Bead & Button Show Highlights

Back from the show and - whew! - a little time to catch my breath. Between teaching classes and demonstrating new products and techniques in the Beadalon booth, I managed to do some damage to the credit card. Lots of fun goodies, as you can see in the photo. For the past couple of nights, I've been laying awake imagining all of the stuff I'm going to make. Scary!

Besides teaching, working, shopping and schmoozing, other highlights of the show included:

• Breakfast with beady friends Melanie of Earthenwood Studio, Jennifer of Jangles, Margot Potter the Impatient Beader and Molly Schaller, Simply Beads
  editor. These women inspire me everyday with their creativity and their commitment to keeping it real.
  
  
• Meeting the talented women who make Proper jewelry: Amy Johnson and Cynthia Archer Martin. I love their fresh take on jewelry making and am impressed by their long-distance collaboration. Check out their cool skull pins!
  
  
• Speaking of collaboration, I noticed that a lot of bead artists at the show are working together to promote each other and their craft. Beads of Clay is a great example. The site has lots of information about making and collecting ceramic beads, member profiles and more.
  
  
• Saw Danielle Fox, the new editor of Stringing and Melinda Barta, my Hip to Stitch sister. They're working on Easy Wire magazine, which hits newsstands in October. Beware - with these two in charge, it's going to rock.
  
  
• Robin Beam from Ranger Ink showed me how to make my own molds from buttons and other stuff, cast ultra-thick embossing enamel (UTEE) into the molds, and use memory glass frames with rubber-stamped relief images on UTEE. She is a veritable font of crafty knowledge and I'm totally inspired to make some cool pendants and charms of my own.
  
  
• Bought Brenda Schweder's new book, Junk to Jewelry. I met Brenda a couple of years ago at B&B - she co-writes the Fashion Forecast column for BeadStyle and she's a fun gal. My favorite projects in the book are the junk drawer miscellany watch and the recycled earrings & rings charm bracelet.