I've seen bead mats around for awhile, but for some reason I never had a desire to use them. After all, I already had my own system, why should I mess with it? I finally picked one up about a month ago (it's cheap after all) just to experiment with...and I'm in love!Why? Well, because my beads don't go everywhere any more! Ok, they still do to a degree, but no where near as bad as they did before. Plus, I was able to use it to augment my normal system!
What is my normal system? I have these little round plastic trays that I get at Craft Warehouse periodically when going through their bargain bins of beads. My seed beads go in there. Sometimes larger beads too depending on the project. Once I have my beads pulled out for the project I put them in front of my laptop, turn on a something from hulu.com, and bead away!
Now here's where the bead mat comes in. I slip it so it's half under my laptop (don't feel like cutting it up) and then I put my trays on top of it. Pointless you say? Not at all. I'm GOOD at jostling my trays and having the beads fly out! Now the mat catches them and clean up proceeds much quicker. :D I've also found less beads in my keyboard of late...
There's been an unexpected bonus too. With all my health problems I have to take a bunch of pills and vitamins. So in the mornings when I take my pills I spread them out on my bead mat, and they don't roll around everywhere! Nice 'eh?
I'm thinking I want to pick up some cheap trays at the Dollar Store or a thrift store and line them with bead mats. Then I can lay out projects and stack them if I want. One of the problems I encountered when I did my "Set Me Free" free form Peyote bracelet was that the only tray I had to lay them out on was way too huge! I have some other ideas that will also involve using a wide variety of beads and having a tray like that would be really helpful.
This, of course, is a project for AFTER my move :P Or should I say series of projects?
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