Cube Beads - Why Do You Torment Me So?

Cube beads.

Sigh.

I have so many of you.  I rarely use you, but I keep buying you anyway.

For no reason that I can figure out.

 

 

In fact, it only really occurred to me after I made this pair of earrings with the aventurine cubes at the bottom that I so rarely use this shape in any of my designs and I thought "huh, that is kind of strange."

 

Then, later that same day, I found myself perusing beads on Etsy and filling my cart with a bunch of cube beads like these:

 

Shinyyyyyyy.....

 

And then I thought about my earlier thought and thought "why would I buy more cube beads when I just acknowledged that I rarely use them." 

 

Cuz...duh.

 

So, then I started trying to figure out what the issue is.  Obviously, I don't loathe them on the surface because that would stop me from buying them at all.  Believe me, there be plenty o' ugly beads out there in the world that I reject on sight. 

 

Or, yanno, not necessarily "ugly" per se, but just "not me."

 

However, when it comes to designing, I seem to always skip past this shape and prefer round, oval or rondelle shapes.  In fact, if you look at the cubes I used in the earrings up above, you will notice that although TECHNICALLY cube-shaped, they have rounded corners and so are more of a softer, mushier cube.

 

I must not like hard edges on things.  Apparently, I like everything soft, rounded and ground down.  I wonder if it's a family trait as Ryan has a noted preference for very soft things.  As a baby, he rejected all but the very softest of blankets (which is still on his bed to this day), he picks his stuffed animals based on which feels the softest, and just yesterday I caught him trying to take the blanket off my bed because he had determined that it was even softer than the one on  his bed.

 

So, do I just embrace the soft, round world I live in, or do I challenge myself to try using cube or gasp! triangle-shaped beads?

 

Do you have a bead shape that confounds you?  What do you think the reason is for that?

 

KJ