Last week about this time I was at the bead show, mostly manning my booth but occasionally visiting the other vendors of awesomeness. With my clay beads, you really only need a bit of accent so I tend to stick to simple stone, pearl, glass and metal beads and use my own as the focal beads. And there was a seriously overwhelming amount of that!
A few other beads snuck in this year though. As always, we nabbed a kitty from Dragonfire Studios. And those beads on the right of the picture are wound paper beads from Uganda – specifically from a group called Akonye Kena. They work with youth in the area to teach them a marketable skill and how to parlay that into self-sufficient businesses and lives. I bought a few strands to play with and they’ll be some nifty necklaces pretty quick!