From Kids Earrings to Sophisticated Necklaces to Wedding Jewelry...

Knowing that I start work in a little over a month (I AM LOVING THIS SUMMER-off STUFF!), I have been spending whatever minute I am not busy at church or with the house on, you guessed it, making jewelry :) Ah, this is the life. Where to being?


A few weeks ago a girl from my church was wearing some super cute earrings. I told her that I liked them... her mom told me that she loves wearing glamorous earrings...  but not the price tag. I told them I could teach her how to make them herself for free. Next think you knew, I had two 11-year old gals (the first brought a friend) and her mom at my kitchen table ready to learn! Making dangle earrings really is quite easy (and after this whole teaching lesson I am going to make a tutorial and start selling DIY earrings kits for kids - not sure why I didn't think of that before!), and these kids (and adult) got it with little instruction! Here is what they created in less than 2 hours!:

Needless to say, I was quite proud :)

Next on the list was several sets of bridal jewelry. Someone contacted me on Etsy awhile back and asked if I could make several sets of my pearl ball necklaces with matching earrings, though change up the color a bit to include white pearl ball rather than a salmon one. Consider it done!

After I sent Laura her earrings and necklaces (I threw in a set for the bride, too!), she wrote:
"I just got them- they are beautiful!!!!!!  I love how everything turned out- thank you so much!!  Thank you for including an extra for myself :) I put it on immediately haha (figure it has to go away till the wedding, but couldn't help myself)- they are so beautiful!!! Thank you so much for working with me on this- was a pleasure!! :) would def recommend to anyone who asks. Thanks again!!!!!!"


I also got a last-minute phone call from a few friends at church stating the need for a mother-of-the-bride necklace for a wedding a few days away! The gals brought the dress that the MOtB planned to wear and we collaborated to make a necklace/earring set of pearls and crystals - my favorite! Best of all, I spotted the MOtB at church the next weekend wearing the pearl and crystal earrings with white jeans and a blue shirt - it was an unexpected match made in heaven! I have since duplicated and posted the earrings on Etsy - thanks for the inspiration, ladies!

Last but most certainly NOT least, one of my most favorite customers turned dear friend (whom we met via this blog, actually!) commissioned me to make a necklace with a rather unique source of inspiration - the colors and art she plans to use for her baby's nursery! Nilsa plans to wear the necklace at her maternity photo shoot in a few weeks, and asked that we focus on turquoise, lime, and orange based on these pieces of art she is loving from Etsy (check out Nilsa's blog for the link to each piece!):

Focusing on the vibrant orange, turquoise, and lime color scheme Nilsa requested, I started by sending her a picture of some beads I had on hand that might work:

From there we agreed on these beads:

Now for the actual layout. I had some lofty ideas for this project, but after a few failed attempts, I knew I could easily do something like this as seen on Michael's.com:

Nilsa and I agreed on making the necklace 3-strands and measuring right above the bust... so I went to work and sent her these pictures along the way to make sure we were on the same page:

After getting her OK, I finished the wire strands off and put it all together on the toggle clasp!

This project was a great way to use some of the more upscale beads I have been collecting but too afraid to use up :) The turquoise, jade, and crystal beads make for one mighty fine statement necklace, if you ask me, and it's not made of plastic! Can't wait to see your maternity shots, Nilsa! Congrats on your pregnancy and thanks for allowing me to be a part of the celebration!

Oh, and I almost forgot. Bead Up has some VERY exciting news! Not only am I now an official business in the State of Missouri (it only took me 2 hours total to get it done - amen for the Midwest!), but I have set a date for the Second Annual Cupcakes, Cocktails, and Creations party! I have been working with local artists and bakers to get some other vendors in on the party, which will be held in my house (again, hooray for Midwest suburban super sizes!). Buckle up, Kansas City, and start saving your spare change!

So save the date for August 28th from 2-5! I couldn't be more excited!

200 custom made-to-order necklaces in 5 days!

It goes without saying that, by the looks of my blog, I have been quite MIA. Ask my craft room and new home in Kansas city if I have been MIA and they would give you a quite different answer! A few days before my husband and I packed up the car to move from Los Angeles to Kansas City, I got an e-mail from someone on Etsy asking if I could create 30 copies of my "Hope" necklace for a graduation her institution was hosting. Wow - 30! That was perhaps my largest order to date! Though I knew I wouldn't be able to make 30 of the exact same necklace, I searched around a found some comparable components and offered a wholesale price to the buyer. 30 soon turned into 50, and not only that, but the buyer wanted to substitute the pink bead for a purple trumpet bead. After adding trumpet beads to my to-buy list for the project, the buyer asked that we up the number of necklaces again to 100! WOWZA! I frantically tried to find the chain and charms that I needed, and as I was on the road to my new home, the buyer asked for 200 necklaces! HOLY JUNK! Sign me up - I think?!

So in addition to trying to move into my new home and prepare for a return trip to LA for the husband's ordination, I searched far and wide for the materials I needed to make these bad boys. In the past when I have made custom jewelry I have had little problem finding the amount of components I need. That was before I was looking for 200-800 of certain pieces. When I went to order 200 of the HOPE charms from one of my favorite sites, FusionBeads, turns out they only had 14 in stock. Ooooh. Next, when I went to order the heart charms I had offered to include on the necklaces, Artbeads only had 25 in stock. Hmmm. Next when I went to Michael's to buy 50 (yes, 50) packets of chain, they of course only had 3. So what's a girl to do? Whine to her husband and have him help! While I searched frantically online for other distributors of the Hope charms, the hubs called EVERY Michael's store in 3 counties and 2 states in and around Kansas City to see who had them in stock. I then spent a whole day driving around my new city and visited 5 Michael's stores within 3 hours - whew. Thankfully I found the bulk of what I needed, though had to settle on a few packets of chains in a slightly different style. AND my VistaPrint order of new business cards was not going to arrive before I needed them because, oh, did I mention that the buyer needed these all within 5 days? 


The factory worker in me got to work with whatever I had in stock as I waited for the supplies I ordered online arrived. I first cut 200 18" strands from 50 packets of 4' chain and attached them each to spring rings from Artbeads (click on the link to read my review of the product). 

Anxiously waiting daily for my supplies to arrive in the mail, I went to work on the purple trumpet beads that I bought on Etsy from Allthingsbeaded:

Each one needed special attention, so I lined them up and put a head pin in each. Of course they each needed to be trimmed,

And then curled...

The next day the Hope charms I ordered on from Fusion Beads and HipChickBeads came in the mail (thanks to a nudging call to the distributor by the hubs!)...

And finally, the day before I needed to mail the finished products (and the day before I was to fly back to California), the heart beads I ordered from Etsy seller CLBeads in Canada arrived - whew! That was close!

The buyer wanted 160 of the necklaces partially packaged so she could easily put them around the necks of the graduates at the ceremony. The hubs painstakingly punched, prepared, taped, and packaged each kit while I finished the necklaces until 2am that night. That's love, I guess!

So, 4 roles of tape,

5 internet orders,

5 Michael's store visits,

50 packets of chain, 

200 spring rings,

200 Hope charms, 

200 head pins,

200 business cards, 

200 trumpet beads,

200 heart charms,

400 hole punches,

410 ziploc bags, and

800 jump rings later, we had these:

We rushed to the nearest Post Office (I had to google map it since I had yet to search out my local post office!) to mail the finished box of necklaces off to the buyer in Colorado. While in LA, I was thrilled to get an e-mail from her stating that she not only received them in time, but also loved them. Whew! I can sleep now!

So, there you have it folks - how Bead Up (and her husband!) made 200 necklaces in less than 5 days. Hope to do it again soon - no lyin!

MIA Monday: Quartzsite, Arizona

I wish thoughtfully posting to my blog was as easy as it is to upload a photo to Facebook. That way I would be much more regular in my Bead Up postings and not feel like I have to cram in everything once I do get a chance to blog it up! In other words, so sorry for seeming MIA!

For what I have lacked in posts I have made up in preparing for my Summer Collection ("Huh?" you may ask, "What happened to your Spring Collection?" Good question, o' faithful reader. Due to crazy life changing events going on this spring, I am going to put everything I had planned to make this spring into a Summer Collection - and now that I bought tons of new supplies I have my work cut out for me!). 


This week the hubs, the dogS (we adopted ANOTHER one!), and I drove to Tucson, Arizona to visit family. I forgot how much I loved suburbia when a HUGE Jo-Ann Etc. and Michael's greeted me in Arizona. The hubs and I went out of our way to schedule in a good chunk of time visiting Jo-Ann on our way out of town, so already I felt like the otherwise obligatory visit was advantageous to this beader.


However, on our way home I spotted a huge billboards that simply stated "GEM WORLD: Beads and Findings, this exit." I TOLD the Hubs that we would be making an unexpected pit stop at this promising place in the hopes that I will leave with a good story or two, especially considering that we were literally in the middle of the Arizonan desert near the California border (as evident in this picture). I figured I would find either some great trucker-stop-type souvenirs or a cool selection of over-priced turquoise. What I found in the fittingly titled town, Quartzsite, however, was MIND BLOWING.

After accidentally passing by the store on "Main Street" (the only street in this otherwise truck stop), I parked on a dirt lot behind "Hardes Bead and Jewelry." The store featured Native American-esk jewelry in the front of the store and lots of beading supplies and products in the back. At first glance I figured that I buy everything that I saw at the store just as well in the Los Angeles Jewelry District, until I saw a sign that said "Everything 50% off marked price!" Suddenly everything was a total deal! I walked away with a bunch of Swarovski and glass crystals that would have cost me at least $40 elsewhere and paid only $13! Score!

Walking past souvenir merchants and locals who have set up shop out of the back of their trucks, I came across the store I was waiting for: GEM WORLD. I walked in and couldn't believe my eyes: aisles and aisles of gems and findings and coral and turquoise and necklaces and earrings and on and on and on! Not only was there a vast selection, but ALL THE BEADS WERE ON SALE! We are talking 75%-off turquoise and coral; $1 pearls by the strand, crystals for less than a dollar... in other words, it was like I was in China again! 

I quickly grabbed a basket and went to town as quickly as I could since the Hubs and dogs were in the car. I managed to buy all kinds of gemstones and pearls and findings within 10-minutes and rushed out to the car to show my family. The Hubs was so impressed that he encouraged me to go back in the store and do it again. NO problem! I went back in and did it again, and this time didn't hold anything back. Overall, I bought what would have been over $500 here in LA yet only spent a 1/5th of that. I asked the guy at the counter where he got most of his beads -- turns out China, so he and I had a good little chat of all that's available in Shanghai. He also said that they are moving to a 2-story location later this Spring, which will include several big-screen TV's for all the unfortunate husbands who have to come and wait for their ladies to get their beading on! Um, who wants to make a trip to the middle-of-nowhere, Arizona?

Here's a look at what I bought:

I also bought something pre-made for myself. I can't remember the last time I bought a necklace for myself, but when I saw this one, I looked and looked over it for a good 5-minutes thinking of ways I could take it apart and re-string it. I could think of no ways I would want to change it! And best of all, it was only $5! I think I am going to take notes from this bold piece and make some similar pieces for Bead Up!

Whew! What a trip! I literally had an adrenaline rush to last for the rest of the trip thanks to the amazing deals in the middle of nowhere, Arizona! Now I have LOTS of work ahead! New pieces to come soon!

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 :)