The BeadFX Buyer takes a Busman's Holiday

I'm taking a few days off work by taking a 3-day Master Class at the Bead & Button Show in chilly downtown Milwaukee, WI. The master class in beadwork was taught by Japanese Designer Sonoko Nozue. The theme was Beaded Jewellery Inspired by Japanese Kimono Design. It was pretty intensive as we covered peyote, spiral stitch and its variations, loomwork, several different methods of creating bezels for stones, and bead crochet.

The Japanese bead manufacturers contributed beads in exclusive colours not available in their regular line (yet) and Swarovski provided vintage stones and lots of 3mm bicones. Although most of the techniques were not entirely new to me, almost all the work was done in 13/0 or 15/0 seedbeads. After a while the 11/0 Delicas seemed enormous by comparison!

The samples that Sonoko had on display were nothing short of spectacular. Picture a long necklace done in bead crochet entirely in 3mm Swarovski AB bicones. Or a shawl over 6 feet long entirely done in 15/0 crystal AB netted seedbeads interspersed with dozens of beaded Swarovski flowers. It weighed over 3Kg (7 pounds) and the fringe alone took almost a month to make.

Tomorrow its back to work for me, after a 1/2 day course in Viking wire weave I'll be visiting with manufacturers to take a look at their new offerings and then hitting the main B&B Show floor to see what's new and wonderful to bring back to BeadFX.