Yesterday I had to go down to the new apartment for our new furniture delivery. Luckily, the delivery men were prompt and finished quickly, so I had quite a bit of time to kill before I had to get back home before Sara got home from school. Since I was near Baltimore anyway, I decided to head into the city and visit Beadazzled, a bead/jewelry making store I had heard about. Thanks to Yahoo maps, I found the store easily. What I could not find, though was parking. I figured I would drive around the block, and see if I could find somewhere to park. Unfortunately, most of the roads in the area were one-way, so I drove around the area...getting lost, finding it again, getting lost, etc. Luckily I eventually found parking.

The store was great, a nice-sized store full of big, round tables. Each table had rows and rows of cups set into to top, and each cup was full of beads, organized by color. Plus a ton of bead strings on the walls. A lot of the beads were ones I could get online through jewelry suppliers, but it was really nice to be able to see them in person. Plus there were some (like the laquered origami pendants) that were entirely new to me.

When I design a piece of jewelry I start by picturing it in my head. I break down each part of the piece in my head, and then go searching for beads that fit what I see in my head. sometimes I find pieces that do not go with thigs I have already picked out, so I have to go back and forth, deciding which ones fit my mental image the closest. Needless to say, this takes a lot of time...I must have spent three hours pacing around beadazzled. Of course, sometimes I find beads so unique, or so interesting I have to revamp my whole design just to incorperate them (or I have to finish my orignial design, as well as coming up with a second design for the new beads). In the end, though I came out of Beadazzled without spending TOO much money.

Today, I had to go BACK to the apartment to meet with the comcast guy who was going to hook up our phone/internet/cable. I brought my beading supplies and got a good bit of work done in the 5 hours I was sitting there. I hope to finish and have pics up before I leave to go camping this weekend.

Also, while browsing Etsy I came across this shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5093490. I LOVE these beads.... if they weren't $45 I'd get some just to make somethng for myself. (Not that they aren't WORTH $45, the time and skill to make these must be increadible...it's just Matt would kill me lol).