I just spent a fun morning with a friend, shopping at one of my favourite bead wholesalers. She shopped..... I shopped..... and between us we wouldn't have had any money left for a cuppa after. Lucky they provide the coffee free! I've become determined (read obsessed) to find a jewellery design that will work with the swirly yellow, orange and brown dress so one of my tasks was to suss out their selection of wooden beads. I picked up a few strands of dark wood and some dyed shell beads. But my happiest find was the strand of kukui nuts (bottom). It reminded me of the leis the girls and I made in Hawaii a few years back. At the time, customs wouldn't let us bring them back into Australia and we had to leave them behind but seeing these brought back some happy memories. It's strange though that we can now buy them here on our own shores!  Anyway, I'm hoping to turn some of these beads into the piece that finally works with that dress. I'll report back once I'v......

You might think it's a bit strange that I would even think about making a trip to Michaels Craft store when I've travelled to the US for CHA, undoubtedly one of the world's largest craft shows. But it makes much more sense when you realise that CHA is a "look but don't touch" shopping experience. Because it's a trade show, you can't buy anything off the shelf to take home with you. Instead, you have to wait for it to be released and then shipped to your local retailer. So you see, a trip to Michaels is essential to stock up on hard to get craft items. Shopping at Michaels is a lot of fun: the store is packed full of crafty goodness for every craft you can think of! But if you're a regular reader of my blog, it won't be too hard for you to guess which aisles I spend most of my time in. And if you're not, then check out the shopping bag below for a hint. As you'd expect, my bag includes lots of beads, crystals and findings, plus some of......

I had the great delight of corrupting one of my paper crafting friends yesterday..... I took her bead shopping! And what better introduction can you have than to go wholesale shopping in a bead showroom? You should have seen her face when we walked into the room. To say she was completely overwhelmed would be an understatement but it didn't take long for the " I don't know where to start " expression to fade from her face and you could see the excitement begin to grow as she realised how much fun this was going to be.  It wasn't long before she was adding a strand of this and a strand of that to her basket...... she says I was a terrible influence on her!! That may well be true. But she was a way worse influence on me......... I spent double my allocated budget for this event!! It was more than 2 hours before we emerged from this beady wonderland, and we had a ball. After all, what girl doesn't like a good shop? 'Til next time..... If you can't get e......