New Year's Beading Tradition

If you are missing a basic bead, beading component or beading tool for your project, can you substitute something else in it's place? In many cases, you probably can. I recently went through many of my unfinished beading projects (the ones from magazines that I wanted to re-create) and realized that most of them were in that state because I was missing a certain bead, charm or a particular finding that shown with the finished project. In all but one or two of the pile of my unfinished beading projects, I was able to find beads or finding that would suffice and in some cases exceed the original project. Customizing or changing a published beading pattern or project should not be done to infringe on another's copyright but is certainly a way to add a bit of "you" to the original designer's creative vision and makes your beading even more special.