Everyone has there favourite way of doing things, or tips they have found out that have served them well, or ways of being that we think are ideal. So this week I thought I would share my top ten Crafting ideals. Whilst writing this article it ended up longer than I wanted, so I have decided to do it in two parts. This week we have tips 1 to 5, and next week I will give you tips 6 – 10.
1) Always have two sets of tools, rulers, pens, pencil etc especially if you live with children, because you can guarantee that unless you have set hidden, someone one will have borrowed your tools and you will not see them again.
2) Label your beads, findings, wire etc as soon as you buy it, before you forget exactly what it is. It can be pretty difficult to tell the difference between silver coated copper wire and sterling silver wire if the packages aren’t labelled properly, or the difference between Swarovski pearls and Czech pearls. Its a good idea to include the size, colour and item number so you can reorder them later if necessary.
3) Keep the cut off ends of head pins or eye pins if they are longer than about 20mm – they can be used for small beads or for a jump ring. If they are precious metal ones, even if shorter, you can bag them up (keep same types together, labelled), some metal merchants will take them and melt them down to make new wire. You should be able to get store credit or a discount for doing so.
4) Keep individual projects in zip lock bags, not only will it keep it clean, it will help you keep all the bits together that you need, and hopefully you then wont accidently use it for something else.
5) Cut up wet/dry sandpaper into comfortable sizes and put each grit in separate labelled container. It makes it much easier to get the grit you want and when you have finished you can dry the piece off and put it back (unless its totally hacked of course.)
Photo Courtesy of
Beadaholique and
Aardvark Silver
Top Ten Crafting Tips8 December 2009, 6:19 amSource: Jennifer Mercer, Handmade News ColumnistDon't forget to check out
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