Sorting Your Beads

When I first started beading I went out to my local craft store and found that my craft store carried a line of pony beads and mini pony beads by this particular company that manufactured these beads. I purchased over the time several bags of different colors as I wanted to build up my bead supply and as I was just getting into doing beaded banners I needed a lot of different colors for these. At the time I sorted them by colors and put them into zip lock bags which are a great secure way to store your beads. Then my craft store added to their stock another company that manufactures beads and I was happy as could be so I went and bought some of these beads as well. I went home opened up and bags and put these new bags of beads into the bags with my other beads, never thinking anything different. When I went to get out my beads to do a beading project I thought oh oh, the beads from one company were not exactly the same as they were from the other company. I noticed that the whites were not quite the same whites, the reds were just a bit different, the sizes of the beads and the shape of them were a bit different and the end result is that these differences would be showing up in my completed bead project. Not the end result that I wanted to see especially since it takes time to do any project. I ended up taking each bag of beads and sorting them into separate bags and marking which company that they came from. I even put on the bag the color number, and any other information I thought would be good to have if I ever needed to get more. Lesson learned, make sure that you keep all your beads separated by company for sure as this will guarantee that your bead project will be uniform in color and size. Having said that, I have also noticed that even from the same company the size and shape can be just slightly different, so when I sit down to do a project I have my beads ready but do watch which ones I choose to string on in the same row, it does make a difference! ~Happy Beading~ Jenny and Jan Copyright © 2003-2006 The Bead Shak All Rights Reserved