Steve and I are home safe and sound after a wonderful weekend at the Art Glass and Bead Show in Madison, Wisconsin. The house is just fine (I had a neighbor and a friend keep an eye on the place), and the cats are well. We gave them "battle pay" (canned food), and they seem to not be mad at us.
Because I was at the show, I wasn't able to make anything for my 2014 resolution to "create or work on something every day and blog about it", right? True, I couldn't create anything concrete like a pair of earrings or a scrapbook page, but I did make some friends. Yeah, that sounds corny, but I'd like to think it's true. I decided to walk around and take pictures of some of the smaller vendors at the show and introduce you to them. I ended up with pictures of 13 vendors, so I'm not going to give a whole lot of information on each one. They were all very nice, and I enjoyed chatting with all of them (and all the other vendors, faculty, and show-goers, of course)!
The links below go to the vendors' websites. I hope you click on them and take a look at their work close up. Many of the vendors are lampworkers, meaning they make "Art Glass and Beads", which is where I'm guessing the name of the show came from. I'm not going to go into detail on what they can do - their websites can do a much better job than I can.
My first stop was Brenda Schweder's booth. She sells her "Now That's a Jig" for wireworking and did some mini workshops on the show floor:
I took a picture of Brenda and Kat working on something over in the mini workshop area, but I didn't think Brenda would want me to post her butt. You're welcome, Brenda!
Next up is lampworker Diane Tarullo, who is from Downers Grove, Illinois. Her acorns have electroformed copper on top glass:
When I started out, I had a notion that I'd get snippets of video from folks with business tips for artists, but after Brenda's and Diane's, I realized that my camera's battery and my time would run out. I'm still going to show them, but not today.
Here is Sher Berman, another lampworker from Illinois (Deerfield, this time). The necklaces below are bead crochet:
Next I chatted with Suz and Shona from Glass Garden Beads. They sell jewelry-making kits in cute little purses from a number of different designers and are based in Northfield, Minnesota:
Cathy from Aardvark Art Glass was next to me to my right. She's from Madison, Wisconsin and has really cute glass fish and silver hedgehogs (among a lot of other things):
Another neighbor of mine was Allison of Bliss Beads Studio. She's from DeKalb, Illinois, and had a lot of beautiful beads and finished jewelry for sale:
Across the aisle from me was Margaret from Mostly Buttons. I imagine you can tell what she was selling (hint, it was mostly buttons!). The buttons are from The Czech Republic and the world. Margaret hails from Toledo, Ohio:
A little ways down was Julie Nordine of Credit River Art Glass from Credit River, Minnesota. My mother has one of her glass hearts from a few years ago:
Next to me on my left was Jes Durfee from Duluth, Minnesota. Not only did he have interesting glass marbles, pendants, and figurines (including a few minions from Despicable Me!), he was a lot of fun to be next to and to chat with:
Even if it did take 4 shots to get a good picture of him! :)
I talk a lot in my blog about the bead society I belong to (the Loose Bead Society of Greater Milwaukee, where I was on the Board for four years), so I enjoyed chatting with the President and Vice President of the Madison Bead Society, Pat and Ingrid:
If you're in Madison and haven't checked them out, you should! Being in a bead society has been so beneficial to me in so many ways!
GLOW was next. No, they weren't the Glorious Ladies of Wrestling but the Glass Lampworkers of Wisconsin from Madison and the surrounding area! They said I should link to Karen's information from Lady Crown Glass. Here are Karen, Sue, and Carla:
These ladies were fun to talk to and so nice! I'm sure you can't see it in the above picture, but look what I spied on their table:
A purple acrylic hand display! I said, "Ooh! That would match my booth perfectly! If you ever decide to get rid of it, let me know, and I'll buy it from you." Sue said, "I bought it for $10 - give me $10 and it's yours." I was so giddy I gave her $11 so she could make money on the deal. After that I started waving to people with the hand, and asking people if I could give them a hand. I think I was getting loopy - it was pretty close to the end of the show. Thanks, Sue! My husband started handing people their merchandise using the hand. He was getting a bit loopy, too.
The GLOW ladies said I just had to go talk to Steve and Terry from Bokamo Designs because they're super nice:
So I did, and they were! As you can see, they had an awful lot of leather cords and materials for making bracelets.
My final picture was taken just after the show closed. I chatted a lot this weekend with Tanya McGuire from South Dakota, who makes glass disks, beads, flowers, and many other whimsical things. Here she is with her husband, Jeffrey (I sure hope I got that right - my brain is a little fried right now!):
Whew! That's everyone! I hope you enjoyed my tour of a few of the Art Glass and Bead Show vendors as much as I did. Please take a look at their websites, and if you see them at another show, stop and check out their stuff and tell them Traci says hi!
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