I've been to Bead Heaven...

The bead fair of the year for me was held on Saturday. I look forward to it every year as I always find so many beadie goodies there. Saturday was  bright and sunny for me to drive to the Big Bead Show held in Esher, Surrey, about 25 minutes away. The venue is Sandown Park ,at the famous horse racing stadium.

I went alone as my daughter, who was staying with us for the weekend, had just come off nights and badly needed to catch up on her sleep so I left her in the land of nod.

It opened at 10am and there were already a crowd when I arrived at 10.15. The show is held in the main ground floor area of the stadium and is vast. Stalls run up and down as far as the eye can see. There are semi precious stone beads, lampwork glass beads, crystal glass beads, designer beads, pearls, metal beads, findings, shells and more and more.............Bead Heaven.

My first port of call was to catch up with the lovely Keiara whom I have known for the last year over the Internet. I met her for the first time last year at Sandown Park when she made some wonderful snowman beads for me. This year she had saved me a pair of her wonderful Rudolf beads which I will be making into a pair of earrings with some silver snowflake charms.

I also bought a set of her legendary cupcake beads. She really is the cupcake queen and makes the best glass cupcakes I know. It was so good to catch up with her although we never have time to chat too much as she is so busy. She nearly sold out on the day, I was delighted for her.

I also picked up some other wonderful beadie treasure which I will share with you.

These are some of the "blues" I bought including dyed agate, lava lentils, mother of pearl and blister  freshwater pearls, they go so well together.

I needed some seed glass beads for an order from my recent jewellery party. One lady wanted me to make a matching necklace to this bracelet using seed beads.

I bought these 2 packs of lovely seed beads, one purple and one  black for her other order.

This is the necklace I have made to match, the seed beads are lovely shades of purple

And above is the black/silver bracelet  which she chose and again I made a necklace to match using the black seed beads.

I also bought some glorious purple/pink large round dyed agate and some pinky/purple blister pearls.

I have already made up a chunky necklace using the pink agate ready to sell at my Christmas Open House on 14th November. This is my last party of the year. I thought the beads looked stunning just with small bicone spacers between the beads....hmmm tempted to keep this one myself..!

Sometimes simple designs work really well with big bold statement beads.

I also found the most unusual Fimo focal beads (below) made by a very talented artist from the USA. Yes these really are hand made from Fimo, I had to pick them up as I really thought that they were paper decoupage. They are stunning and I will launch these at my Christmas Open House. I think I will make a very simple glass seed bead strand to hang one of these from.

The fair was very busy and it was lovely to be able to go outside to eat my packed lunch. Bead buying is a very hungry business you know!

I was the only person sitting in front of the winner's paddock. I could really imagine the horses being paraded around and I should think normally there would be a noisy crowd cheering them on.






After my lunch I made one last launch back to the fair to buy my findings. To those who don't make jewellery these are all the clasps, ear wires, crimp beads etc etc used to put jewellery together with.

These are some of the spacer beads and bead caps I bought. I also bought lots of sterling silver clasps and also bought a couple of the new style ear wires to try.

These are rather interesting and different from the usual ear wires. I will make a pair up and show you in another posting how they look.








I also managed to find some reasonably priced display stands. I have been looking for these for a while but they are usually very expensive.

One for earrings

One to hang bracelets from and..........

a third one to hang necklaces from. These will be very useful at my parties and Open Houses as it will give another dimension to my displays rather than just a flat surface.









By this time my credit card was groaning from all my spending and I decided that it was time to tear myself away and head back home to my daughter,son and husband (and Billy). It is unusual to have both my children under the same roof these days so I didn't want to miss too much of our family time together but I really had visited Bead Heaven. I  look forward to the Sandown Park Big Bead Show again next October.

So I have been able to add some wonderful new beads and findings to my stash which will inspire me make some exciting new jewellery just in time for the Christmas season :0)

Bye for now,

Jane x