BTW- The Beadfest Version

My bead table this week is full courtesy of my recent trip to Beadfest Philly

First up is a gorgeous collection of Elaine Ray beads from Ornamentea.

I tried to win one of Heather's books in their giveaway but i guess I'll just have to buy one since i didn't win it!

Next up is beautiful lampworked flowers from the talented Lisa Kan and some Italian wire mesh ribbon.

Then I found the coolest recycled glass, rings cut from vintage coke bottles by Cathy at GlassGardenBeads.

I can't get out of the Hands of the Hills booth without some antiquity. I am most excited to have found these blue Peking Glass melon beads, very rare from the 1800's. I picked up some more of those beautiful aqua trade beads too.

Then just for fun we found some etched glass rounds and daggers reminding us of beach glass and look at those cool colors!

AAAhhhh, aqua terra jasper

An earthy variety of ceramic, jasper, lapis and shell

Some pretties, prehnite, chalcedony,green amethyst, amethyst, moss amethyst, moonstone and cherry quartz briolettes. Knowing my palette, those cherry quartz stick out like a sore thumb don't they?

 My favorite is the moss amethyst which has greens, purples a little brownish and clear moss filled stones. Love.Them.

Some dagger shaped labradorites, prehnite and amethysts.

Are these chrysocolla cabs just amazing???

The ones with the darker areas are called Sonoran Cactus chrysocolla.

Chrysocolla beads were on my have to buy list and believe me they were hard to find so imagine how thrilled I was to find these?

I think my palette is pretty evident, blues, greens and purples but I went outside my box a couple of times and picked up some crab fire agates, garnets and tourmalines ( which really still fall in my palette)

Plus some aquamarines, blue topaz and blue apatite faceted rounds.

Been There-

I took 2- 3 hour classes while there on Saturday.

The first was Rockin Rivets with Kieu Pham Gray ( in the center) along with 2 BFF's Carol and Bette.

We learned to drill holes in river stones and glass and set with a sterling silver tube rivet-fun!

Kieu is a hoot and we did a lot of damage in her booth Urban Beader , she had a bunch of must haves.

The second class was a jewelry photography class with Jim Lawson who does a lot of work for Interweave publications among other things. look for his name by photos, you'll be amazed how much he does.

Done that-

My 2 river stones from class

That black one was tricky as it wasn't flat and the rivet is set in a ridge.

Got the T-shirt-

Isn't this funny? We got these t-shirts from Kieu's booth, sounds better than tool junkie dontchathink?

Then after braving some wicked storms on the way home, arrived to find these waiting for me.

I have THE BEST husband.

I'm sorry that i don't have more pictures from the beadfest floor itself, i did carry my camera with all intentions of taking lots of pictures but got caught up in the moment and shopping frenzy and never took the camera out - was too busy fishing for my credit card all the time :)

But we did get to see a lot of people and enjoy the company of friends old and new, over dinner and I might add we had our share of "Oh look a chicken" moments as we all got sidetracked by the shiny things surrounding us!

So, what's on your table today?

Head on over to the Flickr group to see what's on everyone elses' table today!