u/Damaniel2

My wife and I have been getting back into bead sprites again after a long while. We already had all of the original Artkal C series mini bead colors from years ago, but decided to pick up a full set of the M series as well. The problem is that now we have ~400 colors to choose from. Since we do all of our matching by eye, trying to look at 14 bins of beads to find a match has become rather inconvenient. I decided to solve that by creating boards with 5x5 swatches of each color (100 per panel), arranged in a grid with the associated bead color listed in the grid below it. Now we can just pick the colors we want to use and go right to the bin they're stored in.

It wasn't as bad as I expected. About 5 hours per board to construct the swatches, fuse the beads, create and laminate the grids and glue it all to the foam core boards. We even found a suitably large binder at the local Daiso to hold them in (which if you happen to live near one is totally worth the visit, compared to the usual US dollar stores).

I'm not necessarily recommending that anyone actually do this, but being able to see all of the colors at a glance is very helpful.

I've never been to the local library sale before, but my wife and I decided to check it out. Every title was $1. The 10 on the right are CDs from a monthly magazine called Jazziz - they're mainly from the mid-90s and each have a set of ~10 selections from contemporary jazz artists.

Neither of us like Dylan in the slightest. At least there will be something other than religious and classical music on the shelf at the local Goodwill.

(Overall, her collection wasn't too terrible otherwise. A mix of new age, some stuff from the Grateful Dead, 10,000 Maniacs, Pearl Jam, and a copy of Be My Lover from La Bouche. She was going to toss it all in the trash, so we had to do our part to save it.)