Bead&Button photos, part III (the people)

Posted by | One Comment | Read More / Add Comment

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!

Bead&Button photos, part II (the booth)

Posted by | No Comments | Read More / Add Comment

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 photos, Part I (Meet the Teachers)

Posted by | 5 Comments | Read More / Add Comment

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.

Bead&Button Show is over!

Posted by | No Comments | Read More / Add Comment

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.

Bead&Button update – Saturday

Posted by | No Comments | Read More / Add Comment

Finally, a bit of a break. :-) Today is typically a slower day than other shopping days, but still nice and steady. We sold out of more instructions, so for those interested in Bold & Brilliant Byzantine, and our updated Dragonscale instructions, they’ll be available online soon. (Give us a couple of weeks to unpack and recover from the show) In the meantime, though, if there’s something you’re having trouble finding from your show wishlist, send an email to [email protected] or give us a buzz at 866.602.7464

A student stopped by to show me some of her micro rubber maille, which was stunning. I’ll definitely post a photo when I’m back.

Today’s show was only 8 hours, and we finished early enough to head to the Safe House for dinner, and it was even still light outside when we were done eating. Wow. Looking forward to the final day tomorrow, though not looking forward to packing up the booth. Where are the elves when you need em?