Used 'Em All Up, Now on to a Different Color...

Everyone has a different style of organization. I tend to sort by beads by color then type so blue glass is one box, blue stone is another. I also do the same with metals, gold bead caps in one box, silver in another. The other day I got an idea for a necklace with some aqua-tinted glass beads that had an unusual, bold geometric shape and grabbed the box of aquamarine and similar stones plus the aqua glass bead box. I didn't stop with the necklace...I made three plus a lanyard.

The 'workhorse' beads for these are either from a strand of really nice aquamarine roundells I've had for quite some time (in the top and middle necklaces), and the last of some strands of a rounded, organic triangular glass bead that's got a bit of shading that reminds me of the blue/green-ish glass from old Coke bottles. That's the bead in the lanyard (the long necklace is also a badge lanyard) and the middle shorter necklace, below.

I should have fiddled more with the staging of the picture to straighten out the glass dangles...

I like to work with bright colors that aren't necessarily close to each other on the color wheel - like purple and orange or purple and green (or all three) or bright accents with muted neutrals like grey, brown or black. Sometimes, though I just use up all the beads I have in the same color family, like above.

If you want to see this set in person, come to BayCon next weekend!