Happy New Year!

One of the problems with designing is that you end up with lots of materials that may look like they are going to be incredible materials to work with but once you start laying things out, they don’t look right. Over the years we have gotten better with this but I have a ton of crystals I thought would be great glued to flowers….Yeah, that didn’t work. I have porcelain flowers that I tried to attach to a clasp once….yeah, that also was a bad idea. This was also the case with these African Glass Beads. They are beautiful but they were sitting patiently in our studio for at least 4 years along with some of the other “great ideas.” We specially imported them from a guy who worked in a CO-OP that helps local villagers organize and produce them. We had emailed with him for months – choosing the colors and sizes that we needed. After 2 months, they arrived in a box that looked like it had hardly survived the difficult journey from Africa. Moria and I were so excited to get them. These beads were the answer to our next collection and they had finally arrived. But wait, the holes are big…but wait the colors were a bit off and eventually we concluded that everything we had planned would need to be postponed until we figured out how to work with the beads.

Well, Moria finally did it! I am so happy to finally use clean them off the shelf and use these beautiful beads. Here’s a look at what’s coming!