Storage Woes

Because my one bead container can hold no more of the round stack-able bead containers I decided to buy another container. As mentioned awhile back, I like the Sterilite show-off storage containers. The clips are secure, and there is one central handle in the lid for ease of carrying. Plus to their #1894 show-off is the perfect size for my bead containers height wise, with just a bit of extra room on top for a few plastic bags of purchases to be sorted.

Over the past 2 weeks I've stopped in a few different Target stores as I've been out. Each one I've had little luck finding any of the show-offs. They've had other Sterilite products in their stores, but not the specific style I'm looking for.

These are the show-offs which unfortunately the company doesn't sell directly. I've even checked Target's website, but they only have one Show-off, one to large for what I'm looking for. I even stopped over to Joann's website, which doesn't have to many show-offs either. I may have to stop in their store sometime, and can check then. I'm planning on buying more of the stack-able bead containers anyways. Rings and Things does have some of the stack-able containers, but only one size. I've found I like having the three different sizes for my different beads. Though I may add some to my cart the next time I'm buying other stuff from them. (It'll be interesting to see the threads on them, the ones I've been buying got redesigned at one point and have wider more stable threads).

Pretty much what it comes down to is when I store my beads I want something to put smaller containers in. Most of the bead storage stuff out there are the kind that the lid opens all the little bead pockets at once. Sure that's fine for some beads and findings, but I have way to many seed beads for something like that. Which is why I like the stack-able containers, only the beads I am currently using are open. Even for my larger (8 to 10mm) beads I like the stack-ables for. And it's also nice that I don't have each type of bead in it's own container flying around a bigger storage thing.

I'll say, storing my beads was so much easier when I didn't have so many.

Update 10:56 PM Eastern time
Because I'm to tired for a full new blog post. I just wanted to add that I chose two of the storage cases from Rings and Things and ordered them this afternoon. I chose ground shipping to save money over air, so it'll take longer then the usual 2 days of Priority Mail.

New Camera!

My husband and I got a new camera, to replace the previous one which is pretty much shot. The light sensor isn't functioning, and the model is old enough that Olympus doesn't carry parts to fix it anymore. That's alright, we'd gotten plenty of use out of the old camera.

To celebrate the new camera, I decided to enter the "Your Designs Rock" contest over at Rings and Things. I sketched out a design earlier this month, then ordered parts from R&T the other week. Thursday I finished the necklace and earrings and will be working on submitting the pictures to the contest. I had been tempted to enter earlier, but with the camera issue I wasn't sure.

Showing off what the new camera can do:

Now this isn't the piece I'm entering in the contest. I am going to wait to show it off until later. This necklace I made back in October with beads I bought with birthday money. The lovely agate stone I picked up from my local bead store. I also made matching earrings, which I didn't take pictures of yet.

The light wasn't the best today as it's a bit overcast, but the pictures for the contest turned out well. This particular necklace didn't do to bad considering it has quite a bit of dark purple in it. As we get more settled into the house I do want to set up a light box for my jewerly pictures to decrease my dependency on sunlight. (It's now light out when I get home from work during the week, but the sun is low enough that I'm still waiting for weekends to get decent light).

Here's a close up of the stone with the second strand above it. I used silver colored copper wire to hang the stone on and did a coil at the bottom. For this shot I hung the necklace on the display stand I made this morning. I cut apart a cardboard box then covered it with some printer paper. My contest necklace has enough little hanging pieces that it photographed better not laying flat.

The only editing I did with these images was cropping and resizing.