Imported Bead Porn

Brought to you fresh from the lovely city of Pasadena from the time just before all of Southern California was washed into the Pacific Ocean...


Let's get started, shall we?

Okay, I know you're all saying "doesn't she have ENOUGH bright beads, yet?" Mais, c'est ridicule, mes enfants! is how I reply to you in my snootiest Parisian accent. One can never have enough beads as my good friend Kelley Wenzel was just saying to me this morning. Besides, these babies were $5 a strand! The vendor was just lucky I didn't buy the whole table!

Another amazing deal - these strands of big crystals were 3 for $10. Yeah, they're not Swaros, but they are PLENTY sparkly just the same and the colors were yummy.

A full strand of nice-sized and well-cut aqua chalcedony brios. These were on sale as well. SCORE!

Same vendor - also on sale. And LOOK at that color. I'm seeing so many color combo possibilities with these - can't wait to play with them!

Not great photo taking on my part, but the rain was really threatening so I was rushing to get the photos taken and get back inside before I became the proverbial drowned rat. These teardrops are graduated but all are a nice, large size. I think the biggest one is probably over 2" in length.

There was a whole contingent of Aussies at the show with tray after tray after tray of gorgeous Boulder Opal cabs and pendants. Since I already have some cabs in my stash, I picked out these three pendants. I love how they are all the same type of stone, but all look so completely different. The teardrop is almost all "boulder" with just a splash of opalescence in the center. The top triangle is much more "teal" and "gray" and looks to me like waterfalls going down the side of a cliff. The irregular shaped one on the bottom right is my favorite - it has the most amazing blue, purple and pink opalescence. There are even tiny dots of lime green if you look at the right angle in the right light. It looks like a satellite photo of the California coastline as seen from above.

You and Me Findings had some great new chain - an entire table of it separate from their regular booth. It's rhodium-plated and guaranteed lead and nickel free which is nice for those of us who have metal allergies. These two chains are a brass/gunmetal mixture in color.

Uh...can you tell I spent a lot of time at the "chain table?" I thought the pebble-textured chain on the left would be fun to take apart and use the links in earrings. I have no idea what to do with the wavy circle chain on the right - I just thought it was too cool to leave behind.

More chain - I liked these because they weren't the super-brite silver color (although the vendor had that, too), but they're not gunmetal either. They're sort of in between.

I did manage to avoid the trap of Grace Beads (unlike last time) and didn't drop all my money there in the first five minutes. I did pick up these three cute pendants on the theory that they will go well with all of the "bright" beads I've been collecting.

Plus, you know, cute and stuff.

It's funny - I had just been reading about Kabela Design's new line of crystal-studded chain and components in the Winter issue of "Stringing" magazine in the car on the way to the show. I had no idea that they would actually BE there! This is just a small portion of their new line - they had so much great stuff, I could hardly decide what to get, but finally settled on some of the brass flowers, the copper flowers and the brass chain studded with crystals. I'm thinking these will mix well with all the lucite flower/romantic designs that I like to do.

And now we come to the part of the show where I just completely lost my effin' mind. I think I might've dumped my wallet out all over the C-Koop booth and said "here...just take it all." Maybe. I can't remember. Things got kind of fuzzy there for a while - she had soooooo many choices. Her newest items are a bunch of Steampunk-related gears and wheels and some incredible flower petals in different sizes that you layer one on top of the other. Now the Steampunk stuff - not really my thing, but the flowers! OH! Loved 'em. My only problem was, I literally could not make a selection. I dithered at the booth for like half an hour or something and finally gave up and just bought these large capped beads and some accents.

More C-Koop...in shades of aqua, lavender, purple and copper.

I did finally come to my senses long enough to realize that everything I was picking out was either in the blue or purple family so I gave myself a stern talking to and insisted that I (we?) buy something in a different color. Y'know...just for variety. Hence this green and yellow combo which now that I really look at it, I'm not sure really goes together. That's what I get for listening to myself talk.

The lights went out when I got to the Claspon-Claspoff booth. And I mean that literally and not just in a "I'm overwhelmed by all the incredible choices" kinda way (although that happened, too). All the electricity for the vendors in that row went out so they all lost their in-booth lighting. Still, it wasn't hard to see this vendor had some truly amazing clasps. These were the three that I picked out - one vintage German glass cab, one dichro cab and one blue chalcedony cab.

I saved the best for last. This was by far my favorite score of the day. This gal comes from Seattle and calls her company "Loot." Awesome name, no? Anyway, she actually gathers up scrap glass from friends who are flameworkers and turns it into these really cool and funky disks in all sizes. I'm showing the medium and small sizes here, but she had much larger ones, too. She had them done up as pendants, as dangles on bracelets (which I thought would break, but she wore one all day long and didn't have a problem) and earrings. OH, the earrings. To die for. So, I scrounged through her piles of glass until I came up with a few pairs. I'm picturing them with chain dripping around and through them or the smaller disks doubled up with the larger ones. Loot, indeed!

Whew! I did all that? No wonder I was so tired and ready to go home when it was over. Great show, though, and definitely worth the long drive and dealing with the traffic.

Can't wait until the next one!

KJ