For me having a good container to hold my beads is essential. I want it to be clear so I can play around with the colors without having to worry about spilling all those tinny seed beads all over the floor or my work space (which has happened many times and is a pain to clean up). I also want to be able to easily get my beads in and out of the containers. (In my experience most bead containers don’t actually accomplish this, they generally work better for big beads but if you try to get seed beads out of them you end up chasing half of them around unable to get them out.)

Below are pictures of a container I found at Michaels which works fabulously There are thirty small screw-top containers, they each hold about 7.5 grams of seed beads (your average small vile size) inside a larger box with a lid. This way you never have to worry about your beads getting all mixed together. I also found it useful to tape the lid to the box like a hinge (I used clear packing tape) so I could easily flip up and down the lid without fumbling it or not being able to find it when I was done.

One of the thing I have found helpful is to sketch out my ideas, whether I just want to remember a certain color scheme, try to recreate a piece I saw or to give me something to come back to so I don’t forget how I was going to do it. I don’t know about you, but I always seem to have at least five projects going on at once. If I stop and come back to it, the piece usually comes out really different than my original idea. Thats where a sketch comes in it allows you to visualize what you like and what you don’t then later you can look back on it as a reference.

Here are some of my idea sketches…