Time To Get Back To Business

I've been slacking off. Not only has it been almost a week since my last post, but I haven't done any creating in a week. I'm not sure if I was on the verge of getting sick or if I was just having an uninspirational week.

Anyway, last week was a really exhasperating week at work, one thing after another went bonkers, starting with no power all day on Monday, no phones Thursday morning, no phones all day Friday, plus my wide-format printer decided to crap out on me Friday.

My husband and I decided on Friday afternoon to run away for the weekend. We had a blast! Went about 2 hours north of home, and holed up in a cozy suite for the weekend. Saturday morning we went out for breakfast and found a bead shop nearby that had beautiful beads from Botswana, Africa, and many other exotic locations. I also found the gunmetal findings that I've been hunting for.

If you're in Illinois or Southern Wisconsin, this is a great bead shop to stop at. Their website is http://www.beadsandreeds.com and they are located in Rockford IL, right on State St, near the Cherry Valley area. The sweetest lady runs the shop and they not only have beads and findings, but also hemp craft items, display products, classes, and handmade jewelry for sale. I have a feeling we will be taking more trips there in the future. The beads I found there are unlike any I've seen before. They have the standards and also some really unique items.

I am hoping work will be less tedious this week so that I have energy when I get home to create more jewelry and accessories for my shop. I have so many beautiful beads to work with, I know that once I get started, I'll be on a roll. So keep your eyes open for new items in my shop real soon! I will post the new items here so if you subscribe to my feed or blog updates, you'll be the first to know about them!

Found A New Bead Store!

Today I was introduced to a new bead store. I was on a quest with my son's girlfriend to find a bead so we could fix her bracelet. She has a Lia Sophia bracelet, a 3-strand beaded bracelet with black beads, gunmetal ball end eye pins and gunmetal clasp. The bead we needed was a 10mm faceted Czech bead. None of my usual places carried this bead in 10mm. Plenty of 8mm and 12mm, but no 10mm. After making stops at 3 places, she mentioned that there was a bead shop near her house which is a few towns over. Since we were near there, we decided to check it out. Voila!!! We no sooner walked in the door than her sharp eyes spotted the beads in a drawer of a display unit. My eyes were still adjusting to the change in the lighting, but I could see it would do the job. It was a Swarovski, and the bracelet was made with Czech, but the only difference we could see was the price. I'm sure a Czech glass bead would have cost less, but having none to be found, this was our best choice. The new bead is the one at the top center, next to one of the originals. (You can see that it is unattached to the rest.)

The next leg of my quest was locating the gunmetal findings, which we didn't see at any of our previous stops, and the bead shop only carried a few findings, earring and necklace components.

So, when we got back home, I fired up my laptop, made a pot of coffee (3rd one today and it was only 2:30pm), and proceeded to check out all my online sources. Very few of them carry the gunmetal head/eye pins and/or the wire, but the hard part was finding the ball end headpin. After searching through all the jewelry supply sites that I could find, I remembered that there were a few stores on etsy that had supplies. After flipping through a few pages of my search results, I finally found a source for my headpins. The picture was very clear, and the color was right on to what we needed. So I ordered, paid and already got my response from the seller that they will be mailed out on Monday. Being that Monday is a holiday, I anticipate not getting them until Friday, which will be perfect since I don't get much bead work done during the week.

All in all it was a good day. I had an enjoyable afternoon with my son's girlfriend as we had our fun in the craft stores, discovered a new bead store that I intended to get back to on occasion, and I found everything I will need to put her bracelet back together. Oh, and yes, I did buy more beads at the new bead store. Watch for the new items in my shop in the next few weeks.