Stash Busting – beaders edition

It’s so easy to accumulate beads as a beader or jewellery maker. So we thought we’d collate a few ideas together to help use some of your beads – or if you really need an excuse to buy a bead mix – then this is it! Here’s 3 great projects for stash busting – beaders edition!

We all know how it happens, for every project or bracelet you make, you always think, I’ll just get a few extra in case I’ve mis-calculated or lose one… well inevitably they all build up especially when added to all those “ooh they’re pretty I’ll get a couple off those” bead purchases too.

Angela’s Anything Goes necklace

I love this necklace, every time Angela wear it I find myself admiring all the beads. Angela used all her random beads (roughly size 5mm – 9mm) in every colour you could imagine. She’s put them with a simple size 8 Galvanised Gold seed bead. Used as a spacer in between each larger bead and it’s all threaded on S-Lon cord. It’s a long necklace, measuring 138cm. This means it’s super versatile, as you can see in the images below of Angela wearing it. Worn wrapped around her neck 3 times, twice and singularly (with a chunky knot).

Angela incorporated all sort of beads and colours including Semi-precious, glass, ceramic, matte, shiny, opaque, transparent – literally everything. I asked her if she had a theme and she replied very honestly “It was every bead I had out went into the necklace, so that that I didn’t have to tidy it away” it’s as good an answer as any (& made me chuckle)!

This is a great stash buster, but also a great project for using random beads. Here are a few bead mixes I think would work well for a similar design. Just in case you’re new to beading and jewellery making – a great way to start building that stash!

Wire Off Cuts Necklace

I have recently created a necklace using headpin off cuts, I created new pins from the waste of a previous project. I selected new beads for this. However this could also be a perfect stash busting project as you can use any beads you like, you could use standard head pins, wire or off cuts. As I was creating this necklace I thought a mixture of seed beads would look great, maybe in stacks of 5 on each pin, in a colour theme. You can find the instructions to make this necklace on our free projects page here.

Beading Fun

A workshop we ran many years ago now (though I have been thinking of re-running something similar) as it’s such a fun creative design. Is our Freeform Peyote bracelet, a fun beaded cuff design. This uses a mixture of different sizes seed beads and Delica beads, with added embellishments using larger glass beads. It’s the perfect project for any leftover seed beads, and small beads mixes (like bead soup). You could also incorporate different bead stitches too.

Top Tip

Here’s a top tip for organising your random bead stash; this is all your odds and ends of beads. Maybe the spare beads from a kit, or you bought a few too many beads for a project or there’s only a pinch of seed beads left in a pack. Or more often that not, I can’t be bothered to put the few beads away after finishing a project (yep, I’m sure there several of you guilty of this too – life is too short for that). However what I do is store them in pots that are easy to access. I organise the beads roughly by size and keep them in clear glass jars or plastic pots. So I can see what’s in there without having to tip the contents out, they also look nice and colourful on my shelf.

For further inspiration for what to do with your bead stash head to our Free Projects page.  Our check out all our projects and tips over on our YouTube Channel.

Thanks for reading – happy Beading!