How to - beading boards.

What to use as a beading work station?
I'm sure there are as many answers as beaders!

This nifty little ideas was posted in Bead and Button magazine.
It's a frisby! How clever.

frisbee bead dish

It's a lightweight, inexpensive beading surface by Shirley Dembo.

 Some people like trays with sections or indentations to keep the beads seperate.

Someone mentioned a fondue tray - personally I've never heard of such a thing, but you might find a dip tray or something similar.

fondue dish

 Another suggestion was the inexpensive plastic plates from IKEA.

You could line them with bead mat like the frisbee.

plastic plates from IKEA

 You just need to get flat bases as you don't want the beads rolling in to the outside or collecting in the centre.

If you need a bigger work space you could use a cookie tray or any tray actually.

Love these trays with compartments - must look out for some of these!

various trays from The Bead Diaries 

 I also love these colourful fabric trays.

They have a piece of bead mat in and the press stud corners let them fold flat when not in use.

fabric bead trays from Nimble Needle

I think these are meant for doing tapestry or needlepoint stuff, but they are just too pretty not to share.

For something off the shelf - how about this double bead tray from Bead Buddy?

Oh, I can imagine a whole stack of these!

bead buddy double bead tray

Available from Fire Mountain Gems.

I might dream about those.

My bead work spaces are not as sophisticated - 

These are the bead boards that I use.

This one sits on my desk for designing necklaces mainly.

It does have a plastic cover and a lid so I could take it travelling...but it usually have so many bits and pieces on it that it would be difficult to move!

 Instead I usually take a plastic shoe box and use the lid with a piece of mead mat in it as my work surface.
I use the plastic shoe boxes to store most of my bigger beads, and tubes of seed beads anyway.

I have a couple of these plastic trays, I think they are paint trays.
They did have a flimsy plastic lid but that has long since broken.
It is quite good for seed bead projects.

What do you use?

Have you any tips for making your own bead boards?
Or seen any great ideas?

Setting up a Packaging Station. How I did it.

I was inspired this week by a post on the Beading Daily blog about reorganising your studio by Anne Vaughan.
There were a few ideas that I could apply to my smaller scale operation but the one that really resonated with me was the packing space.

I don't have a lot of on-line sales, so I'd never bothered to set up my packaging supplies in an efficient manner.

Even though I've been selling on-line for a few years now! - I know I'm a slow learner.
I had tissue paper in one spot, bubble wrap under my work desk, sticky tape, labels, pretty supplies in another corner, envelopes and boxes in the cupboard, business cards and customs declaration in another spot!

How did I do it for so long?

So today I gathered everything together.
This unit was going to be my lampwork spot, but I'm not doing much of that at the moment.
Unfortunately it is the first thing inside the door, so it becomes a dumping ground for anything I can't be bothered putting away, or half-finished projects etc.

Now I still have my glassy bits there and all my packaging supplies apart from the boxes (which I only seem to need once in a blue moon these days - is that due to the exhorbitant postal rates I wonder?)
I'm only using one of the drawers - so there is room for more efficiency!

How do you organise your packing supplies?
I realise I am lucky that I have a whole workroom to myself.
So how do you manage with limited space?
Please share how you do it!