Traveling Lightly with Beads

September was a crazy-dazy month with not one, not two, but three of out town trips.  These included a visit to family in Southern Oregon, the bead retreat where I made Dali, and finished up with a transatlantic cruise (more about that in an upcoming post).  With all of this travel, I've had a great deal of incentive lately to rethink the way I travel with beads.

One of my 'problems' is while I think I know what I want to work on, my ideas often change as I get into a project.  It's so frustrating when I know I have the perfect beads for the piece I'm working on; in my studio a hundred (or a thousand) miles away back home.  The obvious solution is to bring LOTS of different types of beads, right?  Except for the little problem that beads get heavy fast!  This might not be a problem if you're traveling by car.  But we were planning a two-week trip for two with minimal luggage: two suitcases total (one carryon-size), plus backpacks. 

To make it a little more complex; I never know when I start whether the piece will later become a tutorial, or possibly even a kit.  Just in case, I need to be able to figure out not only what beads I used, but how many of each. 

Oh, and I also wanted to be able to bead wherever I was, so I wanted to bring some sort of rigid beading tray as well as my bead mat. 

My Goals

• Bring as many type of beads as possible
• Keep their weight and packing volume as low as possible 
• Ability to track/guesstimate the amounts I used in any projects while away
• Bead storage should also serve as beading tray, protect finished projects
• Make it as easy as possible to see the beads (I just added this one!) 

 

The Solution:  Beading "Kits" and a Repurposed Beading Box

 

weighing out beads

For bead storage, I decided to make up 'bead kits', using little plastic baggies for each bead type. The largest bags I used were 2x3"s. These larger bags I reserved for the sea glass which wouldn't fit safely into smaller bags.  I wanted everything to lay as flat as possible to reduce the chances of breakage in transport.  Most of the baggies were 1 1/2" x 2".

Compact, but jumbled

Using my little scale I measured out my seed beads; 5-12grams each for most of my size 11s and 8s, about half that for 15s. Then labeled each of the baggies with bead types and weight.  This way, when I returned, I could re-weigh any beads I used and simple subtraction would give me amounts used!  This took me the better part of an afternoon, but it went fast, especially as I spent the time listening to an audiobook.  But lots of little baggies are hard to track; they can get lost and it can feel like searching through a needle in a haystack to find anything.

Kit Building Tip: put the tape on the paper, not the baggie 

 The next step was to find a way to organize and store the beads so I could quickly see everything.  For this, I used half-sheets of heavy cardstock and double-sided tape.  Working up from the bottom of each sheet, I arranged the baggies in color families.  The finished 'kits' it incredibly easy to see everything. And they look pretty too!  Best yet, I've found if you stick the tape to the paper first and press it down well, it makes it easier to remove and return the baggies, and the tape will continue to hold them securely in place through several repeats.

re-purposed as a beading box (thanks John!)

  That just left the question of what to do for my beading surface.  The solution here was much simpler - a beautiful cigar box a friend had gifted to me.  Made from an extremely light-weight wood, the box is quite slim, less than two inches tall.  Opened, both sides lay almost flat.  I cut Vellux beading mats to fit both the lid and the bottom.  I prefer working out of the lid, as the lip is not as deep.  The box holds all of my beading tools, and two-three of my beading kits or finished pieces. 

Inside the box, with stored kits & beading supplies

Using the lid for a beading tray and the box for storage

The beads that traveled with me

Stacked, the five kits are still smaller than most hardcover books

Every time I travel, it seems I try different storage solutions, looking for the 'best' way to carry the widest variety of beads.   I've been working through iterations of my current system for the past year; so far it seems to be working pretty well.  On this latest trip, I brought eighty-nine baggies filled with different types of beads and findings organized into five 'kits'.  The whole kaboodle (five kits, bead box and beading tools) weighed in at just under 2lb, 6oz (just over a kilogram).   Not too bad! 

So that's my current solution.  What are your favorite ways to travel lightly with beads?

The Lost Week and my Bead Fest Trip Report

What ever happened to those colds where you wake up one morning with a sore throat and a fever, spend the day lounging and sleeping in bed and wake up the next morning feeling right as rain? Of if it was a particularly bad cold, it might last two days? I want one of those the next time (hopefully two or three years from now) that I get sick!

 It's now been a little over a week and I'm finally starting to feel like I might be ready to rejoin the human race. Whatever I caught, this chest cold really knocked me on my pins. I hate, hate, hate cough syrup (did I mention I hate cough syrup?), yet I found myself taking it ever three hours like clockwork to keep my cough under control. Without it, I coughed until my vision would start to go black.  And it was hard enough to breathe when I wasn't coughing

I did consider that I maybe ought to go to the doctors, but that would have entailed either walking or taking a bus, both of which were beyond my abilities. And even if I did drive, the fear of having a coughing jag while behind the wheel would have kept me at home.

 In truth, I started to feel a bit better over the weekend. Just in time to help my husband move everything in our basement to get ready for the earthquake retrofitting which started yesterday. We live in Seattle in a 98 year old house that has never been properly pinned to its foundations.  Thought it was about time to fix that, and when I scheduled it back in August, it seemed like a full week to sort through the basement after Bead Fest would be more than enough time. Oh well....

To prepare, we had to move Everything away from the Entire perimeter of the basement. Made more difficult by the fact that A) it's a very small house, so there's not a lot of 'center' to be had and B) we've lived here twelve years. And then, of course there's the fact that neither Joe nor I could lift anything without running for the inhaler or cough bottle. Needless to say, it was an interesting weekend, and I got very little else accomplished beyond playing basement sherpa. Which is all to explain why it's taken me so long to write about what I really wanted to talk about - Bead Fest Texas!

Friends pitched in with last minute kit building

First I have to shout out a thanks to my friends who came over Tuesday night to help me with last minute kit preparation.  Despite weeks of advance prep, I was down to the wire.  My printer had been running non stop since the previous Friday (it's a little slow).  They packaged the last batch of needles, cut kit covers, folded instructions and helped me put all the various pieces into the appropriate kits.  Yeah!

Trial run in my hotel room

Then I had Wednesday to fit it all into two suitcases, with kits definitely taking precedence over clothes.  Since the kit making had gone until the last minute, I really didn't know what it all would look like 'on display' until Thursday night when I set it up in my hotel room, just to see. 

My table at the Meet the Teachers session

Friday morning I packed it all back up and dragged my larger suitcase over to the Expo Center for the Meet the Teachers session.  Here's a picture that I got one of the people visiting table to snap.  Believe it or not, people were actually there, but they parted like the Red Sea as soon as the camera came out.  Luckily, they came back just as soon as the picture was taken.  In the left corner of the picture you can see Joan Babcock.  She and her husband Jeff were both incredibly nice.   Jeff, especially was very willing to share tips and advice and he highly encouraged me to apply to teach at Bead and Button.  That is my dream for 2014 - we'll see.  Oh, and it turns out they also use CreateSpace to print their books. 

Mandi Ainsworth and Rolanda Patterson

Also got to meet several of the other teachers, including Rolanda Patterson, who taught the Steampunk Cogs class. Wish I'd gotten a picture of her standing up - I had to borrow this one off of Facebook so you could see a glimpse of her awesome costume.  Since she was teaching a steampunk inspired class, she came dressed for the part in a perfect Victorianesque ensemble that she'd made herself.

Mandi and I pose for a quick photo

And Rolanda introduced me to Mandi Ainsworth, another incredible bead artist and instructor as well as the editor of the Bead Circle Network.  Amongst other things, her blog has a series of podcast interviews, including Marcia DeCoster and Jean Campbell. 

Technically, the meet and greet was only supposed to run for an hour and a half, but somehow over four hours had passed by the time I made it back to my hotel room just across the way from the Expo Center.  Then it was time to prep and repack for my first class. 

Elizabeth Ward with the bead storage systems she designed

I didn't make it to check out the shopping until the next day.  My goals were to look for things that I couldn't easily find in Seattle.

First thing that caught my eye was Elizabeth's storage solutions.  Lots of little clear boxes all housed in easily portable trays with nicely locking lids.  Better yet, she was handing out samples of the little containers.  The lids seem very secure, but are easy to open - both huge wins.  The little indentations in the lids are to make it easy to pull them out of a full tray.

If I hadn't been traveling by plane, I would have picked up at least one tray.  But I was worried about fitting everything in on the return trip (my suitcase was right at the weight limit on the way out).  And it turns her storage trays are available through Fire Mountain Gems.  These are definitely going on my Christmas list!

Bead storage containers, Katie Holland's art bead, Cathy's bird charms

I'd purchased a really cool art bead from fellow instructor Katie Holland the previous day.  It's felted wool with her textured metal bead caps and a copper tube rivet.

Also picked up some fun silver bird charms made by Cathy Collison of Trinket Foundry.  They're cut from antique silver-plated tea trays.  I love how the designs from the tray turn into feathers and body contours for the birds. 

Cathy Collison and her glass rings

Cut and tumbled glass rings by Cathy Collision

Cathy is such a fun person and I love her work!  She makes these cool cut and tumbled glass rings which drew me into her booth with covetous glee. 

And then her stories made me want them even more!  I left her booth with a number of her rings and lots of stories.  The large greyed-green ring is from the bottom of a wine bottle.  It's convex on one side, and completely concave on the other.  The wide sky blue ring is from an antique electrical insulator - the type my grandmother used to collect.  And the gold ring she said she'd dusted with something she called 'fairie powder' before annealing it to give it a lovely oilslick finish up close. 

But my favorites, story wise are the red to orange rings.  Turns out she cut them from red glass votive candle holders.  Did you know that the longer red glass is exposed to heat, the darker it becomes?  Cathy says that's why red glass candle holders often seem to get lighter as you go towards the top.  I have an incredible soft spot for red glass as I inherited a collection of it from that same grandmother who collected electrical insulators.  We had a lot in common.  So I purchased a set of graduated rings and at some point I will make a piece specially for Lela.

Oh, and I used one of Cathy's rings to make my Owl Brooch from my previous post.  

My classes themselves were tiny.  Definitely need to keep working on getting my name out there.  But my students seemed to enjoy and I know I had a great time getting to know them and sharing the techniques.  One of my student regularly attends Bead and Button and takes numerous classes there each time.  So I asked her what she thought of my kits and handouts and she said they compared favorably to anything she'd received there.  She loved the detailed photographs and illustrations. So that made me very, very happy!

And I got a chance to meet and chat with Melinda Barta, the editor Beadwork magazine.  She is incredibly nice and personable.  We chatted a bit about copyright and I want to follow up with her on that.  I've had some concerns about having my designs published in a magazine and losing the copyright so that I could no longer teach or make kits for those designs without violating the copyright agreement.  Looks like that might not be an issue.  I need to follow up with her via email - another thing I haven't done due to illness. 

But there you have it, my trip report for Bead Fest Texas.   Any of you who have borne with me to this point definitely deserves a medal! 

Lunchbox of Holding

I received this little beauty as a bit of a gag gift for my birthday.  My friends all know I'm a bit of a Disney nut, so this was the wrapping for their 'birthday survival kit'.  The plan was that I'd then pass the lunchbox along to me niece.  A grown woman can't possibly cart around a princess lunchbox was their supposition, I think. 

Since I'll see Emme in person in December, I figured I'd give it to her then.  In the meantime, I could use it as a bead storage box.  Seemed like a clever plan.




The lunchbox isn't as big as the one I had as a kid.  I had a Little House on the Prairie lunchbox, with a matching thermos.  I carried it back and forth through at least three grades of school.  Laura, Mary, Ma and Pa were my constant lunchtime companions.   How about you; do you remember who was on your lunchbox? 

It may be smaller than the old style lunch boxes, but it holds a ton.  This thing is like the Tardis or a bag of holding (yep, my geeky antecedents are leaking out)!  It's incredible how much it holds!  Just look:

 A peak inside, but wait, it gets better....

All of that was packed inside the lunchbox - including my normal travel bead box.  It's a full bead studio on the go!  I fear that Emme may not get her lunchbox after all.  Or maybe I'll have to go out and buy her her own.  I think this one's taken. 

Happy, Happy, Happy Day

I made it into the studio today!  Last night, I told a friend I was bound and determined that today would be the day.  Curious, she asked what I had planned.  The truth was, I didn't really know; my only true plan was to walk through the door.  Just snatching the time to do that has been difficult enough this spring.  Whatever I did once there would be gray.

The way things have been going.  Just showing up would be enough.

But as it turns out, I did end up doing a bit of something.  Decided it needed to be a play day, so I spent it making a bunch of little rings.  And since it's Bead Table Wednesday, I thought I'd share a shot of my table, just as I finished up my fifth (and last) ring of the day.

Like the brightly colored little cup bowls?  I picked them up as Safeway earlier this week.  They had them on sale as part of their 'picnic ware'.  Also bought a platter that I can use as a beading table when on the go and some smaller square plates (you can see the little plates in my first picture).  Gotta love the season!  Picnicware is perfect for the studio - durable and brightly colored.

And here's a closeup of my new rings, with a bead tube as a handy ring display.  So, nothing big, nothing fancy.  But sometimes it's enough just to play.

Protection from Being Bored

I love to travel, but I hate the boredom that comes from long waits in uncomfortable airport seats or long plane flights.  In self-defense, I pack a bag of supplies as 'protection against being bored'.  Art supplies are always high on my list of 'must brings', but they can be both heavy and cumbersome.  And tubes paints are pretty much verbotten if you're doing carry-on these days.

My ongoing quest has been to find the lightest, smallest, most useful supplies and in the past couple of trips, I believe I may have finally perfected my selection. 

I packed my beading kit with supplies for two different projects:  finishing the beaded back of a cabochon setting, and experimenting with ideas for the Bead Soup challenge.  The beading cloth fits an airplane tray table almost perfectly. As long as I have day light, I can get a fair bit of beading done.

If I'd remembered my camera to take process photos, I could have easily finished the cabochon back, but I didn't.  Sigh. My camera will likely come with me in the future. I'd left it behind figuring I could use my iPhone to take vacation pictures.  It's is great for a lot of things, but not macro photographs.

 And of course, I needed a sketchbook and some drawing materials.  In the past I've been known to bring 2-3 sketchbooks of varying sizes.  This time, I ran with only a little moleskin (same as my Alaska trip).  The paper is thin and bleeds through, so I only use every other 2-page spread, but that still gives plenty of drawing space for a one-to-two week trip.  Add a drawing pen, an home-made watercolor box and a water brush, and you have a complete kit that fits in a largish pocket and can be used anywhere. I've painted on planes, standing in line, on the beach and any number of other odd places. 

Housed in an Altoid tin, I filled 24 empty half-pans with my favorite water colors attached to two layers of heavy cardstock with double-sided tape.  The top layer lifts out and can sit in the lid (which can also serve as a mixing tray) or any flat surface.  Add in a small napkin or tissue for cleaning the brush so you don't have to use your clothing and you're good to go. 

This particular trip was to Disney World resort, where I met my folks, brother and his two kids for a week of park hopping.

My drawing set came in very handy protecting both my 5 year old niece and my 9 year old nephew from incipient boredom while waiting for the buses to take us to and from the parks. 

I love Emme's six-legged unicorn and her snowman with its rainbow dress (I was informed it was a dress, not a cloak).  Sam focused on planes with rocket propulsion and massive guns.  Notice that both proudly signed their work.

So what are your favorite art supplies/kits for traveling?