Inside you'll find a mix of traditional chainmaille jewelry and
striking contemporary designs. Everything you see is lovingly handcrafted—ring
by ring—by some of the top weavers in this industry.
Enjoy the beauty of maille that is colorful, creative and very alive.
29 September We'll be closed on Thursday, October 2 for a staff retreat. Orders placed Wednesday afternoon (Oct 1) and all day Thursday will ship beginning Friday, October 3. Thanks for your patience. We look forward to returning to work rejuvenated, re-inspired and ready to serve you better!
22 September
Since we're mainly an Internet company, and many of you only "see" us via our website or over the phone, we updated our About page to include our headshots. Now you can put a face to a name!
21 September
Next Saturday, you can find Blue Buddha Boutique at the North Park University Homecoming Block Party (see shows page for more info). We're always looking for ways to be more involved in our local community, so we thought this would be a great chance to meet some of our neighbors. We'll also have a raffle where you can win jewelry or a jewelry-making class for you and your friends. Stop on by!
16 September
We updated our class schedule for the next few months. If you're taking classes from Caravan Beads, you can now sign up via their new website. Nifty!
12 September
We're have copies of Link It!, the new chainmaille book featuring aluminum and rubber rings. We'll be stocking the rubber rings (along with a few additional anodized aluminum sizes) soon, so you'll be able to purchase what you need to complete every project in the book. In the meantime, grab a copy of the book, flip through it, and decide what pieces you want to tackle first. The photography in the book is great, and I myself can't wait to get started with some of these projects!
And don't forget, if you're in the Chicago area, you can learn rubber ring techniques (including a few projects not featured in this book) from the author/artist herself on October 18 and 19.
2 September
Just updated the class calendar for September. Should have October and possibly some of November and December posted next week. Enjoy!
22 August
Just a heads up to let you know that we will be closed for Labor Day weekend (August 30 - September 1) and will re-open Tuesday morning (September 2) at 10. Orders placed Friday August 29 at noon or later will begin shipping on Tuesday, in the order in which they were received. This means that orders placed late Monday might not ship until Wednesday or even Thursday. Keep this in mind when placing your order. We'll try our hardest to catch up as quickly as possible! We appreciate your patience, as we need a long weekend off sometimes, too!
We'll be updating our class schedule for September and October shortly after we're back, so check back then for some new class listings. Enjoy your holiday; do lots of weaving if you can!
20 August
We are pleased to welcome Blue Buddha Boutique's first-ever guest instructor! For the weekend of October 18-19, Susan C Thomas will come to Chicago to teach three workshops combining rubber O-rings with anodized aluminum. She'll have copies of her new book, Link It! Colorful Chain Mail Jewelry With Rubber O-Rings, a Lark Book publication scheduled for release in October. I can't wait! For more info and to register>>
23 July
We just moved our website to a new server. If you experience any issues with the site—pages look funny (ie, super wide, like the enameled copper page, which is kind of out of control right now!), PDF downloads are troublesome, or any other problems—please let us know by sending email to orders@bluebuddhaboutique.com.
22 July
I just found out that someone raved about Kat on yelp.com. Though Kat is an avid chainmailler, she is also passionate about beading and has worked part-time at Caravan Beads. A Caravan customer praised Kat in her review: "Caravan offered warm and welcoming people who were eager to assist in every way, especially from one star employee: Kat. ÊShe offered to show us how to complete our projects and ... she made sure we left the store satisfied with everything." Yay, Kat!
17 July
We've just added enameled copper jump rings to our inventory. These rings come in 26 gorgeous colors, and we look forward to selling using them in new designs and kits. Enjoy!
3 July
Yesterday was a crazy technology day, with our phones and Internet/email going down at various points during the day. Everything seems to be mostly working, but the phone may still cut out periodically. We hope everything will be fixed soon, but in the meantime, we are off to enjoy the holiday weekend! We will have someone here to process Internet orders over the weekend (assuming our Internet is stable), so we don't expect to fall behind in shipping orders. We'll post here if anything changes.
In the meantime, you can check out our announcement for more details on our weekend schedule. Have a good holiday!
24 June
Hmmm, it seems as though PayPal's site is having trouble. Or more specifically, folks trying to check out on our site using the PayPal shopping cart can't check out. My apologies for this. If you're looking to place an order and have trouble with PayPal, please give us a call on our toll-free number and we'll process your order over the phone: 866.602.RING (7464). Sorry for any inconvenience, and we'll keep our fingers crossed that the error is fixed quickly!
20 June
We've added a few new products for supplies customers over the past few days (see supplies updates for details), and by far what we are most excited about are the anodized niobium rings. These rings come from Spiderchain, who has discontinued packs of 250 and is only selling niobium by the ounce. So, if you just want to make a pack of earrings and don't need 700 B20s, then hop on over to our niobium section and get a small pack. Lots of beautiful colors and mixes available in packs of 50, 100 and 250. Enjoy!
11 June
We're back! The Bead&Button show was great! Vanessa, Kat and I are still a bit exhausted, but we had a great time. We met so many people, and have a few new chainmaille converts. One person at a time, the whole world will be converted. *grin*
Back at the studio, I've got about 300 non-spam emails to sort through, so if you sent me email while I was gone, please know it'll take a few days for me to get back to everyone...but I will try to get it done as soon as possible. We'll also be posting photos and getting some new products (like niobium jump rings!) online very soon. We are pretty much all caught up with orders, and expect to be completely caught up by Friday. Thanks for your patience!
2 June
And we're off to the Bead&Button show! We hope to see some of you there.
Chicago folk - note that the Amtrak stops just a few blocks from the show...so if you're thinking about going, but are dreading the drive (and the gas price!), consider the train. A $21 ticket takes you from downtown Chicago to Milwaukee. Bring some friends, and chainmaille or play cards on the train. :-)
