I was recently paging through the May/June 2006 issue of Quiltmaker when I found an article about a problem that is very much relevant to us beaders. In her article “The color-filled fabric pantry,” Heather Thomas writes, “Many quiltmakers buy only beautiful fabric. They’ve got a stash full of gorgeous, starring-role fabrics, but have no supporting cast of ordinary fabrics to put with them. It’s not that pretty fabric isn’t useful, it’s just that pretty fabric isn’t enough.” In other words, without ordinary fabrics to make the majority of a quilt, there’s very little you can make with the extraordinary fabrics.

How many times do we purchase beautiful focal beads, salvage center-stage found objects, or stash away other bead “treasures” of the variety Angel Hrabowiak talks about in The Beader’s Handbook only to find we don’t have a “supporting cast” of more ordinary beads to make jewelry that shows off our gems? For instance, I am terrible about keeping a wealth of metallic beads and spacers on hand, and always seem to be short on crystals in usable shades. This holds me up when designing jewelry.

Thankfully, Heather Thomas goes on to give advice for rectifying this situation, and what she says about fabrics is equally applicable to beads. To obtain a more desirable balance of ordinary and extraordinary beads, try:

• Taking an inventory of your bead stash by separating out your “starring role” beads, then dividing the remaining “supporting cast” of beads by where they fall on the color wheel. This will reveal which colors you might need to have more of in stock. You might want to take this advice further by making categories for metallic beads and non-bead components (like findings).

• When you shop, try to spend 75% of your funds on ordinary beads you need to construct jewelry and 25% on extraordinary beads that will take center stage in your designs.

• Keep you bead stash out in the open where you can see it on a daily basis, so you’ll be more aware of what you need more (or less) of.

Does anybody have other advice for rebalancing your stash?