Playing with leftover beads

When I make a new bracelet from scratch I always use my leftover beads until I run out of silver bracelets... (I really need to get another 2 stoppers and another 2 chains so I can finish them properly)

The first combination using "leftover" beads is a glass/silver arrangement featuring lucky dragon and some bubble beads.  I really like this combination and I seem to be getting good "use" from my newly acquired pink beads.

The second offering from my leftovers featured my RAFBF bead.  I'm using the past tense because whilst I'd already worn this bracelet a few times, I wasn't 100% happy with it.  Partly, I think it's because I've repeated some of these combinations a bit too often in recent bracelets but also because I really wasn't sure about the placement of the purple armadillo.  I know, it's only 1 bead, but it was bugging me... how daft is that?

Not to worry, I still had even more beads left in my bead box, so...

...time for a fourth silver bracelet?

Not quite... time to fix that 3rd bracelet!

Recently I saw another collector make a lovely rainbow bracelet, inspired by that I decided to redo the last bracelet, still using leftover beads, but "blocking out" more colours and incorporating more contrast.

Hmm, still not 100% happy after living with this one for 24hrs, it wasn't quite the effect I was after...  So 3rd go on the 3rd bracelet... yes I can get a bit obsessive!

I love this one, it took 3 attempts but I finally got there in the end!  It's a very full bracelet and I couldn't get the stopper on the smaller end, and was too eager to take photos before I moved the stopper to the proper end... if you're only going to have 1 then it needs to be on the end the beads come off!

I collect beads because I like that individual bead, rather than collecting by a theme or a colour or with a permanent bracelet in mind.  However I can see that collectors who do collect by these methods probably don't have the same issues when trying to make up bracelets using "leftovers".  

My 2nd bracelet usually happens quite easily, but as you can see the 3rd can take a few attempts, as I normally think oh x bead would go really well here but I don't have multiples of beads (other than the agates) so if I've already used it - it's not available.  Lol, I guess that's why other collectors find multiples so useful!

So now it's time to put the blog away whilst I watch an episode of Walking Dead with my live-in geek; sigh yet another decision to make... doughnut or wine to go with that?