Bead&Button Show Marketplace day 1

Today was the first full day of the Bead&Button Show Marketplace.  I did a fair amount of walking around, and I have some folks and products to show you.

First is the Xuron booth with Abby and Ashley (not Abigail, as I had originally posted - BAD Traci!):

You can't see it, but Abby (on the left) is wearing the Stitched Saucer bracelet she just made (you can read the blog post about it here).  Xuron has great tools, demonstrated by two lovely ladies.  I'll be spending more time with them this weekend!

Another vendor I make sure to go visit every year is Priscilla Marban.  I posted about her a few years ago (check it out here).  Wait, that was four years ago.  Wow.

Here she is:

She has neat decoupage beads and pendants, but the best things are her recycled sawdust items.  The sawdust is dyed and embedded within metal shapes, and the pieces are sealed.  Let's take a look at a few things that really caught my eye today:

In the middle are strands of owls.  Let's look at them closer:

So cute!  And I found some large kitty pendants, too:

I will be going back to get at least a few things from Priscilla.  If you're at the Show, please stop by and see her.  No picture is going to do the sawdust items justice.  She's all the way in the back in the 800 aisle.

I stopped by Brenda Schweder's Now That's a Jig! booth, but she wasn't there.  I think she was teaching.  Here's Dawn holding down the fort:

On the floor below the Marketplace, there's an art installation with collaborative pieces Brenda made with a number of other artists.  All of the pieces will be auctioned off at the Bead Auction tomorrow night.  Here are a few pictures of the installation:

From there I wandered up to where the bead quilts are on display.  I've posted about them before when we were assembling the ornaments and such (posted here and here).  They were packing up, but I was able to see a few neat pieces.

It was behind glass, so there's a reflection.  I love the background on this one!  While I was there I ran into Helen, who was pointing at one of the quilts and how shiny the beads were in the sunlight:

It wasn't until I went around to where Helen was that I saw what she saw.  I took a picture, but it's only about 1% as stunning as it was in person:

In the foyer of the Show there are frequently demos and make 'n takes going on.  I sat in on a lampworking demo from my friend Karen Crown from Lady Crown Glass.  You may remember her from the GLOW booth at the Art Glass and Bead Show (and my post about them).  I love seeing her, and watching her work was great!  She was demonstrating how she makes these shells:

Here is Karen not lighting herself on fire (which I would be hard-pressed to avoid):

I took one of Karen's shells home (the one on the right in the above picture).  I think it would be a perfect centerpiece for a Riding the Waves necklace.  Thanks, Karen!

Back on the Marketplace floor I visited another glass artist, Tammy Rae Wolter from Glass by Tammy Rae.  Her items are Borosilicate glass, which is a bit rare among lampworkers.

Here are some of her items close up:

Since I first visited Tammy in her studio (before she moved to Neenah, Wisconsin) about 4 years ago (again, wow), I have wanted one of her keys with a bead on the shaft.  Since it would be an indulgence for me, I've been putting it off.  She posted them again recently on Facebook, and I decided now is the time.  I want to stitch a tube above and below the bead.  I think that would be very pretty.  I wanted a purple bead (of course), but Tammy didn't have any with the colors of purples I was hoping for.  We were about to discuss her making one just for me, then I saw one I fell in love with.  The bead was gorgeous (of course), but what made the decision for me was the shape of the key.  The bead is a purplish color, but there are elements of blue and pink and green, so I have a lot of leeway in what I stitch, and I can't wait to choose my colors.  I'm going to wear it tomorrow so I can match colors as I shop.

This picture isn't the best, but I'm crashed on the couch and didn't feel up to playing with light and angles.  Isn't the shape of the key great?

The final vendor I'm going to show you today is Joy Munshower, the Tile Goddess.  She's another glass artist, and she proves that you can find absolutely anything made out of glass.  Shield your kids' eyes, and if you're at work, you might not want to linger on this picture too long:

Yes, they are what you think they are.  She does have non-penile works that are amazing:

Those are made out of glass.   Remarkable!

Here's Joy, trying to be in the picture and not in the picture at the same time, like some having tea/no tea thing in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

I chatted with her for only a few minutes, but in that short amount of time I really liked her.  I hope to chat with her more, at the Show and on Facebook!

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You may remember that I was teaching a class tonight.  Unfortunately, I only had one student, and she didn't come.  I knew that was a possibility, but I hadn't heard for sure if she was going to make it or not.  I was hoping for a few more registrations, but that didn't happen.

Ah, well.  I'll keep plugging away and hope that next year will be better.  I wore my SDN15 - Dino-spine bracelet on the Marketplace floor tonight, and a few friends who hadn't seen it before really loved it, so I will submit that as a class for next year's Show.

Tomorrow Steve and I are going back, and I'm going to take more pictures of vendors to show you.  Maybe not quite as many pictures as today, because this blog has taken me well over an hour to write.  :)

A place for everything, part 2

In case you're just joining me, you may want to check out my original post about my studio, and part 1 of my reorganization.

Oh!  I never posted about this... I have an item in the twin bead challenge in the August Bead&Button magazine!  See page 15 and here.  It's been so nice to have people congratulate me about it.  Someone at the Bead Society meeting on Monday said, "Was that you I saw in Bead&Button?"  It's such a great feeling!  I need to get going on submitting more designs.  I know they're booked up for months and months, but I need to try to get in there before more months are booked.

I posted about this on Facebook, but I'm going to paraphrase here (because you all are caught up on what I'm up to).  I was moving things around, and my box of dominoes fell.  Because a project isn't a project without making a huge mess at least 5 times.  Steve came upstairs to comfort me (so I wouldn't pitch a fit - things like that frustrate me).  Of course, he was also curious what could have made all that noise that probably reverberated in the basement.  He plopped on the floor and started picking up dominoes.  Since there was no room to join him, I checked my e-mail and saw the comment my friend Kat made to my blog post about chainmaille:  "Fun blog post, Traci! Saw you in the recent Bead and Button mag! I know someone famous! Yay, you! Kat"  Isn't she sweet?  I read this to Steve (who is still picking up dominoes) and said, "I'm not famous.  If I was famous I'd have someone picking...... up..... my......" Ah, hell.


Back to the reorganization.  After I moved the stamps, I kept going with the rest of that corner.  Steve brought up an empty under-the-bed storage box from the basement, and we loaded everything from that accursed folding table on it.  Then he whisked it out of the room onto the dining room table.  Then - whoosh! - the table went downstairs.  Instantly I felt so much better.  We wheeled the purple two-drawer rolling cart and my stamp cart (yes, I really do have that many stamps) out into the dining room, and that wall was empty.  I rolled my chair up and back in glee.

I worked more on the second bookcase.  I consolidated the scrapbook embellishments I want to keep (for now) and dumped things like diecut cardstock letters.  I do not need an entire plastic container to hold letters I'm probably never going to use.  So off they went!  Off this went!  Off that went!  Although I'm being fairly brutal, I am keeping quite a bit.  I've moved them all into a few containers.  I can paw through them when I finally have time to scrap and want to use them.  For now, I need the space.

Out the bookcases went!  Steve moved the tower of paper and the cute cubby-hole cabinets where my sticker rolling cart was (which is now in the closet).   Ahhh... That corner of the room was absolutely empty.  I just stared - all that space to work with.  All that..... SPACE.  It was wonderful.

Now, the reason I did all this so quickly (Thursday-Saturday last week) was because my mother and stepfather were able to borrow a van and bring me a wall unit.  It was in their sun porch, but it got moved into the garage when they put a desk in there for my stepfather's laptop.  It was sitting in their garage gathering dust, and I was more than happy to put it to use in my studio.  The best part about it is that it's PURPLE!

Mom gave me the measurements - 52" x 90" and 9" deep - so I knew I had to make room for it.  I was going to put it against the wall where the blasted folding table was, but after we moved the bookcases out, I measured that wall, and it was perfect.

Here it is, after Steve secured it to the wall so it won't fall on me or him or a kitty:

The purple isn't ideal, but it doesn't clash with the rest of the room.  It needs some touch-ups, and my stepfather checked that they have the paint and that it's not dried out.  When they come in a few weeks, he'll bring the paint along.  We could have repainted it, but we'd have to buy paint, and time would be lost painting (probably two coats) and letting it dry.  Now we'll just touch up the front surface, and that shouldn't interfere with me populating it.

Steve started the population with Pixel and Fe, but Fe jumped down and darted out of the room before I could take a picture of the two of them.

So now that I have this amazing wall unit, I've been reluctant to fill it.  I want to make sure it's "just right", which I know isn't good.  Steve keeps asking what he can do to help me, and I keep saying, "I don't know what I want to do yet."  He keeps saying, "You keep saying that."

I spent a bunch of time yesterday cleaning out the closet in here (as opposed to the one in the hall where (most of) my stamps now live).  As I figured, the space was very poorly managed.  I threw a few things away, but mostly I moved it all out into the dining room or onto my floor in here.  Scrapbook stuff stayed in here, because I knew that's what I wanted to have in this closet.  The things I didn't know what to do with yet went into the dining room.

I want to keep this room as peaceful as possible while I work so I don't get overwhelmed again.  If it all gets dumped in here, I'll be tempted to stop and just shut the doors when my in-laws come in a week and a half.  If it's in the dining room, I have to deal with it before they come.

After I cleaned out that closet, consolidated some things, and purchased two cigar boxes from a friend, I found that I have quite a number of empty containers I can put projects or materials in:

That's not even all of them.  I have a few plastic storage containers out in the dining room with my beads, and I'm going to try to sell some at the Loose Bead Society rummage sale which is this Saturday.

There's more to tell, but that will have to wait until tomorrow!

If you like my blog, please feel free to share on Pinterest, Facebook, or wherever these things are shared.  If you have ideas on what I can blog about, please leave a comment here or send me an e-mail.

Oh - one final thing.  Steve said to ensure (not INsure, he ASsures me) a proper "Guns in the Sky" earworm, I should post a link to the video.  Click here to be indoctrinated.