Dawno's Do It Yourself Portable Beading "Lap Desk"

I thought I'd do something a bit different and start off by sharing a simple, portable, lap sized stringing set up I use from time to time. I love my Bead Buddy lap desk, but it is a bit bulky, and I primarily use it when I'm trying to figure out design. Once I have that accomplished I continue my stringing with the lap desk for its portability, but sometimes my work is simple enough that I'm ready to go without having to 'draft' it on the design board. For example, the "Chateau Picard" lanyard I mentioned last night, for that I'm just using two types of beads and one type of spacer and the pattern isn't complex, so there's not much need for the whole design board/lap desk kit.

I've taken a wide shoebox lid and fit an 8"x8" bead mat inside of it. By the way, bead mats are just a square of vellux material - you could probably find it at a fabric store and cut your own - in my googling I found a cute one at Etsy with edging, a sewn in tape measure and tie strings at the ends so the whole thing could be rolled up - probably not a good idea to try it with beads still inside, though *grin*.

Where there's space left over in the box top, I've put some small plastic containers and the spool of stringing wire. I used the box top, initially, to sort the lighter colored faceted roundel beads from the darker ones, and darker pinched oval beads from the lighter ones, so my finished lanyard necklace would be uniform in color - thus the tiny spoon lying there, which I used to help sort and set aside the unneeded beads.

The bead mat keeps the beads from rolling all over the place and makes it easy to pick them up on the wire since they stay pretty well put, the plastic holders keep the smaller spacers from finding their way under the mat. Since the box top is just 8" x 12", it fits very nicely on the lap.

By the way, here's the finished necklace lanyard, tentatively named "Chateau Picard"

(click image to enlarge)

More Sorting Beads than Beading Accomplished this Weekend

As I mentioned, I did go out looking for briolettes, didn't find what I wanted, but I still didn't come home empty handed, picked up some copper and antique gold colored spacers and bead caps, and a few new beads (lovely peridot green ones) at Global Beads yesterday.

Spent a great deal of time yesterday and today organizing and cleaning my work space and various bead storage bins - I can only go so long with it all splayed out around me - eventually I don't have room to walk around if I don't. Last night and this morning I played around some olive colored glass beads using inexpensive silver colored wire wrapped loops, but I didn't like how it was turning out, so disassembled it. I like the idea I had, so I'll give it another try.

Tonight I decided that I need to make more earrings, so I got started with these glass bead earrings from some beads out of a glass bead mix batch (not attached to earwires yet):

...and began work on this lanyard necklace tentatively named "Chateau Picard" - may add a vintage year, will have to do some fact checking - because the citron colored glass made me think of champagne. I think it's not just the lighting of the photograph that makes some of the faceted roundels look a bit darker than the others, so tomorrow when I have some daylight I'm going to sort the roundels and make sure I'm using just one shade.