Stocking up at the LA Jewelry District!

Knowing it would be one of my last times in LA for awhile, I made SEVERAL trips to the jewelry district to stock up for my Fall Line and whatever is to follow thereafter! I went a month before we moved and stocked up... but then went back a few weeks later and stocked up again... and after making the 200 necklaces sale, I went back when I was in town one last time and fully stocked up - again! That makes 3 full stock up trips - which resulted in these:

::ah!::

::pearls!::

::and gemstones!::

::and turquoise!::

::and crystals!::

::and findings - oh my!::

In addition to stocking up on jewelry for my fall line, moving cross country, planning my hub's ordination, and making those 200 necklaces I mentioned last week, I made sure I didn't forget one of the most important tasks on my list -- an outfit (and coordination jewelry!) for myself to wear to the ordination event! I found a chic pink dress with a high collar early long before the event and the move (on sale at Macy's!), and topped it off with my hub's black tie as a sash and some CUTE Steve Madden shoes! I knew I needed to make a fun and bold necklace to coordinate. During one of my many re-stocking trips downtown, I spotted some pearls and immediately knew what to do... here is the final outfit! (Sorry that picture to the right is ghetto-tastic, it's the only one I have of the whole outfit)!

Sue's necklace looks like mine - because I custom made it for her last year!

And on a final note, I finally got a job here in KC! I will be serving as a chaplain at a large Trauma Level 1 hospital downtown - and the best part is that it doesn't start until September! Which means I have between now and then to totally tackle all these supplies I have accumulated and make a killer Fall Line! Yeehaw! Here are a few previews of the line, in a semi-4th of July fashion!

Yee-haw Cowgirl It Up necklace on Etsy

The Chuck: All-Star necklace on Etsy

Happy 4th of July!

100th post!

That's right - this is my 100th post! I started this wee-little blog last May with the intention to expand my Etsy shop through blog lovin' and interaction! Since then, Bead Up's blog has ranked in 227 Google followers, 33 Networked Blog readers and another 176 fans on Facebook, readers from every continent, and over 10,000 hits! Wahoo! Thanks for being one of those faithful followers :) This past February also marks the anniversary of my first Etsy sale (now which ranks over 150 on the website with 105 feedbacks of 100%, and over 300 custom and in-person sales)! It's been a great year - especially since I never thought that Bead Up would grow at such an encouraging rate! Though most people do big-ole' giveaways when they hit milestones such as these, I don't want to over-do it since I just had a series of giveaways and am still co-hosting one that ends on Sunday (click here to enter if you haven't already)! Instead, I am pleased to announce the winner of the Lovely Clusters giveaway. In case you forgot, Bead Up was in the running to be announces a user favorite Blog or Etsy shop. Thanks to all of you who voted, I came in 3rd for Favorite Jewelry Shop (only losing by 2 votes - dag nabbit)! After numbering your entries and using the Random Number Generator, I am pleased to announce that the winner is my buddy John (who actually blogged about our recent doggie adoption on his own doggie blog)! John asked that I either raffle or donate the necklace's price to Used Pets, the organization in which I found my new doggie. I love this idea, and am going to put alot of thought into how best to raise funds for them through Bead Up'in! Lastly, I finished a custom wedding set of jewelry for a friend of mine here in LA. Adrienne asked if I could make her some statement necklaces to match her brown and sage colored themed wedding, and if she could provide the beads herself? Not only do I LOVE making statement necklaces, but I really love when the client provides some of the materials - it makes the process that much more reflective of their own style! I recommended some of my favorite locations in LA's jewelry district to Adrienne, and a week later she presented to me some really cool looking wooden disc beads and some round sage gemstone beads. After showing her some ways that I could string and arrange the beads, we agreed on using brass colored findings for the 2 bridesmaids's necklaces, one junior bridesmaid's necklace, and a flower girl bracelet (which Adrienne requested be made with crystals).I even had enough beads remaining to make a necklace for Adrienne, too! I hope she likes them!

MIA - but still keepin' busy!

Ok, so I know I have been rather MIA lately. But I swear, I have been busy doing Bead Up things (in addition to a million other things, including getting over a bad cold and starting a new job)! Here are a few of the latest projects I have completed... A loyal customer of mine, Karen, asked that I make her 3-year-old niece a little pink bracelet for Valentine's day. I used some beads I actually had left over from a previous project and came up with this little number: I love how the beads capture the light! When I gave it to Karen, she put it on her own wrist and laughed, saying "You will need to make another one - I like this one too much to give it away!" Coming right up! Back in December I blogged about how a co-worker of mine asked that I make her three brass necklaces that looked like exaggerated chains. She liked them so much that she asked if I can make her a double-linked bracelet to match. I mixed and matched some different sized chains and brass links to come up with a cute little bracelet that I thought she would like. When I presented it to her, she liked it so much she asked if I could make another one so she could stack them. I didn't get a chance to take a "formal" picture of the bracelets, but did manage to get a snap shot of them on her wrist as she just so happened to wear some rings that matched! I used the remaining chain and links from the project to come up with a matching necklace, complete with a cute little birdie charm! And finally, I splurged and managed to make something for myself, too! I have arrived at a point where I have become a loyal customer of two particular stores in LA's jewelry district (good products + great price + nice staff = I am there and devoted, baby). Every time I shop at The Bead Factory, I have been drawn to this certain string of peach, brown, and clear faceted round crystals. Finally, upon my last visit, my husband put them in my shopping basket without me knowing and I went home to find a surprise for my personal indulgence! I knew just from looking at these beads that I didn't want to yuck them up with any other beads or wire-wrapping -- I loved how they looked next to each other in their "raw" form and wanted to keep that integrity. And though there were enough beads to make a solid 13" choker kind of necklace, I wanted the beads to fall just north of my collar bone, yet also be adjustable in length. So I ordered some large linked gold chain and gold findings and simply strung the beads on some gold wire: And then added the gold chain and clasp, in addition to a cute little clear faceted bead at the end of the chain :) I LOVE how these crystals capture light: Now if I only knew what to wear the necklace with, I would be set! Meanwhile, I am meeting with a new client this weekend to start creating her wedding jewelry -- all I know is that she wants statement necklaces -- my kind of project! I am also working on a few more giveaways and some really cool, fresh, never-before-seen-kind-of blog-entries :) Keep posted!!

Nesting and Crafting and Showing and Selling!

Merry Christmastime! I hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving break and are just as excited about this next month as I am! I had a very productive Thanksgiving weekend. Between eating and sleeping and cooking and cleaning, we also put up our tree and other Christmas decorations, went shopping on Black Friday, washed our cars, cleaned our closets, did laundry, went to the jewelry district, spent most of Sunday at church, had dinner(s) with friends, and even found a few minutes in there for me to nap, knit, and scrapbook! I would have to say it was a very productive weekend! I also finished a necklace that has been on my to-do list for far too long this weekend! A seminary friend of mine asked me to recommend some jewelry from my shop for her to give two new mommy friends of hers. While I showed her a few pieces I though would fit the occasion, I also told her that I was thinking of making an item I have had on my mind for awhile - a hand wrapped wire birds nest with pearls. Holly loved the idea and was kind enough to give me all the time I needed, which came in handy once I figured out how much wire these little guys need! After ordering more 24 gauge wire off of Amazon (a beading first, since my usual online resources only offer expensive sterling options), I finally reserved the time to make these little guys. I am not going to lie - they were a bit challenging, especially since I am not a wire-wrapping goddess! Either way, I think they turned out well... well enough to post in my shop! Speaking of posting in my shop, today is the last day to buy ANYTHING in Bead Up's Etsy shop and get FREE SHIPPING! I think the sale went well this weekend - I even sold a large order to someone in Australia! Lastly, if you didn't make it to the malls on Black Friday or still have some Christmas shopping to do and are in the LA area, let me invite you to come and check out all the Bead Up carries at one of two shows I am doing this weekend! Here is the information:

Friday, December 4th 1-7 pm, Burbank, California Providence High School's 7th Annual Christmas Boutique located in the school's MPR room (click here for directions). In addition to having a Bead Up booth, this show will also feature gift baskets, sterling silver jewelry, brittle and other Christmas sweets, and a raffle. From what I hear, this show is a big deal :) Saturday, December 5th

4-9 pm, Redondo Beach, California (south of Manhattan Beach) Riviera Hall Lutheran School's Who-ville “Christmas Means Something More” Boutique located in the school's Rygh Hall (click here for directions). This one promises good food, sales, and even some live entertainment, too!

I will of course be spending this week making new and re-newed items for the show and also my Etsy site :) The hubs and I scored lots of great deals this weekend in the jewelry district and I am excited to show them to you! It's going to be a crazy busy week - but I wouldn't have it any other way!

Fall Line 09 - I'm a machine.

This was one of the first weekend's in a long time where I didn't have massive amounts of plans consuming any potential free time. In other words, I had lots of time to make jewelry! Making jewelry, much like scrapbooking, painting, writing, etc, doesn't just happen. You need to be in the mood and have some sort of inspiration keeping you going. Sometimes I sit in front of my supplies and think "WTF am I going to do with this?" Or other times I would rather waste away in front of the TV rather than face the disaster that has become my craft room. And it always seems that when I set aside time to get crafty, I come up with excuses or have no motivation or inspiration what-so-ever. Thankfully, this weekend, none of these were the case! When I started thinking of what I wanted included in my "Fall Line," the first thing that came to my mind was brass. I have seen alot of it around the craft world lately, so I knew I wouldn't have a problem finding this unique material. I have scored alot of brass charms and findings at Michaels, but the buggers don't carry matching chain in a size of my liking! I found myself in quite the dilemma on Saturday afternoon while staring at dozens of brass charms with no chain to match. Thankfully, the Hubs agreed to join me in a little trip to downtown LA's Jewelry District, simply to find the perfect chain. It had only been 3 weeks since I was last there, but I have already used a good deal of what I bought the first time I visited and knew that this trip would be much shorter than the last since we knew where we were going this time! Compared to our last visit, the Jewelry District this time around seemed more lively and promising (maybe because we weren't intimidated by it's randomness anymore: see picture on right). It's a mix of bead stores, trim stores, fabric stores, button stores, ethnic stores, mixed in between lots of random taco, hot dog, and ice cream stands. Kids run up and down the street playing with toys, guys stand under door frames urge you to step in their shop for a look, florist man corners hoping to sell gifts for sweethearts, and fabric lines the buildings on the sidewalk. We tried to visit a few stores that we missed during our first visit, but apparently this section of town is known for closing at 3 on Saturdays (fine, then!). No worries, the main store I hoped to visit, Athenian Fashion, was open and ready for me to drop some serious cash on some chain! I had a nice chat with the owner of the store and asked him if I could take a picture to share with you all. No dice, though I did at least get him interested in posting some on Yelp. I walked away with over 100 feet of chain and enough fixings to make dozens of necklaces! With the AC and TV on and food in my belly, I sat on my oversized suede chair for the majority of the rest of the weekend, making as many necklaces as I could on my ottoman. In the past, I have been proud of myself for making at least 3 necklaces in one sitting, but with my new supplies in hand, there was no stopping me! I think it also helped that I only had what I knew I was going to use for this specific project in front of me (instead of having ALL my supplies on the table - this only ever overwhelms me!). I also used only one kind of material and had a series of components that I mixed and matched. After a few cuts, bruises, and bandaids on my fingers accompanied by a very sore back, I was shocked when I counted how much I made: 30 necklaces and 5 pairs of earrings! I separated what I planned to sell on Etsy and what I am holding for my upcoming Jewelry Party, and then tediously packaged the two dozen necklaces in preparation for a very busy October. Here's a picture of all that I made: In the meantime, here's what I posted on Etsy this morning - click on any of the images to go it's listing!

I would love to hear what you think! I hope to add more every Monday for the next few weeks until my jewelry party... keep checking in! Now, where's that Tylenol?

Los Angeles Jewelry District - A Beaders Dream AND Nightmare.

First of all, so sorry I didn't get around to posting my weekly Fashionably Friday entry last week. It's been a crazy few weeks with leaving and returning to LA unexpectedly, though I think I am starting to get back into the groove of things. I think...

I have been living in LA for over a year now and have yet to find a jewelry supply store that makes me smile. I have heard all kinds of mixed reviews about the Jewelry District downtown, though have been avoiding it because a.) I didn't want to leave disappointed and b.) though it's not far away mile-wise, LA's traffic and subsequential parking is a nightmare, so just making the 12-mile journey is exhausting and takes the better half of a whole day. That said, this weekend my end of LA (the Valley) has been plagued with crazy amounts of smoke thanks to harboring wildfires, so on Saturday morning the Hubs and I needed a reason to get outta the area. I could think of nothing better than to finally cowgirl-up and make the adventure to the Jewelry District. After facing a fair amount of traffic and not finding the exit Google maps suggested, we drove into the first parking lot we could find and figured we would find where we hoped to go on foot.

LA is both alike and unlike other cities in that downtown itself is only really used by business people on the weekdays. Most of the city life is outside of the city limits. Except Broadway, which used to be the theater district of the West whose theaters are now factory stores (with the exception of the Orpheum). Broadway is bustling with ice cream carts, hole-in-the-wall pharmacies, taco trucks, crappy fast-food restaurants, guys trying to sell CD's on the corner, woman trying to sell something else on the corner, you get where I am going with this. Oh, and Broadway is also home to The Jewelry District itself. Perfect. (I thus didn't take as many pictures as I had planned since it was the kind of hood where you didn't want people to know you were carrying around an expensive electronic gadget. Same goes for the GPS I could have benefited from on my Blackberry. Next time I am going with just a few bills hidden deep within my bra and a good pair of tennis shoes. That's it). That said, we didn't really know where to begin when we started our trek around the hood since every store claimed "Wholesale" and "Unbeatable" prices. The majority of stores seemed to sell jewelry itself rather than jewelry making supplies (no surprise here). We finally found a hole in the wall little bead store (oddly called SSMAGR & MB, so good luck finding it in the phone book! The owners are from Egypt so I assume the name means something having to do with Jewelry in Coptic!) on 7th near Broadway. I had a great conversation with the lady behind the counter, who told me a bigger shop was just down the street a bit. I left with only a strand of emerald glass crystals that cost $12 - my kind of deal. (note: You can click on the name of each store I mention to read my Yelp review on the business). I tried my luck at the next little hole in the wall store next door but only found rude sales people and overpriced beads. Blah. I finally found a store that I have heard alot about - Bella Beads. This place was a little trippy but I left with some good finds, including some gold chain (for which I have been searching high and low for months) and some great rare gemstones and headpins. The location itself, as stated in my Yelp review, is more of a factory store for people with a business license than amateurs like myself, though the lady working there made me feel semi-comfortable! The husband helped me pick out some items for what he is calling my "fall line" and even encouraged me to buy more than I had planned. My kind of guy! At this point, though I had purchased a few good items, I was itching to discover where the real goods laid hidden, and suggested we find the 8th and Maple intersection Yelp deemed as the heart of the Jewelry District. Of course we got lost, and of course I didn't want to bring my Blackberry out to help me find the place since stood out as it was. After about an hour of circling the district in the 100 degree heat, the mecca was in sight: 8th and Maple! According to Google Maps, this intersection is home to about a dozen jewelry supply stores, many of which claim to be the biggest in the city. We started by visiting "Beads and More," which at the time I thought was the best jewelry supply store I had ever seen in my life. Aisles and aisles of gemstones, pearls, glass, Czech, fire-polished, porcelain, wooden, seed, and rare beads. Not only that, but they were all reasonably priced, well organized, and well marked. The only downfall was the sneudy staff who at one point had the nerve to come up to me and ask what my husband was doing sitting in the corner. You can read all about it here :) I left with some really funky gemstone beads, yet with a really bad taste in my mouth thanks to the crappy and intrusive staff. (Haha, note the google maps picture. Wasn't about to whip out my camera in this hood!). The poor husband at this point was dehydrated and ready to melt, but I pushed him enough to visit just one more store (with a little puppy-eyed action and a "pleeeeeeeeeeease!"). We walked down the street and stumbled on a non-marked building that looked promising. I walked in and gasped in disbelief. Poked myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. An actual bead heaven! This store, Athenian Fashions, had it ALL! Aisles and aisles of well organized, thematic, and color coordinated findings galore. The store is divided into three sections: findings, chain, and children's. The findings room: We're talking every size of headpins, spring rings, clasps, etc, and in 4 options - gold, silver, brass, and copper! The stuff literally is stacked from ceiling to floor. They have TONS of charms sold in bulk at SUPER cheap prices - featuring everything from religious charms (sectioned by religion rather than all jumbled together, and including rosary materials!) to a huge selection of skulls! The chain room: is basically my heaven. I have been looking EVERYWHERE for some gold chain and found it BY THE AISLE here! AND - it's all perfectly priced and organized! They not only have silver, gold, yellow gold, copper, and brass colored chains, but also pink, blue, white, green, etc. They also sell them by the ream in addition to by the foot. Amazing. (Note all the gold chain options in a super organized fashion!). The last room was full of what I consider "children's" beads - wooden, plastic, funky, brightly colored, etc. A perfect resource for a teacher or parent! If all this amazingness weren't enough, the staff here were 100% cordial and interactive. I had some great conversations with the gals working there and even gave some of them my card. They also have beautiful sample pieces on display and put your purchases in a nifty reusable jewelry bag! I have found my main jewelry source in LA - and now know how to best get here without getting lost :) Overall, my adventure into the heart of LA's Jewelry District was successful, but not without the blood, sweat, and tears (ok, fine, blood-curdling heat, sweat, and Gatorade) it took to find it's gems. I bought lots of cool items and now know what resources are at my disposal. Now longer do I need to reply on Michael's! Go figure, though, that the next day we swung by the chain craft store for something un-jewelry related to fund that they had just re-structured their whole bead section. There goes that idea! (note my Hub's glee in the newly renovated section - there goes our next paycheck!).

You can read my list of LA Jewelry District reviews here :)