A few Fraser Valley Bead Show pictures!

Okay, there aren’t a ton of them, but I want to thank Darlene for getting at least these ones!! I had my camera there, but couldn’t find it half the time and was totally swamped with other stuff the rest of the time. There aren’t even any pics of my booth!! Wonder how that happened? This is the first year that I actually had lots of stuff to sell! Oh well, just means I’ll have to have lots to sell next year to take pics of!

So without further ado, here are the pics!

Damaris Oakley (and hubby!) of Redroom Art Glass!

Wendy Bester, Bumble Beads – amazing polymer clay beads (super nice lady too!!).

Patricia Doyle (in the middle – not sure who she’s with!), showing off her gorgeous fused glass platter! By the way, Pat is awesomely amazing! I am eternally grateful for all her help before, during and after the show! She helped one of our virgin vendors (he’d never been to any show, let alone a bead show before!) and he walked in the room, stared straight ahead like a deer in the headlights, and Pat walked over, guided him to his booth and assured him that he would be just fine.Matt of Just Screwing Around says that if it weren’t for our wonderful Pat, he’d have turned tail and run! LOL Bead freaks aren’t that scary, are we?!?

This is Pat’s booth at the show. She is a lampwork and fused glass artist, and a super nice person! (don’t worry, she deserves all the praise I can give her!!) LOL

Strung Out On Beads (above) is a local bead store (Abbotsford, BC). It’s a VERY funky bead store, and I’m proud to say I’ve known Lisa, the owner (not shown) since she opened her original store around the corner from this one – gads, must have been at least 14 years ago!! Yikes! LOL If you think you’re a bead addict, Lisa’s daughter’s name is Nova Bead! I tried to get a pic of Nova and Freya playing while everyone was setting up, but they’re all blurry! That’s what happens when little girls run rampant!!

There’s Melanie Rowe, peaking from beside her display!! Mel does the most incredible face beads – I wish I had a picture of the one Darlene bought. It’s so beautiful! I’ll have to bug Darlene and get her to take a pic of it!

Roxann Blazetich-Ozols of Bead Addict, from Ontario. She makes up beautiful seed bead kits, and taught a couple of bead crochet classes at the show (thanks Roxann!).

Caliente Art Glass – Michelle had tons of her lampwork beads for sale, including her super cute pirate beads wearing santa hats! LOL

This somewhat unpopulated booth is shared by Kerri Fuhr and Stephanie Cannon (Donna Barrell is out front shopping! Her daughter had a booth at the show). Anyway, I’m not sure where the girls were when Darlene was taking a pic – wish I’d gotten some close ups of these girls’ beads! They do amazing work!

Hooray! A picture of my wonderful amazing Silent Auction assistant Naaz!! She’s manning Debra Kallen’s booth in this picture. This woman is an absolute spitfire! So full of energy, life, enthusiasm and fun!! You can’t help but laugh and smile when she’s around, she’s awesome! And a VERY dedicated supporter of all our local bead artists! I don’t think anyone has a collection of jewelry like Naaz does!! She’s also very good for the ego – she tells me I’m doing a great job (even when I feel like I should be pulling my hair out!). Did I remember the thank you enough yet, Naaz? I’m making her a ring covered in sapphires – that should be thanks enough, right?!?! LOL

Here’s Tanis Johnson ofStudio Indah! You wouldn’t believe the clasps this woman sells!! STUNNING!! If you’re ever looking for spectacular and unique clasps for your handmade jewelry, Tanis is your woman! I have a pair of earrings to send her tomorrow – I’ll post a pic before they go in the mail (Sorry for the delay Tanis, I was such a complete zombie last week! Sorry!!). Naaz fell in LOVE with a HUGE blue clasp – I wonder if she bought it?

This is Kimdoly Trading – LOTS of semi precious gemstone beads. Their booth is always busy.

This is the last of the pictures I have – Kirsty Naray from Ontario. She’s another amazing lampwork artist. She makes beautiful flower beads. I was so glad she made the long trip to the show!

Thanks again to everyone that made the show a huge success!! If you or anyone you know has any pictures, I’d love it if you’d send them to me! There were 49 vendors at the show – surely someone got more pics than this! LOL I must remember to make sure my volunteers have more time to wander the show, shop and take pictures for me! Or better yet, remember to get one to volunteer to strictly take pictures! That would probably work best – I wonder what my wonderful friend Susan is doing next year! (hint, hint!).

One more quick note!

Just wanted to add that I’m by no means completely annoyed at Lise, she’s my friend, and I know she takes this as a loving jab – and she also knows if she ever does this to me again, the video will be the least of her worries! LOL

Tomorrow, I am going to make jewelry again! It’s about time! Wait til you see the garnet earrings I’m going to finish and mail to Tanis of Studio Indah! And I’ll show you a few pics of the jewelry I finished last week. I’m back at the bench! hooray!!!

I’ll post about the show occasionally, it really was a fantastic show – now that I’ve gotten the worst incident out in the air, the rest was a cake walk! Cheers!

Whew! We survived the Show!!

Well, the show arrived, and it went off with only a few minor glitches. The funny thing is, the whole show goes on, and no one but my little inner circle of wonderful assistants realizes that things are going haywire!! In all honesty, this year was much less stressful for me than last year. I think it was because I was way more organized than usual. Unfortunately, into every show a little rain must fall (not literally, it just seemed like a downpour at the time!). My class organizer/assistant who shall NOT remain nameless (LISE) ended up having a pretty serious family crisis befall her shortly before the show and needless to say she was a MESS!! She came to my house three days before the show and told me she wasn’t ready for her class on Sunday, she needed bunch of stuff done and didn’t think she could do it. She also didn’t do the name tags, class lists, schedules, signs, etc like she has the past two years! Yikes! So I drop everything and start working on that end of things. Three days was not enough time!! Especially when I still had a bunch of other things I needed to do! ARGH!! So, not the panicking kind of person, Lise and I agreed that I would come to her hotel room on Saturday night after going out for dinner to cut out the silver disks for her class and ‘help’ her write her notes for her class. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? You would have thought, but no. Nothing is ever that simple! I arrived at her room at about 8:30 ish. She and her friend were drunk as skunks! Oh no! So not letting little things like that phase me too much, I sat down and started getting all the stuff she needed to borrow (my hammers, etc) out of my tool case and handed over to her so she could have it ready for the morning class. When I sat down, she poured me a drink – crantini she calls them. Vodka and cranberry juice. Well, this particular drink was WAY more ‘tini’ than it was ‘cran’!!! Whoa! So I sipped it slowly, I don’t drink. Not because I can’t and not because I don’t enjoy it, but because I get such a stuffy nose from alcohol it just ain’t worth it! LOL Then there was a knock at the door. My son’s girlfriend’s, Claire and Cecili arrived to visit and keep us company – the boys were watching UFC and the girls wanted to hang out with us. No big deal – the girls are 20 and I love them to pieces, plus they were sober! It was nice to have a sober face or two there! Tricky girls! They had coolers in their purses!! Coolers are alcoholic carbonated fruit drinks – needless to say the first one didn’t last either of them long! They moved onto crantinis – oh goody! LOL I kept working away, pulling out the sheet of silver, hammering out the little disks, sipping away at the drink on the table, listening to the giggling and laughing of all these crazy women. Sipping a little more – boy, it was warm in that room!! I got all 66 disks cut, then had to get Lise to focus long enough to help me write her notes. Piece of cake! NOT!!! She couldn’t stay focused for longer than about 2 minutes! ARGH!! But we managed to slap something together that was legible, and informative, if not full of fluffy extras and pretty pictures. Whew!!! At this point, it’s made it to nearly midnight and the girls (Lise, Claire and Cecili) have decided they’re going downstairs to the Casino. As I rolled my eyes, I figured what the heck – they’re all adults, why not! When I left them at the elevator to go to my room to try to sleep, I told them that all three of them HAD to work the next morning, HAD to be ready to deal with the public at 9:30am – Lise to teach her class and the girls to run the admissions desk. They were warned that they better be on the ball or I was going to be very upset with all of them! LOL (oooohhh!! there’s a threat! *snicker*)

Well, I had a restless night. The vendor in the room next to mine had some friends to his room and they were VERY noisy well after midnight. But eventually it didn’t matter – I was tired!! At about 1:30am I got a text from Cecili – they’re at Citrus! The nightclub down the street from the hotel! OH NO!!! This can’t end well?!? But as I absolutely refused to get up and do anything about it (like I could?), I figured Sunday morning was going to be an interesting one! LOL I got up early, went down to the restaurant for breakfast and called Lise at 8:15 figuring she would have lots of time to nurse a hang over with black coffee before class. I called her cell and her room mate answered ‘She’s still drunk!!’ as I hear a very happy ‘WOOHOO’ in the background! OH NO again!! So I tried not to panic. I finished my breakfast, and headed up to the class registration desk, determined that if Lise couldn’t handle it, I would teach the class myself – not that I was any more prepared than she was, but at lease I was sober! I hauled out the silver disks – I still had to cut the circle out of the center of them (they needed to be donuts), and it had been too dark and I was too wobbly to do it the night before. I think I managed to cut two or three before a volunteer rescued me from that task! Thank you Eve!!!!! But not before I dropped the steel block on my toe! Oops! LOL I had decided that I was not even remotely prepared to teach that morning (with all the show things going on, I couldn’t focus enough to teach!) nd I was about two steps from canceling the whole class as I didn’t think Lise could pull it off herself – she was still drunk for crying out loud, who should appear at the top of the escalator but Lise herself. Ready and raring to go – sort of!! Somehow, someway, she managed to scrape herself together and get the class finished with minimum difficulty. I did have a friend help her get her class started, then Lise managed to run the class and get through it without further incident. Whew!!! I had to relax for a few minutes after that whirl wind!! But not before finding out that Cecili and Claire managed to take a video of Lise pole dancing at the club!! Pole dancing?!? Are you kidding me!? ROFL! So I promised the whole show that I do not get mad, I get even and so for your grainy viewing pleasure, may I introduce you to my friend Lise (though she may never speak to me again after this, at least she has clothes on and doesn’t have any handsome young man girating against her! ROFL!) – oh and I have NO idea how to turn the video from sideways, so tilt your head and enjoy! LOL

Three more sleeps!!

Three more sleeps until the bead show! I’m finally getting excited. I think I’m on target, though I wish I’d had more time to make beads, more time to make jewelry, more time to do all the little things I always say I need to do and never find time to do them! Sigh!! It’s going to be great, I know that. I’ll stress about everyone having a good time (it’s what I do!). I’ll stress about making sure all the vendors are doing okay (it’s what I do!). I’ll stress about all kinds of little things, but that is part and parcel of putting together a show of this magnitude.
My hubby and I will be spending each night at the hotel, I HATE leaving the building during the whole shebang as I want to be right there should anything come up. We’re going to stay Thursday night as well, as the show starts setting up at 7am on Friday. This way, we can just get up and go in the morning instead of having to drive all the way to the hotel at that horrid hour! We’re having the dogs spend each night with us too! That should be quite interesting! Hah hah!! Yes, interesting is a good word! Bailey will love it, Jessie will hate it. Too many people she doesn’t know! I did buy her a pretty new purple collar and leash so she looks pretty (I know she’s a dog, but she’s my dog and she better look good! LOL). Bailey has a new leash and there’s nothing pretty about it! LOL Randy picked it out, and I think it would look better if it belonged to a big black lab or a rottweiler or something! LOL It’s a lot bigger than necessary!! Ahhhhh testosterone – it’s a guy leash! LOL Good thing Bailey’s not a girly/girl dog!! LOL
Speaking of purple, today I bought new fabric for my table covering for the show. Purple!! It’s a lovely shade of crushed velvet and once the show is done, I can use it to make myself a duster coat! I bought the pattern last year, and finally have the right fabric to make it! Just have to wait til after the show – like I’d have time to sew at this point in the game! NOT!! LOL
Well, I’m sure I’ll pop in at least one more time before the show – hopefully I’ll remember to take a few pictures before I deliver the custom work I have to do tomorrow. But right now, I’m off to pick up Randy, stop at the hardware store for wood for a cash box, stop at the insurance place to insure the truck (two vehicles will be MUCH easier to deal with this weekend!), then home to hit the studio. Gotta finish that custom work for tomorrow!! Cheers!

Happy Birthday to me!!

Yup, it’s that time of year. I used to REALLY hate my birthday. Many of the worst days of my life were on my birthday. It got to the point that if I made it through the day without crying, it was a good birthday! Thank goodness those years are LONG past me! Now I actually look forward to it. Not because it’s my birthday – it’s just the inevitable march towards older age! But now, I look forward to it because I share this day with my first granddaughter, Freya. I had four boys, and my third son graced my life with a little girl for myy first grandchild (yeah, her mom’s a wingnut and we all just tolerate her). Don’t get me wrong, I ADORE my grandson as well, but there is a special bond between Freya and I. It was 11:30pm when I got the call from Freya’s other grandma that she had been born and surprise, it’s a girl. I was just SO thrilled!!! I knew that my birthday would never be the same again – in a VERY good way. Finally!!

So to celebrate this wonderful day, Freya and I are going to bake a cake. She wants a triple layer spice cake with white icing. Damn, I HATE cooking/baking, but for my little princess, I suppose I can suck it up and bake. It won’t kill me, I know that. And I’m good at it. I just hate doing it! LOL Dh is making us corn chowder for dinner – three of my four kids will be here (the oldest is coming for Thanksgiving dinner on the weekend, he lives too far away to come during the week), along with both my grandchildren and the boys’ girlfriends (whom I LOVE dearly!). So it is going to be a wonderful evening!

And as my dh is lousy at birthday gifts (I love him anyway! LOL), I’m debating buying myself a present. Just don’t know what I want specifically. Must give that some serious thought!

Well, off to get that cake started! I wonder if we have any cake pans ………..

Guess what?!?

There’s less than two weeks until the bead show! And my brain hasn’t exploded yet! Woohoo! I have been super busy, as usual. I have a long list of things to do, however it’s getting lots of things ticked off said list, so I’m pretty comfortable about where we stand! Now, just have to cross my fingers that we get lots of people out to the show!
Other than bead show stuff, not much else going on. I’ll have some jewelry to show later this weekend, but for now, here’s a cute kid pic!! Freya and Dayton, cuddling in the comfy chair!

Hope you all have a great weekend!! Cheers!