CAT | Shows
23
Bead&Button photos, part IV (the jewelry)
4 Comments · Posted by Rebeca in Jewelry, Other Artists, Supplies Shows
The final installment of our Bead&Button photos features the really fun stuff: the jewelry! Most of these are my favorite entries from the Bead Dreams competition. The final three images are other lovely jewelry I saw during the show. Enjoy, and be prepared to drool a little.
Variations of a Peacock by Stephanie Czaja
We are proud to say that Stephanie was a Blue Buddha intern for a short time (before an actual job changed her schedule and meant she could no longer come in). Congrats Stephanie!
Chainmaille Jacket by Vanessa Walilko
2nd Place, Wirework category AND People’s Choice Award
Woo! Way to go, Vanessa!
You of course, all know and love Vanessa already through her work at Blue Buddha. See more of her armor and sculpture creations at Kali Butterfly Dark.
Flight of Fancy by Rachel Reilly
1st Place, Wirework category
Facets of Avalon Amazing microknitted wire. (I don’t think microknitting is a word, but I’m using it anyway just to convey the eye-popping reaction I had to this piece! Simply amazing.)
And because you can’t really appreciate Rachel’s piece unless you see it close up, here is a detail shot:
White Clovers and Clovers by Yukiko Yamamoto
2nd Place, Seed Bead Jewelry
All you seed beaders are nuts. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how this is put together.
Warrior Rings by Lynn Davy
Lynn Davy Beading
*nods of approval* Though we still think seed beaders are nuts.
The Stone Flower by Tatiana Fitzpatrick
J & T Design
Himalayan Blue Poppies by Barbara Caraway
View Barabara Caraways portfolio on GlassArtists.org
Cigno Sinistro (sinister Swan) by Sara Sally Lagrand
3rd place, Lampwork/Glass
What can I say? I love eyeballs.
Pretty Babies Glass
Nitidus Quasar by Pamm Horbit
White Lotus Beading
Nitidus is a latin word meaning “explosive bloom.”
Beautifully Baroque by Lynn Ann Schwarzenberg
River Poet Design
1st place, Polymer Clay
What this woman does with clay is amazing. I love creating customized niobium chains to match her polymer clay pendants.
Finally, here’s some other jewelry that I fell in love with during the show.
Flower of Life Bracelet made by a customer of A Beadtiful Thing, by joining several Flower of Life segments together.
Omni bought some scales on Friday during the show, then showed up at the booth the next morning with a spiffy new badge chain. Cool!
And finally, one of my personal favorites from the entire show is this stunning reversible necklace made with rubber and aluminum by B3 student/customer Sarah Meadows. She’s got other beautiful pieces in the works, and I’m encouraging her to try for Bead Dreams next year!
Bead Dreams · Bead&Button Show · Jewelry · seed beading · wirework
23
Bead&Button photos, part III (the people)
1 Comment · Posted by Rebeca in Behind the Scenes, Supplies Shows
Here’s your chance to meet some of the friendly folk in the B3 booth this year:
Gail, wearing an awesome Jacob’s DNA ladder necklace. We sold out of those kits in sterling in 1 day, and in base metal in 3 days. Whew! (And yes, we’ll post more sterling kits online soon!)
Lori, our cash-register goddess, decked out in Rebeca’s chainmaille scarf & lots of chainmaille with beads that she made. She’s grabbing a swig of water, which is typical booth behavior. It’s amazing how parched one gets workin’ the booth!
Omni. You can’t see the chain- and scale-maille neck chain he made for his badge, but it is awesome. (There’s a pic of it in the Part IV of the Bead&Button blog updates.)
Rebeca & Spider, the fabulously talented chainmaille queen of Spiderchain.com.
Per our usual tradition, we went for a group dinner to The Safehouse. Kat forgot the password to get in, and Lori, Omni & Omni’s girlfriend never knew it in the first place, so they had to waddle like penguins in order to prove their worthiness as undercover agents and gain access to the restaurant. (Jen & Rebeca knew the password, but decided to be mean and not share. And be even meaner and take a photo! On the way home to Chicago, Rebeca reminded Kat what the password was, which caused Kat to give Rebeca a little punch. But we bet Kat will remember the password next year!)
By the end of the show, we were a little loopy. Fire Mountain Gems had passed out hats to vendors and students, but no one was wearing them. So Rebeca decided to show FMG a little love by wearing the hat, but of course, what fun is a baseball cap if you can’t wear it sideways? Here are Kat and Rebeca, with the hats on, and flashing the “pliers” signal. (Yes, the pliers signal in motion is indistinguishable from the “scissors” signal. Details, details…)
But Kat & Rebeca are no where near as cute as Jen in her hat…
Finally, here is Rebeca with the pile of empty boxes of stuff we did NOT bring back to Chicago, because we sold out. Cool!
Those who remembered our claustrophobic booths from years past (10 x 10 last year and *gasp!* 10 x 5 the year prior) were pleasantly surprized with our 20 x 10 booth this year. It seemed almost luxurious with space
Look how many people could fit inside at once, without being elbow-to-elbow!
Here’s another shot of the booth:
And a view of all our base metal kits & instructions along with Spider’s DVD:
You may remember that we were doing a special goody bag giveaway each day of the show. On the first day, there was literally a crowd of people running toward our booth, eager to show us that they’d found Zed’s head:
Unfortunately, most people got it wrong. (We didn’t make it easy, we admit!) But enough folks got it right, that the goody bags were gone within about two minutes. We really admire the people who got it wrong on Thursday, but came back again on Friday to give it a try. Here are Friday’s three lucky winners:
Here is Kat with one of Saturday’s winners. We love that she’s sporting a Celtic Visions Star pendant, one of our best-sellers at the show!
Bead&Button Show · chainmaille supplies booth · contest · winners
18
Bead&Button photos, Part I (Meet the Teachers)
5 Comments · Posted by Rebeca in Supplies Shows
The metal dust has settled, and we’re back into the swing of things again. We had an amazing time at the show. It’s always a whirlwind, but well worth it to meet so many customers and students face-to-face. Here’s our first round of photos.
Meet the Teachers Reception on Wednesday night:
Me! (Rebeca)
Kat:
Vanessa:
and a closer-up photo of Vanessa’s awesome scalemaille jacket:
My table was back-to-back with Sherry Serafini, an amazing beadwork artist. It was great to meet her in person. One of the first things I told her was how much I loved the Aerosmith belt she’d made. (Confession: I am an Aerosmith junkie. So much so, that I even have 5 Aerosmith tattoos!) As soon as I’d said that, she grinned, turned around, and grabbed this purse off her table. *swoon*
Stay tuned for more photos of happy customers in our booth, Bead Dreams and the B3 crew goofing off.
We did it! Kat, Jen & I just got back to Chicago and are taking the rest of today and tomorrow off before finishing the massive task of unpacking, restocking and catching up with emails. Sorry to keep you waiting even longer—but after working for a week straight (even longer, if you include all the weekends worked prior to the show) we need a bit of R&R! We’ll post photos of the show as soon as we can. And in the meantime, if you love beading & have a journalism background, we hear that Bead&Button magazine is hiring.
