C is for Collecting

When I bought my first Trollbead I had no idea I was going to become a Collector of Trollbeads.  I naively thought I'd buy one bracelet, maybe two (one silver and one leather) and enough beads for both with a few to change them over on occasion.

A small selection of my glass beads from 2013

Two years and many hundreds of  beads and quite a few bracelets (& necklaces) later my collecting looks a little crazy to most "normal" people; after all there's only a certain amount of beads and bracelets you can wear at any given point.

I have since had the pleasure of connecting with lots of other Trollbead Collectors and on the rare occasion we get to meet up in person the "Troll Talk" is such a pleasure!

Question for today's blog post...

Do you have any collecting habits that have grown far beyond your original intentions?

That's it for today, thanks for visiting and please feel free to say hi in the comments!

Bonus content if you're not on a whistlestop tour of the A to Z Challenge

I once decided to blog a whole weekend of this with the help of a couple of Guest Authors so if you ever want to take a peak into this crazy world I've created a list of links as a bonus which will open up in different tabs for your reading pleasure.

I have to say the amount that was bought was not a typical weekend of collecting: this was something that we'd all been saving up for especially... just in case you thought yesterday's post on Budgeting was an understatement.

Go make a cuppa, put your feet up and be prepared to enter the world of Trollbead Collectors!

An introduction

The Beginning - Guest Spot

My huge leap from the Bead Wagon

Cocktails and Beads

Adventures in York - Guest Spot

Just a quiet meal...

All good things must come to an end

Behind the scenes at one of the Jewellers - Guest Spot

Right that really is it now... hit the comments or feel free to run away from the crazy bead lady behind this blog!

Before I start to show you 2013's beads...

I thought I'd just show you these shots I took back in December before I started to assemble my favourite 5 bracelets, I'd dismantled all my previous bracelets and was getting ready for some bead play... this was my collection of beads on 7th December 2012.

I love aerial shots of bead cases, as I get ready to show you my beads from 2013 so far... I do worry about where I'm going to keep them all.  Time for a new case soon I think, as long as the boiler keeps on running!

Preparing for departure & new arrivals

This weekend marks my first online trade (swapping beads with another collector) so I took the opportunity to take some photos of the collection as it's currently comprised, before the actual physical trade takes place.  I am a little sad to see a bead leave the bead box but it's going to a much loved home and will get to see far more daylight that it currently does with me; although in my defence, I did take it to 3 Greek Islands last month so it had a good holiday before we will eventually part company tomorrow!

Over the coming weeks I am expecting the bounty from my bead buying bonanza to start arriving so I thought it was a good time to also take stock of my collection to date.

      

I am delighted with these two photographs, I think they show off the lovely colours and diversity within my collection at this time - I use the term diversity quite loosely as I do realise I have 3 agate kits (plus the extra one I couldn't resist) and a fondness for zodiac stars!

The sharp eyed amongst you may be wondering where my leather bracelet has gone, well it was the entity that was anchoring my 3 heavy bracelets to the top of that pot!