Bead Stop on My Trip to LA

I'm visiting with friends in LA this weekend and we went to a great little bead shop yesterday in Santa Monica called Beadniks (warning - site has music on the intro page) on Arizona Ave. Googling Beadniks also brings up other cities - not sure if this is just a name people liked or a chain of stores. There's one in Chicago, another in Westchester (didn't check which state) and another in Saratoga (again, didn't checkwhich state - went straight to the link for the one in Santa Monica) They've implemented a great idea - you can make stuff right there in the shop. There are people who will help you with the technical bits of constructing your beaded piece, as well. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but it's definitely a great idea.

So I shopped around and found a beautiful silver piece:











and this assorted glass mix (contents = 2 3" tubes):










I certainly could have bought more, but I didn't want to have to carry around ten pounds of beads all day and the bead store was our first stop. My friends know me all too well. In fact one of them asked "would you like us to 'cut you off' at any point?"

Later on as we chatted about all kinds of things, my friends also gave me some great advice about my Etsy site, building my future site, marketing, writing good description copy and pricing. We talked about doing shows and fairs, also. Lots of fun stuff to think about, although I do realize the reality of it is a lot of hard work, too.

What a great weekend!