Beads!

So, this one kind of came about in a roundabout way.

For Hanukkah, I made my aunt a bracelet, and she got me a purse - it's a gorgeous, very unique stiff-felt purse she got in the Distillery district. I'd admired those purses before, so when the holidays rolled around, she went back there to get me one (thanks!). The problem was the store was low in stock, and they didn't have any of my colours. My aunt got me a purple one.
It was lovely, but it was purple.
In its defence, it wasn't pink.
But still...purple.

So a few weeks after Christmas, when we each had a spare day, my aunt and I and the purple purse went back to the Distillery district, back to the hip, unique little boutique from whence it came. And they had a pile of new stock! Gorgeous neat purses in all the good colours of the rainbow. It was hard, but eventually I settled on a heather gray purse with cobalt and grass-coloured dots. Sounds weird, looks unbearably stylish.

While we were there, we did some browsing. The shop features mostly jewelry, mostly very unique, elegant but edgy stuff that both my aunt and I admire (she buys, I don't). While we're walking around the glass cases, admiring the shiny wonderfulness that is being sold there, she speaks up, saying that the bracelet I made her would fit in well with the store's inventory.

Now, I'm a bead artist. Its just a hobby, but I have developed a few skills, though I've never made any real profit off of it. Selling has never been a big priority of mine. But the guy running the shop comes over with a business card and tells me how to submit images of my work for evaluation by the owner.

And I love this idea! I've been working a lot on new projects, trying to get a portfolio of sorts made up, to show the type of stuff I'm interested in making for them. Very sleek, simple, elegant, with a little fun thrown in. Beads, strung by hand, but no single-string silliness (the type of thing I dislike seeing in shops, cause it's so easy to make it yourself, often better, and probably cheaper). My friend Victoria (of Sonnet & Mayhem fame) gifted me with a new notebook so I could keep track of new ideas (which for the last month have been pouring out like water) and important facts on current pieces (time involved, prices of materials, etc). I've been beading up a storm. I've visited Sassy Bead Store four times this month, and the brother drove me out to Bead FX last weekend. I RAN OUT OF BEADS (seriously!) and had to special-order more. At this point, it's becoming obvious that if this venture goes forward (and I'm aware that there is no guarantee of it doing so - I am trying not to count the chickens, I swear!), I might have to start ordering my beads online, in BULK. I've never created pieces like this before, and I'm loving it.

I really hope the shop is interested in my stuff, if only because at this point, I'm having so much damn fun!