Bead Show Blues

The bead show was a great disappointment. I thought it would be full of suppliers and instead it was full of what seemed like local bead shops. Maybe big local bead shops, but nonetheless. Lots of dyed freshwater pearls of low to middling quality. Lots of stone bead strands, very few of which were at all interesting. Lots of Swarovski crystal - not that I have anything against it, I sometimes use it, but you can find it everywhere. There were only a couple of dealers who had cabs and only one had cabs worth buying, though even they weren't anything really special. Nevertheless I found a few things to take home.

My favorite stone, right now at least, is blue chalcedony and I especially love a blue chalcedony druzy. I picked up a quite nice strand of good sized ones, some botryoidal, that will make excellent pendants.







I also bought several other strands: striped agate teardrop beads
teeny 1-1.5mm peachy pearls, small 3mm silver grey pearls, small labradorite teardrops - these I'm going to use as chain substitutes for some of my silver pendants









five different kinds of vintage lucite beads - I have a retro streak that doesn't really fit with the style of jewelry I'm making now and that no one else seems to be interested in because every retro piece I've made has failed to sell - but why let that stop me?
four very small cabs: three white opal and one pink tourmaline - opal is my birthstone and these not very flashy ones remind me of a pendant I had as a child








and a hank of silk cords - scrumptious colors.







Grand total? My lips are sealed.


There's one other thing I bought that I'm really excited about: a Paraiba tourmaline crystal that hasn't been polished. It's pink and blue and frosty and absolutely gorgeous. It also cost way too much and is responsible for putting me over my self-imposed spending limit for the show. These pictures don't really show how luminous it is.

Maybe this is just buyer's remorse (not an a usual affliction for me) but, I've been reading a little about Paraiba tourmalines in the couple of hours since buying it and I'm starting to think that it might not actually be one. It looks suspiciously like this regular tourmaline.

(This picture is in the public domain and comes from Wikipedia and you can see it in context here.) True, this one's not frosty, but that might just mean it's been polished. However, the non-pink areas on mine are more blue than green and Paraiba tourmalines are known for being more blue than green, so I'm not going to worry about it. My new tourmaline is a beautiful piece of rock and I've already started sketching ideas for how to use it - another example of "love the stuff".