Although I buy what I love, what I love still doesn’t always work out.
When I first started collecting, I was drawn to white-based beads. There is something about them that makes them seem clean and crisp, and white really helps make colours pop (which is probably what I really like about them: those bursts of colour).
The problem is that the same thing that makes the colours pop in a good way also makes the beads stand out in a bad way. When I’m putting together a bracelet, I usually want it to appear as one cohesive unit, but when I view a bracelet I’ve made that has white-based beads, all my eye wants to see are those white beads … and it doesn’t like what it sees. It took me a while, and quite a few regretted purchases, to finally acknowledge that, as much as I love them, I can’t make them work they way I want them to. Most of my white beads have been sent onto other homes with no further regrets!
There are still some that have made their way to me and stayed, but I’d be lying if I said their time with me hasn’t had rocky moments. My hearts bead has left my bead box a few times, but it always makes its way back in. I wore it by itself for quite a few months, before accidentally pairing it with another hard-to-match bead and finding a mini combination that worked. The Fireflies bead has also flown in and out of my bead box a few times before I finally found a match for it (the army green braid that didn’t match my olive bracelet). And although they are used only in those limited combinations, I do wear them enough to justify keeping them.
Now my errors are usually as a result of the differences between the computer screen and real life (like that olive braid). Which is almost more frustrating than just an error in judgement.