Choosing Colors for a Beading Project

I have had  the stone in my stash for several years now.  I  bought it at a store in Yellow Springs, Ohio called Unfinished Creations.  I have been wanting to make something with it, but creating a beaded bezel around a stone of this shape is not trivial and I really didn't want to get into metal work.  I also did not want to mount the stone on fabric and bead around it.  Kate McKinnon has been doing cool things with right angle weave and peyote stitch and it occurred to me that I may be able to adapt the Modified Right Angle Weave to create a beaded bezel around stones that are not circular or oval, the traditional shape for cabochons used for beading.  I started playing with some beads last night, but they were not the right colors and I also realized that I needed some precision cylinder beads to really get the structure to work right.  Fortunately I happened to have some in my stash.

Toho Beads usually has a reception at the Bead & Button show, and they used to give out some amazing gift bags.  When they introduced their Aiko beads (named for the wife of Mr. Toho), they gave us a nice sample box in our gift bag.  Recently I had gone through all of the samples that I had gotten and taken them out of their cool little plastic containers and put them all in zip-lock bags and labeled and sorted them.  This made it easy for me to go through them this morning and pull out a nice color palette.

Let me just say a few words about bead packaging.  I know that lots of places sell the beads in cool plastic containers, but I prefer small zip-lock bags.  Plastic containers can easily get crushed, their tops pop open, and they spill.  Plus, regardless of the amount of beads you have in them, they take up the same amount of space.  Plastic bags, on the other hand do not get crushed, their tops do not pop open, they will not flop over and spill your precious beads, and they only take up as much space as the beads inside them.  They are however, vulnerable to being stolen by acquisitive kitties.  Mine routinely will walk through my work area, pick up a bag of beads and walk off with it.  I always have extra zip-lock baggies on hand to replace the ones that have been punctured by sharp kitty teeth.  Besides, if I didn't store my beads in baggies, I would not be able to put them in these cool drawer organizers.

There is actually a plastic tray under all of those bags of beads with molded cubbies and my little bags of beads fit perfectly into them.  The cabinets and the plastic trays are from the Best Craft Organizer.

And yes, those cabinets are filled with beads.  You should have seen my cat Jasmine when I was sorting the beads to put them in the organizer.  I was sitting on the floor surrounded by piles of beads and she kept making passes through my piles stealing beads.