Storing Small Embellishments and Recycling

First off, I recently found out about blog scraping where someone clones your blog and gives it a new name but adding advertising on it.  I wrote about this on my other blog HERE.  I don't think this blog has been blog scraped, but if you are looking at it and there is advertising on it, I would appreciate it if you would contact me and let me know.

Now that I have that out of the way, on to more fun issues...storage!

I discovered the most practical product for beads, findings, buttons, embellishments and small items used in crafts such as scrapbooking or crazy quilting for example,

Seriously, I went from this (above) shoe box full of little baggies with just a few leftover beads, to this (below) organized and easily visible box.  Which one do you think it is easier to find things in?  The best part is I can see immediately what I have and it takes less space!  If I am going on a trip or going to a class I can simply switch out the jars so I take the ones I may need while away.

You know I am not fond of a room full of plastic bins, plastic drawer units and plastic boxes, but these are awesome.  No I am not paid or compensated by Michael's where I purchased them.  I just wanted to share my find.  These come in different sizes also.  This one is only an inch (2.5 cm) tall!  There are taller ones also (you can see the measurements for this on the package label below) and smaller diameter ones as well.  The back of the package has an email michaels.com/beadlanding.  They are out of Irving, Texas.

They work great for these little metal or the glass leaves.  You can sort your items by type, by style or by color, or even finish.  What ever works best for the way you work. 

If you have looked at at my studio photos, you will see I use glass apothecary jars and other glass pieces so I can see what I have.  I think this is so important.  However, I noticed some of my jars only have a couple or maybe a few beads in them and taking up space with a jar seems wasteful.  Can you tell - I am so excited about this.  I know.  Silly.

I have not given up on my other storage pieces though.  I keep a couple of these hinged lid boxes (above) for my assorted beads that I will use for outdoor items or something other than jewelry.  I also still like these towers that screw together (below) for keeping like pieces together such as these larger hole silver beads and dangles.

You have to admit though that these little jars that fit perfectly in the clear box they come with look gorgeous!  I'm such an organizing geek.

Here is another idea I like.  Since I make a lot of jewelry and do crazy quilting, this works really well.  The spools of wire for beading wire often comes with a plastic (there's that word again) guard on it to keep the wire from unraveling.  It is removable.

When I empty one of the spools, I remove the label and wrap my my narrow ribbon on it, clip the plastic stopper on and my ribbon is easy to get to and doesn't come loose or have holes from pins that might otherwise keep it in place.  My question...why haven't ribbon companies thought of doing this?!?  If you only use ribbon but not the wire, maybe you can find someone who uses wire but not the ribbon?

I also love that these usually have a tab for hanging or a hole in the center to put them onto a dowel or peg.

What do you think (about the idea, not about me being an organizing geek~lol)?