A New Way to Organize my Beads

For quite a while now I have been trying to find a way to organize my beads so that they are out where I can see them and easy to use in projects. During my last studio re-do, I hung small plastic storage baggies from wire shower curtain hooks which were hung from the pine shelving unit in my closet studio space.

This was OK but I was not completely satisfied with it for several reasons: 1) Some of the bags were smaller than others and got lost in the jumble and 2) because of the size of most of the bags, I still had to dump all of the contents of a particular bag out even if I just wanted one bead. In addition to this, I have a large drawer in my work bench which holds 9 plastic cases - the kind everyone has somewhere in their studio space; white plastic, 18 compartments or so with a hinged lid.

These storage cases are far from ideal as it's sometimes impossible to get small items out of them without some sort of scoop or something, you can't ever just dump out the items in one compartment without dumping everything and dust, lint and other little undesirable elements seem to end up in the bottom of them (*YUK!*). Also, I am finding that I have some of the same beads in two places - in a little compartment in the drawer AND in a baggie on the hook. There have been times I have wanted to use a particular bead in a project and thought I didn't have enough when in actuality I did, they just weren't stored together in the same place!

So, I have come up with a solution (I hope)!! The beads will be hung in strands in plain sight and will be easily removed if I need only one bead or the whole strand for a project. Here's what I'm doing:
1) I take a skein of cotton string, not too lightweight since it will need to carry the weight of vintage glass beads, and not too heavy since the beads need to be strung on a double thickness of it.

 

2) Cut a length roughly 18" long (since my finished strands need to be 9" or less in length), fold it in half and knot the ends together making a loop of string.

3) Cut a 5" length of nylon fishing line string it through the loop end and bring the neds of the nylon string together to form a make-shift needle. String beads onto the doubled fishing line and then onto the cotton string until you have roughly 3/4" left or until you have strung all of the beads of a particular type.

 4) Hang the loop onto a wire shower ring and hang from a hook. You now have strings of beads from which you can slip a few or a bunch depending on how many you need for a particular project. Here are a few shots of some of the strands I have finished:

So, I hope some of you might like this storage idea for your studio space. Do you have a great storage solution that works well for you? Share them in the comment space below :)