New Year = New Stuff!

Happy New Year! I hope you had a restful Christmas and joyous New Year celebration! The Bead Up house went from crazy busy to crazy relaxed and back to crazy busy over the last week and a half! Between filling in lots of Bead Up orders for Christmas (both custom and from the shop) and even saying "yes" to a crazy call at 12:30p.m. on Christmas Eve to make a custom necklace for a co-worker who, at the last minute, needed a Christmas gift for his wife (...?!), the days leading up to Christmas were both rushed and quite profitable ;) The hubs and I then flew to my parent's in Kentucky at 4am on Christmas morning and spent the week celebrating the birth of Jesus and my own birthday! In addition to sleeping in, eating whatever was in my path of destruction, playing lots of board games and watching lots of movies, I also did quite a bit of shopping and stocked up on what I think is the beginning of my Spring Collection of supplies - all I am going to say is that it will involve lots of word charms :) Since my return to LA a few days ago, I already have quite a few custom orders on the queue, many of which I can't wait to blog about in the near future! That said, I managed to score quite a few free, cheap, or totally expensive items over Christmas, all of which will be very helpful to Bead Up in this new year! Back in November I entered several giveaways hosted by my new blog friend Celeste (with whom I did a giveaway earlier in the fall). I guess good karma gets returned to you, because I won a super awesome tote bag compliments of Memento! After a few e-mails back and forth with the creator of the tote, which included debating over colors and fonts, I got this beauty:

This tote is not only super cute and useful, but it's also collapsible! Perfect for jewelry parties and shows, in addition to storing my stuff around the craft room!

Lime, pink, and brown - Bead Up's favorites!

Thanks again, Celeste and Memento, for sharing your time and talents!

Next on my list was more items from Vistaprint. I have blogged before about how much I love their website and deals, which include crazy free e-mail promotions with no strings attached! I splurged a little before Christmas and ordered a (free!) Bead Up note book (with a slight typo - can you find it?!)...

And some Bead Up letterhead and Gift Certificates (which can be purchased for $25, or any other denomination, here)! If you found the typo in the notebook, maybe your eagle eyes are also noticing a slightly different quality in my pictures. My last, but not least, Christmas splurge was...

A Nikon D3000!!!

I have been planning on buying a new, slightly more "professional" camera for awhile (the camera I have been using, a Fuji Finepix S5200, has been a great companion in my travels to Asia, Europe, and around the US in the last 3 years, though I was ready for the next step!). The hubs, my parents, and I are planning a trip to the Holy Land the year (and not the amusement park in Florida!), and I plan to bring a camera that's worthy of such a trip. And with such a successful Bead Up year, I figured it's not only a reward for all my hard work, but also a great investment for Bead Up's product photos! I have yet to read the owners manual (I kind of like figuring it out organically!), but plan on getting to know this thing like the back of my hand in the new year! So, thank YOU, Bead Up friend, for helping me reach this goal and buying this camera!

Prayers to you for a happy and healthy new year! Here's to another decade!