m going to need to start by taking stock of my entire bead stash from top to bottom. The concept is horrifying!

Before I can even fathom such a task, I will need to clear out a lot of older beads, particularly those that I’ve had since long before beading became more of a business than a hobby. My ultimate goal is to have only items in my stash that also have invoices to go with them. This could take awhile.

I have a lot of good reasons for never using all these beads that I’ve been carrying around. Some of them only have tiny quantities; there aren’t enough to commit to a project, so they wait until they can be used as the occasional accent color.

Others just keep getting passed over, and I tell myself “I’ll probably need them some day”. This is, of course, ridiculous. I don’t worry about saving beads that I really, really like, because I love using them. And if I’m ever in need of a certain bead color, I have no trouble ordering them. There is no reason to hang on to these beads until the end of time.

The Inspiration:

I am starting my big destash project by using up all of my old Czech seed beads. The first thing I did was pull out all of my bead boxes and removed everything that I haven’t used in months. I sorted the seeds by color, then created an assortment of bead soups. They instantly became ten times more appealing.

The Beads:

The first bead mixture that I wanted to use was a combination of all my pinks and purples. I liked the sweetness of the colors, and I wanted to put it to good use. I grabbed some more must-go beads - a 4/o mixture of magenta and baby blue. With the dash of blue thrown in, the bead soup was now the color of cotton candy.

The Beadwork:

The most exciting thing about a bead soup that absolutely must be used up is that there are no rules or boundaries. You can make any design, any size! It’s been awhile since I made a clasp free chain necklace, so I decided to make loops of right angle weave until I ran out of beads.

Cotton Candy Swirl Necklace

I created a pattern of accent beads in groups of four: magenta, pink, blue, pink. To make it a little more interesting, I alternated which side of the chain the accent beads were on, but in groups of three. At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be a pattern at all, but there is a lack of chaos that sort of soothes the eye.

I wish I had staggered the pattern a little more, because I ran out of pale pink accents long before everything else. Still, the necklace turned out to be a whopping 70 inches. I think this is the longest necklace I’ve ever made. I’m going to enjoy this destash mission.

Copyright 2010 Inspirational Beading and The Sage's Cupboard

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