A Handmade Holiday Giveaway and Two Limited Time Sales

Taking today and maybe Friday, too, off from my usual post about a design or two and showing some pictures of the work. I'll be back on Saturday with my usual Supplier Sales post. Before I go, there are a few things I wanted to mention, though.

1st is the giveaway at Create for Less - "Handmade Holidays Drawing"

Send us your best handmade holiday creation, from Christmas cards and ornaments to holiday gifts and home décor. We can't wait to see your holiday creativity! Simply pick out your favorite holiday project, enter below and you could win a $100 CreateForLess shopping spree!

Entry form link

The second is Rings & Things 5-day sale is going on now through Sunday, and it's a 15% off price on Swarovsky round beads. If you're thinking of making really special holiday jewelry as gifts or to dress up your holiday party outfits, this is a good deal to take advantage of!

Lastly, The Beadin' Path is having a sale special through this Saturday only on their Lucite items. If you're not subscribed to their newsletter mailing list (the sign-up box is on the home page), you're missing out not only on deals like today's, but also on great information. For example, the current email is all about the what, where, when and how of The Beadin' Path's fabulous collection of vintage Lucite - the story of how they found their vintage Lucite flowers is really interesting!

Oh, and the sale? Spend $50 on Lucite and get $5 off. Order $50 or more Lucite using coupon code LUCLRN at checkout and get $5 off. Valid to both retail & wholesale customers, for one time use. Discount will be applied to Lucite items purchased "online only" at BeadinPath.com. Offer expires Saturday, November 14, 2009, at midnight EST.

Normally I do sales info on Saturday, but since both of these sales are ending over the weekend, I didn't want you to miss out.

Friday Pick is On Hiatus!

I have such a backlog of great beads to work with, and ideas with them that I need to turn into jewelry, that I'd better focus on the stuff I already have and not get distracted by more shiny stuff. Which I'll certainly be (and probably buy) if I put together a Friday Pick.

So instead, here's something I've just started with copper beads and chrysocolla from The Beadin' Path.

I just need to think about what else it needs before I'm satisfied that it's done. I usually start things pretty simple and then start adding stuff, this one definitely seems to be going that direction.

There's the slight possibility of something dangling from the flower at the bottom of the large focal, but I have an idea I'm going to experiment with first. Whether it works out or not, you'll find out about it here!

Speaking of lots of shiny stuff, today my August beads of the month from The Beadin' Path arrived, a lovely selection of glass beads crafted to look like sea glass (some of which are BeadClub specials and not in the catalog) another bag full of Lucite beads (now I can finish the necklace I featured last Friday) plus more yellow and orange Lucite flowers to finish up the necklace I shared on Wednesday). Obviously, I have plenty to work with, so I need to get to it.

See you, I hope, tomorrow!

P.S. - I challenged myself, on Twitter, to list something every night until I run out of things to list. Here's the pair of earrings I listed last night on Art Fire:

Dawno

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Friday Guest Post - The Beadin' Path's Heather & Her Phenominal Stash of Vintage Lucite!

The wonderful Heather DeSimone whose Twitter bio says: "Mama. Wife. Bead Store Owner. Lover of vintage and Lucite Maven." Has given me permission to reprint one of her blog posts from The Beadin' Path blog "What's In Store with Heather" in place of an original piece of my own today, as I am still a little too blue to be creative.

One of these days (maybe when she's not wiped out from moving her entire store!) I will see if I can wrangle her into being the subject of a Thursday interview post. Until then, I offer you a post from last summer she wrote that simply fascinated me. It's an inside peek into the bead store owner's world and a simply wonderful tale! It's the story of how they acquired their huge supply (over 40,000 lbs!) of vintage Lucite as well as information about its provenance and how it has been used.

Learn Where We Got Our Vintage Lucite Beads
by Heather DeSimone
Friday, 18 July 2008

Want to know where our vintage Lucite beads all came from? One of the most frequently asked questions when a shopper enters our store or shops with us online is "Where did you get all of those fabulous vintage Lucite beads?"

It could be because when one walks into our store at The Beadin' Path, they're greeted with a 18 foot wall full of it. It's colorized from left to right and spans almost the entire back wall of one room in our store. We try to merchandise our entire store & our website in color blocks so that each room or page is a virtual palette of beads. I think those who ask, expect a quick or secret answer. However, there's a much longer & more interesting story to how we acquired over 40,000 lbs of vintage Lucite.

We were approached 2 years ago in the early Summer by the manager of a plastics company in Rhode Island via. email. (You've got to love that world-wide-web). They did a search for vintage Lucite & saw on www.BeadinPath.com that we stocked and LOVED vintage Lucite beads. They were looking for a buyer to come and clean out a couple of rooms in their very large warehouse. We get approached all the time by exporters, manufacturers or companies that are liquidating jewelry components. Yet this contact really intrigued us. You see this company had not manufactured beads or jewelry components since the late 1970's and early 1980's. They simply had a 10,000 + square foot room stocked floor to ceiling with these pesky beads and hoops and cabochons that were just in their way.

Currently the company (Plastic Development) is one of the leaders in the industry for manufacturing earring cards & other plastic-based merchandising for jewelry and accessories. When you order these from many well-known companies that distribute them, chances are they're made by these folks in R.I. Because they had the need to expand their business and move some of their less physically-able employees to the first floor space, currently housing all of 'those beads,' they needed them moved out and moved out fast.

My mother Jan & I decided it would be worth a trek down I-95 South to at least check this stock out. And if it was a wash, we'd head on over to Providence Place & do some shopping (they have an H&M and a Restoration Hardware there!). Well we never made it to the mall! When we met with the manager of the company we learned more about vintage Lucite than we had ever known before. He had worked at the same company for over 30 years and was there when they had actually made these great beads & parts.

They had been commissioned by well-known companies such as Avon, Coro, and Trifari to custom-create colors and shapes for their seasonal lines of jewelry. The quality of these 'plastic' beads was just unmatched. (Yes, I too used to be a 'plastic-bead-snob'!) He explained to us a little about the process where the beads are actually made in a relief process or 'carved' from a rod or cane of Lucite. They were not press-molded like many plastics that show seams and are lighter-weight. So, when they had overstock, slightly off-color beads from the special order, or simply orders that were not picked up, they stashed them in 'the bead room.'

After some research and much number crunching [we] decided to bring a group of helpers down to Rhode Island the following week with 2 20' UHaul trucks. Wow! We had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into. We worked a 12 hour day with 10 people we brought down as well as many of the warehouse workers who chipped in to help us.

Sure there were lots of us 'bead girls', but our group also included many big burly guys, all bagging, packing boxes, stacking boxes, wrapping and loading palettes. We finally got the 2 trucks loaded to the ceilings. But we had only packed up about 1/3 of the stock! There was still a whole room of beads & parts: it almost looked as if we hadn't even been there.

A week or so later, Jen our store manager came to me and told me that her Uncle was a licensed trucker and could drive a big old, not sure what they're technically called, 'semi' type truck. And her dynamo of a mother Sue, who also worked for us was inspired to ride down there with him and get the semi loaded up if we could get down there in the days before & get the rest of the warehouse packed up. We were so overwhelmed by the first trip that (and I can't even believe this now) we had been contemplating just leaving the rest of the stock down there and having a rubbish company come & remove it. It was costly to move beads! So with Sue's encouragement, we made another trip down to RI and packed & boxed & stacked our little hearts out once again. Sue & her brother drove the 'semi' down a day later & filled it from front to back!

…and that's how it all happened. That's how we acquired over 40,000 lbs of vintage Lucite beads & parts. Surprisingly, two years later we have sold almost half of the stock. When we first brought it home to Maine, I made the comment that I would be that little old lady at 80 years old with a barn full of rotting boxes full of beautiful beads. I guess I was wrong… nah, I'll be that old lady who dies with the most beads yet.

For the last couple of years, a really fun gal named Danielle has been purchasing lots of our vintage Lucite stock for her very funky & successful line of jewelry. She has a great business and sells her wares mostly over in Europe (smart chic, considering the plight of the US Dollar right now). Anyway, this lady knows her plastics. She was teaching me a thing or two about our very own stock. And as we'd discuss the differences between Lucite and other vintage plastics, she kept using the term 'Best New England Warehouse of Vintage BeadsPlastics' to describe where our beads had been made.

I kept thinking "What is she talking about?" but I didn't say anything because I was afraid that maybe she'd misheard something that I said or maybe I'd misheard her. After all: the company we purchased the beads from was called Plastic Development in Warwick, Rhode Island. And Norm, the man who sold them to me had worked for that company for the last 45 years and knew his stuff. He told us all about making the beads himself back in the 70's and 80's. So for the first couple of conversations I didn't say anything to Danielle.

Finally, when I KNEW that I had heard her say very clearly "…and the beads that came from Best Plastics in Providence…" I interrupted. "What a sec, WHAT are you talking about? You keep dropping this name and I thought I was hearing things. I've never heard this name before. As far as I know, these Lucite beads were made by Plastic Development in Warwick, not Providence." There's always this veiled mystery that many vendors like to perpetuate. She was buying a lot of beads from us and I didn't want her to think I had anything to hide about where they were from and where we got them. Danielle's answer was "Geez, I don't know. I thought YOU told me about Best Plastics." I said "I'd never heard the name until you mentioned it." And we moved on.

Fast forward a few more weeks. I was at one of our favorite job lot warehouses where I had not been for over 2 years! And evidently I've missed out in the last 2 years too because we didn't find a whole lot. Between being pregnant and having a newborn, it's hard to travel a few hours each way, dig through dirty boxes that are 15 feet in the air, etc etc to do your buying. So we've been doing a lot of buying via our manufacturers overseas lately, because I can simply send an email from home and viola! Beads!

Anyway, I was talking to Anthony who has been in business in the Rhode Island area for many, many years and his business was handed down to him from his Father-In-Law so he knows the industry. I mentioned Best Plastics and asked him if he'd heard of it. He said "Yeah, that's that warehouse you bought out!" I nearly fell on the floor. I said "But that company was called Plastic Development…" And now you're about to hear a thing of fables… bead myths from years past.

Best Plastics had been manufacturing beads for years, right across the street from Anthony's warehouse in Rhode Island. In the early 1980's, Best decided to shift their focus to manufacturing pressed plastic earring cards and other merchandisers. You know the type: when you go into WalMart and you see tacky earrings on a rounder, they're hanging on these grey plastic earring cards with a patch of velvet on them that read "Fashion New England Warehouse of Vintage Beads Earrings."

No matter what part of the world you're in, when you see these, they're probably made by Plastic Development in Rhode Island. Anyway, when they decided to shift their focus, they moved their company from a warehouse in Providence to a warehouse in Warwick and you guessed it, changed their name to Plastic Development. Anthony said "you know, they offered me that lot of beads and I just had too much plastic." We purchased over 40,000 lbs so I can only imagine how many thousands of pounds they had offered him.

So, thanks to Danielle, I learned the real name of our beads' manufacturer. And thanks to Anthony, we have thousands and thousands of pounds of Lucite beads to sell. These are the things that intrigue me still after all these years in this business: the lore of the beads. The history. Sometimes you hear these things from vendors and you think "They must have made that up to get me to buy this strand of beads, but it's cool." But the great thing about buying anything vintage, is that it has history. And the most mundane story can seem so riveting when it's told in the context of something you love. Like beads.

Post and pictures courtesy of, and with permission from, The Beadin' Path - Learn Where We Got Our Vintage Lucite Beads (11 June 2009)

One final thing - last Friday I wrote about "Follow Friday" for bead/jewelry artist bloggers - here's the link. I didn't get any comments last week, but perhaps if I remind you, you'll have some ideas this week?

Monday Miscellany - Some New Photos for Art Fire Store

Before I get into the Miscellany, Blanche from Sha-sha Handcrafted Jewelry got the "One Lovely Blog" award and passed it along to 10 other crafty bloggers, and one of them was me! You should click over to her blog and visit all her nominees, too!

The rules are:

• Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link.
• Pass the award to 10 or more other blogs that you love. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

My nominees (and you don't have to accept, just know that I think you've got lovely blogs!) are :

ABeadADay
Baubles and Babbles
Bead Origami
ErtheFae
JustATish
Kell's Creations
NiftyKnits
SmuTopia
WillowWalker
WireMySoul

I worked on photography Sunday and re-listed one piece and put up one new listing. While I have a number of new pictures ready to go, I'm going to space out my listings to try and get some front page views.

Anyway, here's the old vs. new main view pictures of one of my pieces:

old

new (and you can see the rest of the "poses" by clicking the link)

(click to enlarge any picture)

And here's the new listing

I'm not sure if I'll add the props to this necklace's listing - it's a very busy necklace as it is, but I kind of like the idea of the jewelry posed as if on one's dressing table just before getting gussied up for the evening, which is why I thought I'd try those props.

This one will probably go up today:

I didn't get around to cleaning up and re-organizing the workroom. Ended up working right at my computer desk with one of my shoebox lid DIY lap beading trays. I showed off one of those pieces late on Saturday, but I'm so fond of it, I'm going to share it again.

(click to enlarge)

It deserves a great name, too, but I can't seem to come up with one. What would you call it? I'm very doubtful that I will ever try to sell this, I just like it too much to give it up!

Also am working on another piece with Lucite floral bits from The Beadin' Path, a light pink rose (like this one but not such a bright pink) and two large leaves (like these but in a light olive) - I thought I was finished, then got a wild hair and tried something different, it's not working out exactly as I want, so I'll be playing with it more.

I've added a little slideshow to the very bottom of the blog (you'll have to scroll all the way down to the footer) where I've put pictures of myself through various ages and stages in my life that I've stored in Photobucket for one reason or another. If you want to know a bit more about Dawno, please take a peek.

Hope you come back tomorrow for Tuesday Tidbits. Also, want an easy way to read my past Sunday Wanderings or Thursday Interview and Review features? Here's the link!

Saturday Extra: Lucite Flower and Leaf Necklace

Created this today, using Czech glass faceted rondelles and flower beads, freshwater cultured pearls, non-tarnish gold artistic wire in 24 gauge and lucite flowers and leaves. I still have to add the clasp, it'll be 17 or so inches with a short extension chain.

I received these lucite flowers and leaves from The Beadin' Path and they must be sold out, can't find links to them. I believe the flowers are contemporary German lucite (here's what I think are the same style in 'celery') and that the leaves are contemporary German lucite Beech leaves (here's what I think are the same style in deep grass green).

Sorry the picture isn't the best, it's late afternoon and the light isn't good. I am really happy with how the necklace turned out, though.