Shopping for crafts @ the fleamarket

Now that the girls and I are so into crafts, we need to find supplies. Someone on Craigslist suggested hitting up the flea market, so that’s what I did this morning. I didn’t find any general craft stuff (I specially want to get things I can glue or saw onto fabric), but I found a lot of jewelry.
I ended up buying a Beads Carousel for $10. It looked new when I looked at it, but upon opening it I realize that it had been used. The threading needles were in a different box from their packaging, a couple of bead compartments were empty, and there are less beads in the package than the picture I found online. Still, I think it was a pretty good deal. In addition to beads, the kit includes thread, threading needles, clasps and earrings. The big problem with the kit is that there are lots of small beads that are too small to make it through the eye of the threading needle. I have no idea how to thread these ones. Please e-mail me if you know :-).

As if all those beads were not enough, I also bought a bag of assorted old and broken jewelry for $5. I got that particular bag because it included several shell necklaces, and I’d like to use the little shells for gluing to cloth. There was much more than shells, and I’ve been able to recover quite a few beads in good condition. There are also a few pendants that I think I can clean and use, and lots of single earrings. I’m hoping to turn some into pendants, use others for their beads, and some light ones also as decorations for fabric. I don’t know what I’ll do with the rest. I also don’t know what to do with the non-broken chains that came with the kit. I’ll clean the thinner ones and I can attach pendants to them – but what about the thick ones? I’ll figure something out.
There is at least one necklace that I think Mika could wear -there is nothing wrong with it – and a couple that I wonder if we should keep for dress up. We’ll see.
What is frustrating is that there are a few necklaces that cannot be “debeaded” – the beads just won’t come out. But really, for five bucks I can’t complain.