Up to date...

So I've alwasy been so intimidated by this blogging thing. I always put his pressure on myself to say something so worthwhile, so profound in each and every post. I originally starting writing blogs more as informational articles on beads and beading: to share the love but also to help get traffic to our site BeadinPath.com.

Now the more I read blogs, the more I realize that I need to blog just to help me organize my thoughts. And what an opportunity to get back to my love of writing! Since it seems I never have time to put an actual pen (remember the 'vintage' kind that had ink in it - used with paper?) to paper, I am trying to revive my blog. It will be a dual purposed blog: daily ramblings of what is on my mind, but alos bead tidbits and updates on store stuff. Store stuff is what is on my mind quite often anyway so it's all the same really.

SO, on the store front: We just got in the most darling vintage Margarita crystal beads. Rare & vintage Swarovski. While we have a pretty large collection of vintage Swarovski crystals still these days, it's been awhile since I've 'stumbled upon' any "NEW" vintage crystals. Back in the day, I had to ration my buying as there was so much out there and not a super-huge market (I know, can you believe I used to see walls of 'polka dotted' Art 42 Swarovski beads in varied colors & sizes and didn't BUY THEM ALL?!). But in recent years - there's a market. And the good finds still happen, but they are fewer and far between than they used to be, that's for sure. Luckily people come to us now and that's how we 'stumble' on these treasures lately. Back to the beads...

Vintage Art 3700's and 3701's. Swarovski still makes 3700's but not in these sizes & colors. We found 16mm double coated Comet Or in 24k coating, 14mm Bermuda Blue and other lovelies. Art 3701 is a similar style to the center holed sew-on margaritas (Art. 3700), only 3701's have extra facets on their perimeter. We now have 16mm in the double coated Comet Or in this shape too. I am addicted to wearing gold anything lately, so many of these will go into the BP archives (my stash :) but we'll have them listed on our site very soon. Miss Megan just priced them out for stranders today so we'll have them back in the shop and hopefully online sometime next week.

We also just purchased a large joblot of vintage glass stones & cabochons, mostly made in West Germany, Japan and Czechoslovakia ca. 1930's and 1940's. Again 'back in the day' (and I'm really not that old...) I used to find these high end, highly leaded, lovely colored stones all over the place. I used to be able to buy some of them by the pound!!! That was some years ago though! These are 2-tone colors and other specialty pieces that are hard to find in one place. BUT we're still trying to figure out what to do with them. Such is the problem with having a 5,000 square foot bead store: a space I never thought we'd ever fill! We're already running out of room and have to decide what to do with things like this: lovely things that have a market, albeit smaller than our general bead market. Chris (dear hubby) just built new display tables and I believe this lot is beckoning for a 3rd to display them out loose. These will not get online for a while as we have many Czech glass beads and other lovelies on their way in that take priority

SO, on the daily ramblings... I'm losing my voice. I LOVE karaoke and just came from my friends house where we sang our arses off. Little Chasie (15 month old baby boy) was bouncing and singing into the microphone like the next American Idol. Her husband had borrowed a DJ-friend's set-up to DJ an event their hosting tomorrow night. So he was practicing his set-up in their basement tonight. After a glass of wine or 2, Karen & I (my best girlfriend from grade school) broke out the Cheap Trick and the Journey and sang so long we had the kids begging us to put them to bed! Maybe it wasn't because we sang too LONG... maybe we just weren't all that good! But it was fun. I used to think I could sing OK. I sang in church growing up and was always encourage to perform. But it's the kind of think that if you don't use it, you lose it. I need to practice more often because tonight... was bad. And wow, Steve Perry really could sing... you try it. Separate Ways in your shower tomorrow morning. You'll see.

OK, I have no idea if this blog is going to be something I keep up with or not. I will try... and hopefully it will be more 'on task' and less long winded going forward. And I'll post pictures once I figure out how...