Voting for December’s Featured Weave Contest is now closed, and the winner chosen by you is…
Danny K. with Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey!
Congratulations, Danny! You’ve won a $25 B3 gift certificate. Email us at [email protected] to claim your prize.
Stay tuned! In just a few days we’ll launch the 2013 Mailler of the Year contest!
You might remember that we were pretty excited to have our ads running on the CTA red line trains through the month of December. We wanted to share that excitement and hopefully make some folks’ commute a little more fun with a scavenger hunt of sorts. We asked you to find the ad, snap a photo of yourself with it, and send it our way. Well, we have a winner!
Congratulations, Yelena P.!
You are the lucky recipient of a $25 B3 gift certificate. Please email us at [email protected] to claim your prize!
2013 was a pivotal year for B3. We celebrated our 10th anniversary and experienced the challenges that come with making the leap to the next level as a business. Truthfully, it wasn’t always easy. Sometimes, it was downright hard–remember when our building’s plumbing had to be completely redone? Oy. Through it all, however, our team remained steadfast in its effort to keep B3 a great place to be and a business our customers can be proud of.
We hope you enjoy this look back at some of our biggest moments of 2013. Share your favorite B3 and chainmaille moments of the year in the comments below. Here’s a toast to 2014!
By far the BIGGEST moment of the year–and maybe even of B3’s history–is that we moved to our new space in Edgewater, allowing us ample room to work, store product and ultimately open our first retail location. It wasn’t easy, but looking back we can hardly remember being cramped in our old space. We barely know how we managed to do everything we did in there!
For Valentine’s Day, our team shared love notes to some of our favorite projects and crafts. The result demonstrates just how creative our group really is.
In March, we launched our CRE8TIME Maker Studios, just in time for National Craft Month. We opened our space to makers of all kinds and had a great time creating together.
In May, we organized a blog hop to celebrate creative moms and women in honor of Mother’s Day. The posts honored all kinds of crafty ladies–including Rebeca’s mom Rita (who tried her hand at chainmaille for the first time!)
We always love seeing regulars and meeting new addicts…er…chainmaillers *wink* at the Bead&Button Show and 2013 was no different. Also, Rebeca’s Chainmaille Mandala winning the Bead Dreams People’s Choice Award was super-exciting!
It’s no secret that the B3 team is a big bunch of animal lovers. Nearly everyone has at least one furry family member–and some have several. With our new larger space, we decided to participate in Bring Your Dog to Work Day and had two fuzzy co-workers for the day. Too much fun!
After dealing with months of red tape and delays, we took matters into our own hands and opened a Pop-Up version of our space, working with what we had. We didn’t have a floor, but our creative retail team still managed to make the place look pretty great. We had visitors from as far away as New York and Texas!
In September, we learned of the passing of a woman named Genie Jackson, who, in addition to being a kind and uplifting soul, had been an incredible supporter of our craft. We honored her with a blog post, sharing some of the ways she had contributed to the growth of our art form. She was an inspiring person and we think of her often.
In October, we finally celebrated the opening of our retail space and had a great night partying with close friends and making new ones. We made Make & Take projects, ate cake pops and admired epic chainmaille couture. It was a total blast. We wish we could have a Grand Opening every month!
In October, we challenged you to create chainmaille costumes for your pets and got some of the cutest contest entries ever! The winner was Oscar the Knight, and his person was awarded a $100 B3 Gift Certificate. We think Oscar’s reward was probably not having to wear his costume again (at least until next year).
Three years and 35,000 copies later, Rebeca’s book CHAINED continues to inspire new maillers everywhere! We took a moment to honor this big anniversary in November and are happy to announce that Rebeca is now working on her long-awaited second book!
Well, we do that all the time actually–but not usually in the form of a super-fancy ad! We ran our first CTA ad on the red line in November (which, conveniently, stops just steps from our front door). We have to admit, it’s been pretty exciting to see these shining faces when we travel to and from work.
This might not sound that exciting, but after for waiting nearly a year to be able to really complete our space, seeing this beautiful floor installed was a huge moment for us. It felt like a big fat reward for all our hard work and we are loving the elegance it lends to our store. *swoon*
After all the ups and downs of the year, it was pretty great to end on a high note! With your help, we were voted “Best New Edgewater Business.” In 2014, we look forward to doing even more for our neighborhood in an effort to achieve our mission of being a center for creativity in Chicago.
Love Maillers’ Choice? Join the club! Subscribe and you’ll automatically receive every Maillers’ Choice kit in your mailbox each month.
Kick off your 2014 mailling with “Inner Fire,” a design by B3’s own Omni Mee. This scaled dragontail (a helm variation) is wonderfully versatile, appealing to both men and women.
The uncolored rings are stainless steel and will be the same in the kit. Please select your favorite metal for the rings that run down the center of the bracelet (those in the photo are bronze). Click the button below to help us finalize Omni’s creation!
This is the third post in our blog series introducing you to the talented folks behind the fabulous, locally made, hand crafted items that fill the Blue Buddha Artisan Market. Also, head on over to our B3 Chicago Retail Store Facebook page and Like it to be notified about new items in the Artisan Market, B3 classes, special events and more!
Since 2005, Chicagoan Kat Wisniewski has been designing and creating distinctive wirework and chainmaille jewelry. To date, she has been teaching for nine years, has published 13 projects and invented 11 weaving patterns. Her love of chainmaille and specifically to her glass chainmaille designs have allowed her to grow into being a nationally known expert in a very niche field. Elemental Art Jewelry specializes in creating glass chainmaille jewelry and functional attire, featuring more than 35 colors of pressed glass rings in combination with a variety of metals and other materials.
Michelle Kaffko has been “making stuff” since she can remember having hands. When she was around 10 years old she found some discarded craft store potpourri in her mother’s closet and sewed it into little fabric pouches and went door-to-door on the block selling them for 50 cents each. After leaving a corporate career in marketing, Michelle sewed together some reusable coffee cup sleeves with curse words on them to give as gifts to friends — and Snarky Sleeves was born. Michelle explained, “My parents saw that I had put the F word on coffee sleeves and freaked. But then realized that people actually buy them. Now they’re in on the business. My dad cuts the felt, assembles the tags, and mails the sleeves for online orders. My mom and I make the labels and sew the sleeves together.”
April Hannah Llewellyn’s hometown is the geek haven of Huntsville, AL where she graduated with a degree in studio art from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2009. She now resides in Chicago and recently graduated with an MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts from Columbia College Chicago. She spends most of her days helping others get their craft on at Blue Buddha, and her evenings are generally taken up by making things and watching netflix with her cow-kitty Sam.
