I get asked a lot about my bead storage and as today I'm busy tidying up the disaster zone that my bead room has become recently it's the perfect opportunity to snap some photos.

I store all my Delica beads in boxes by number (001-99, 100-199, 200-299 etc) which makes it easier for me to find specific numbers (which is usually how I search for them) but also means that if I'm searching for a colour I have to look through each box which always throws up new colour ideas and variations I may not have considered if I just looked by colour.

I have less Aikos so these are in their own box, and then I have a box which contains mixes I've made and lots of tubes and bags where the number has come off and I haven't had a chance to sit and re-identify them.

All my other beads are stored in larger boxes and then sorted by type and then by colour. So all my wooden beads are in one box and so are my lampwork, daggers etc whereas my seed beads are sorted more specifically, especially where I have lots of a certain type (size 11 greens I'm talking about you).

With my seed beads there's of course a lot of overlap between colours (green & blue or red & purple for example) so again when I'm looking for a bead I always make sure to search through boxes which overlap to ensure I choose just the right colour or more often than not, a completely different one that zings up the colour scheme.

Doing all this tidying-up has really hammered it home to me that I simply have too many beads that I'll never use so look out for me selling lots of items in the New Year...