Something you might see at Rings & Things bead shows…
Stacks of bead “shopping trays” spontaneously appear at our shows. (These are action photos taken by cell phone…)
Mysterious bead stacks...
Been to our bead shows? Know what these are all about? 
...made by aliens?
If you have a theory, we’d be interested to hear it…leave a comment!
Where we check into possible birthstone plans for the upcoming month…
A great design you can make with tourmaline beads...
Tourmaline beads, the birthstone of choice for October, show some appropriately magical properties. Did you know that if you rub this stone, it generates a charge that attracts small objects like bits of paper or strands of hair? (I couldn’t find an image of this. Bummer. Please submit one if you’ve got one.)
True to its name (which originally meant “stone of mixed colors”), tourmaline is found in a very pretty palette of blue, yellow, pink, red, black, green and clear stones. Here are most of those colors in a strand that we sell:
Rings & Things also sells strands of the nice black tourmaline alone:
Here’s a great idea for using black tourmaline in a rosary:
David's Rosary uses the black tourmaline beads
And don’t forget tourmalated quartz. These beads technically include tourmaline, so they add to your options for “October babies”:
You’ll find lots more neat background reading at our Gemstone Index ‘tourmaline’ entry! And this is the time of year when you can come to our BeadTour bead shows to look for great new tourmaline, tourmalated quartz and many more gemstone beads not found in our catalog!
If you live in the Northeast USA and can attend one of our late September bead shows, you could be a winner!
We’re scouting for our first-ever Guest Bead Helper! You could be an honorary BeadTour bead-show worker, with all the fame and glory that come with that honor.
Who set that table so nicely?
For our first foray into roadie recruiting, we’re looking for someone who can say “Yes” to all of these questions:
Other perks of the “job” include meeting our friendly crew and getting a behind-the-scenes look at how bead shows are put together — not to mention getting to start bead shopping before we open the doors to the public!
PS: It’s a bonus if you’re an active Facebook-er, Twitter-er or blogger. We’d love it if you talked online about your roadie experience!
We’ll announce our winner on Wednesday, September 16th. Good luck to everyone who enters the drawing!
So enter by leaving a note below…mention which city you’d like to help us in!
Also known as Garland Street (in Spokane)!
Two Rings & Things artisans are featured in an art show celebrating the 70th anniversary of “The Wizard of Oz”. Appropriately held at the stalwart Tinman Gallery in Spokane, this OzVitational exhibit showcases artists’ unique takes on the legacy of Dorothy and friends.
Sondra Barrington, our Sales manager by day, mixed found objects with quality vintage-feel findings for a steampunk bracelet titled “Flying Monkeys”. Like a wearable video clip (from the scariest part of the film!), this piece sports stills from the classic movie transferred onto copper stamping blanks.
When monkeys fly out of film onto charms!
Kurt (Metalman) Madison is our Art Clay Silver certified expert. He and partner Margot Casstevens created a collaborative print/sculpture/jewelry piece that the Inlander newspaper called
“one-of-a-kind pendants — ruby slippers, a yellow brick road, the heart so sought after by Tinman himself — hang[ing] from inside their gray weathered box. A knothole in the wood becomes the “O” for Oz and the wood itself is said to be from Dorothy’s Kansas farmhouse…if you let yourself drift to where childlike wonder lives, you can almost believe.”
The exterior of Kurt & Margot's "OZ BOX"
Many other gifted artists are in the show, too. So if you’re in Spokane any time this month, head to the Garland District for a visual treat!
This week’s featured bead is a huge favorite…
Coin pearls are worth their weight in money!
Coin pearls are loved for a lot of good reasons.
They go great on bracelets, since they’re pretty flat. That nacreous, mother-of-pearly surface feels nice against your skin. And these days, with the booming cultured freshwater-pearl industry, you can get a strand of coin pearls that are neatly matched in shape and size — at a great price.
Besides the luminous-colored offerings in our online store that you see sampled here, you’ll always find our latest purchases of new styles and hues if you attend our BeadTour bead shows. Make sure you’re on our mailing list to get invited!
Have a favorite way to use coin pearls in your designs? Share your inspiration in a comment below!
Thanks to a number of kind people who talked about Rings & Things in the last week…
Bead Origami has already made some splendid beaded beads she shows in her blog, that use amethyst just bought at our trunk show.
In other tour-related blogging, KJ at the Silver Parrot tantalized us with a promise to show off her discoveries at our latest bead show. AJ at Erthefae managed a mini-vacation to our BeadTour show and to the Bead Museum in Arizona…lucky! SoftFlex Girl Sara also managed to visit us at the Phoenix show, and blogged about it.
Heather at Humblebeads paired some Rings & Things brown lava beads with some cool, lustrous-toned beads and a striking handmade wing pendant in her Earth Angel necklace.
Heather also posted a nice-looking “Luna Flor” (Moon Flower) bracelet design at the Art Bead Scene blog. Dawno at Dawno’s Beaded Badge Lanyards devoted one day’s post to interviewing me. I’m humbled… She also wrote up an informative review of Rings & Things’ black rattail cord!
Tish over at JustATish wrote up a nice project using some of our hammered-oval gunmetal chain for a necklace and matching earrings!
Margot Potter put up a fun design of her own, the Peekaboo mixed-media necklace, at her Impatient Crafter blog.
A discussion over at Etsy about “what free gift do you include in your sent-out orders?” mentioned our candy in a positive light. The conversation generated a huge amount of response, by the way, and is really worth reading to get your marketing gears turning.
Thanks so much to everyone who found us worth talking about this week!
We like to end the week on an up note, by thanking people who are good to us.
This week, the BeadStyle blog discussed a favorite find of emerald slice beads at a past Rings & Things show.
And AsetMekti was kind enough to suggest people visit our BeadTour bead shows. Fab Fibers shared the excitement of preparing for our trunk show to come to town, and some bead finds when we showed up. The Lampwork Art blog was nice enough to publicize our Louisville, KY show.
The Little Bead Shop showed off the awesome competition winners' creations in our 2009 "Your Designs Rock!" contest.
Meanwhile, Dawno generously steered her readers to our contests, even though the more entries, the lower her chances of winning are!
CraftGossip.com gave some handy tips on Finding Jewelry Artists Through Twitter, using us as an example. (Okay, this was back in April, but we just became aware of it!)
Wendy at Craft Dinner recommended stone cold stone lovers to check out our popular Gemstone Beads Index. Another recommendation of the “Gem Index” appeared at Winged Heart Studio.
In an excellent tutorial on how to dabble in mixed media with porcelain blanks, The Rabbit Muse kindly gave a shout-out to us as a good supplier for bails to hang them on.
In other design news, Margot Potter recommend Melanie’s (of Earthenwood Studio) designs using our lava-rock beads.
Thanks so much to all of you in the blogs and on Twitter for your nice words about Rings & Things. We appreciate you!
Plan ahead for May birthstones!
There’s one main birthstone for May, emerald. This is also the seasonal birthstone for Spring, so it’s doubly appropriate. For an economical emerald look, think about glass beads. Anything from these metal-core Calypso™ (“Pandora”-style) lampwork beads…
…to the ever-popular, economical Cosmic Crystal™ bicone…
…can be an evocative way to play on the emerald theme. Just search our online store for “emerald”! Or for “sapphire”, which some consider a birthstone for Taurus. Now that’s multi-purposing your components!
Speaking of zodiac signs, Gemini’s birthstone is agate. We always seem to have dozens of varieties of it at Rings & Things’ BeadTour bead shows, and you can always find agate beads in our online store. A couple of favorites are Botswana agate, like these faceted rounds…
…and blue lace agate, like this bib:
Less well-known May gemstones, according to various traditions, are chrysolite, carbuncle, and chalcedony. For reliable, honest background information, you can look these and many more up in our popular Gemstone Beads Index!
What’s your favorite May birthstone, or birthday jewelry? Share it in a comment below. You can even link to pictures of your own creations!
We’re sorry to inform everyone, our Friday (03/27/2009) bead show in Salt Lake City, Utah has been cancelled. Our crew got stuck in Denver, Colorado and couldn’t get through the snow that a surprise blizzard brought. So they weren’t able to set up our show in Salt Lake.
We regret the inconvenience to our Utah customers, and we’ll be back in town soon!
Idaho customers: Our Boise bead show scheduled for Sunday is still on. See you there!
–Dave
In honor of our “on the road” season, starting today in Houston and going till some time in November…
Russ the Bead, perched high atop the Rings & Things bead truck
5 things you didn’t know about Rings & Things’ BeadTour:
] tons of beads every year.Have a favorite “R&T” bead show story? Any questions about our shows? Comment below…and be automatically entered in our raffle!