Bead & Button 2014 Day 5

posted: Wednesday, 04 June 2014

Today as a long day, but a great one. I was once again helping Glenda Paunonen from Beads Gone Wild and after being up until at least 2am last night it was a struggle when classes began at 8am. 

The day started with Alchymia and went right through to 7pm with CZ Cuff. Both are gorgeous projects and it was great to see everyone's piece take shape as I beaded a gold and silver version of Glenda's Himalaya Bracelet.

The evening was then taken up with Meet The Teachers and it was a crazy fun time!

I got to reconnect with many old friends (Francesca Walton, Rose Rushbrooke and Laura McCabe amongst many others) and got to meet so many new people (The talented Huib Petersen, Jayashree Paramesh, Sharon Wagner, Jill and June Wiseman, Melanie Potter, Nancy Cain and Diane Whiting amongst many, many others) and very excitingly I finally got to meet the talented, gorgeous, wise and delightful Onye Ndika!

If you've been reading my blog for a while you'll have heard of Onye many times after she first emailed me way back in April 2009 (yikes!) and I went on to create a series of work named after her.

Sadly the night was so busy that I barely had time to say hello and hope I get to see her again some day.

The busy evening also meant I only had time to visit one stand all night- but from the second I first walked into the hall to help set up the table I knew exactly what stand I wanted to visit - JC Herrel's. As soon as I saw her exquisite and colourful beads I wanted to buy some and when I got the chance I browsed the stand and struggled to narrow down my choices so figured 'what the heck' and bought all the ones I felt I 'must have'.

By the time we got to bed at about 2am (after being ably assisted by the wonderful JR who now has his own fan club badges thanks to Judy Walker) we were worn out, laughed out and shopped out.