You may have noticed that the logo in the upper left-hand corner of our website is looking a little extra “festive” today – that’s because it’s Blue Buddha’s 9th Birthday!  We are so excited to be celebrating 9 years.  We’ve come such a long way in that short time – growing from Rebeca working out of her spare bedroom to fill her handful of weekly orders to a team of 13 employees, supplying people in all 50 states and 40 countries with our top-quality chainmaille jewelry supplies.  Here’s a big thanks to B3′s customers, supporters, mentors, designers and employees for getting us this far and here’s to many, many, more!

Our jump rings surprised us with a party – complete with noisemakers, party hats and of course, cake!

A close up of our cakes (left) and Rebeca’s mom, Rita stands in for Rebeca (who is out at a leadership retreat this week) to blow out the candles (right).

Some of our team members mugging for the camera – from left: Max, Erik, Nadja & Jason (making a fashion statement with our decorations!)

Nom Nom Nom!  We love cake – a vanilla cake with strawberries (left) and a chocolate, chocolate, chocolate cake (right) – our jump rings know us so well!

We also wanted to share some very sweet birthday wishes we received from our community members on Facebook.  Thanks for all your kind words – we love you right back!

Happy Birthday to the biggest and best Chainmaille supplier – Tammy R.

Happy Birthday, and here’s to many more! Thanks for helping making all my ring-crazy dreams come true! – Jo H.

Happy birthday, B3! At the rate you’re growing, world domination won’t take as long as we all first thought. Hope y’all find a bigger home soon and we can play during open studio again. – Lisa S.

Happy Birthday, and congratulations! I remember taking some of Rebeca’s early classes at Caravan, and am so proud of all the wonderful changes over the years. Here’s to many more birthdays! – Sharon B.D.

Happy creative dream to permanent reality day! – Melissa L.

Happy birthday to the greatest business that supports my addiction to chain maille! – Audra P.

Happy birthday, B3! So glad you are there to inspire (and supply!) us chainmaille fanatics. ♥ – Meridy M.

Happy Happy Birthday! I hope there are 100 more!!! – Meta G.

Happy Birthday B3, may your pliers stay strong and your reign be long! – Deni C.

B3 Employees · blue buddha birthday · Blue Buddha Boutique anniversary · just for fun

Here’s a little bit of Friday Fun that brightened up our chilly winter morning.

Which B3 staff member is this?

If you guessed Blue Buddha founder Rebeca, then you are correct!

She was thrilled when her dear friend Anna Goldberger presented her with this sock monkey, complete with mini Wubbers pliers and her cats Apollo and Zeela.  “I tied a piece a string on an angle here,” Anna explained, pointing to the chest area, “for you to take off and replace with a piece of chainmaille. I thought it would be appropriate that the chainmaille go over the heart since you love it so much.”  Awww!    Rebeca just about melted.

And of course, she whipped out her pliers and started making the mini Jens Pind necklace* right away. No doubt, this is one of the coolest gifts ever.

* Because someone is bound to ask – the necklace uses size B20 Niobium  (20ga AWG 3/32″  / 2.8 mm)

chainmaille · just for fun · Rebeca Mojica · sock monkey

We toted this big ol’ barrel of rings to The DIY Trunk Show this weekend to ask you to guess how many rings were in the jar.  We had guesses from 1,000 all the way to 1,999,999,999 with the average being 213,408.  Nearly 100 folks submitted their guess in the hopes of being the closest to the real number and winning a $25 Blue Buddha gift certificate but only one had the closest guess.

The grand total of rings in the jar was *drumroll*…

87,843

The winning guess of 86,000 belonged to Andy I.  Congratulations Andy, good eye!  Congrats also to runners up Lauren C. and Mira, Petrea & Alexa B.

We also posted this picture on our page on Facebook just for fun to see if any of our fans could guess the total.  We have to give props to Jen M., Ray T., and Cathy M. for making the three closest guesses!  You guys really know how to virtually eyeball jump ring quantities!

Miss the show?  Check out a few pics on our page on Facebook:

contest · DIY Trunk Show · jump rings · just for fun

For this year’s staff “retreat”, all members of the B3 team were asked to present a special talent as part of the first ever B3 Talent Showcase. The presentation could be no longer than 60 seconds and could be as short as 1 second.  As described by Rebeca, “You can dance, or sing or show us a piece of artwork you’ve made.  You can stand on your head.  Or bake something delicious and bring it in.  So long as you can be done in 60 seconds, whatever you want to do, goes.  (Well, OK, except illegal behavior and such.  *grin*)”

The talent showcase had a little bit of everything: dance, music-playing, monologues, jewelry, sculptures, paintings, drawings, delicious treats and even nail art and the fastest lecture of graveyards of Illinois anyone has ever heard.  We laughed, we chowed down, we oo-ed and ah-ed and in the end we just sat back and appreciated the wonderfully weird and talented group we get to work with each day.

And now, for your viewing pleasure – the documentation of this first ever event.  Enjoy!

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Talent Showcase Video

In order of appearance:

Lisa Rosenberg
Order Processor
Presents a monologue from Austin Powers

Jenna Deidel
Social Branding Coordinator + Marketing Assistent
Tap Dancing

Matt Hucke
Database Programmer, Web Developer, + General B3 Tech Guru
Presents the speediest lecture about Graveyards of Illinois ever (note: Kat’s voice in the background saying “next” was to help him stay within his time limit – not to move him along rudely haha.)

Maximillian Otto Lapine
Quality Control Specialist
Presents a monologue from Pillowman

…and last (but oh-so-certainly not least)

Rebeca Mojica
Owner + Founder of B3
Playing the piano!

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Nadja Aller
General Operations Manager

Nadja presented us with some incredibly delicious Upside-down Apple Muffins….and yes, we’ll be posting the recipe on our blog as soon as I get it from her!

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Artie Keefe
Quality Controller + Order Processor

Artie presented us with customized nameplates for our workspace!  (Later he also made homemade chai tea which was amazing!)

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Emily Fiks
Quality Controller + Order Processor

Emily is known for her intricately painted nails and brought in a handful (get it? handful?!) of nails she had designed.  We especially loved the B3 nail

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Jennifer Hohe
Inventory Coordinator + Weaver

Jen brought in a number of pieces of her hand cast metal jewelry and sculpture.  Incidentally, we loved it so much that she was the winner of the showcase!

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Aimee Leang
Customer Service Specialist

Amy presents this one of a kind piece made using a combination of chainmaille and wire wrapping.  Being the harmonious and spiritual gal that she is, she also let us in on the meaning behind the piece which celebrates the lessons life teaches us.

B3 Employees · just for fun · talent show

We just wanted to give you all a heads up that we are having our staff “retreat” this afternoon.  As of about 1pm, we will be away from the studio and unable to take calls or answer emails.  Things will be back to normal tomorrow morning and we’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes for you.  It’s been a while since we’ve gotten to do a real team building retreat and with so many new employees added this year, we think it’s important to take the time to stop and really get to know one another to help us work better together.

We mentioned on Facebook a week or so ago that we were going to be having a talent show as part of this team building experience – we’ll do our best to show you guys some of the talents that our employees show off via video (with their permission of course!)  We are also using some personality tests this year to help us gain some insight into how best to communicate to the people we work with.  It’s bound to be very interesting and I can’t wait to learn more about some of my fellow staff members that I don’t know so well.

We also did a Muppet personality quiz just for fun and we thought we’d share our results with you as well as encourage you to take it and find our your Muppet personality (note, our team member Samm had not yet taken the quiz when we made this chart so he sadly is not accounted for).  Check out the B3 team breakdown (clicking on the picture will open a larger version), then follow the link below to take the quiz.  Post your Muppet type in the comments section, post it on our page on facebook or tweet it to us twitter.

The Muppet Personality Quiz

B3 Employees · just for fun · muppet personality test · staff retreat