Bead College 2017 (Freshman Year) November 2, 2020 11:40

Back at the beginning of 2017 I sent myself to "Bead College" by making a goal of making 10,000 beads that year. I applied to and got into the Milwaukee Bead & Button show and that ramped up my focus making enough beads in six months to meet my goals for the show. I made 5,000 polymer beads and 5,000 glass beads. I didn't start out making collections. I started making mini-collections but then learned that slow approach wasn't going to work to have enough beads to sell. 

I changed my approach multiple times from making single beads, to making mini-collections to making several beads of different shapes in the same color. The last approach worked the best and allowed me to get into a production mode where I made hundreds of the same beads in the same color and shape to achieve my 10,000 bead goal. 

Making tiny groupings of beads:

A slightly bigger group.

Still smaller group 

 
Slightly larger group 

 
Coordinated collection but still small.

 
Making bigger batches.

Finally making large batches and coordinated collections. 

 
Coordinated and organized display. 

I got a lot of compliments from n my display. It was easy to browse and customer centric - vertical allowing them to see everything easily and easy to search through.