Love is in the Air Design Challenge

We love to see the creative designs that our customers come up with using our materials.  Now we’re offering you the chance to submit your designs for the possibility to win a prize in our first customer design challenge!

Take your interpretation of “Love is in the Air” and create an inspiring piece using Bead Inspirations beads & findings!

Submissions are due by noon (PST) Wednesday, February 9, 2011. Voting will be open from February 10 – midnight February 13, with the Challenge Winner posted on Tuesday, February 14.  Winner will receive a $50 webstore gift certificate for Bead Inspirations.  A Staff Pick be also chosen from the entries.  Staff Pick will receive a gift bag of jewelry-making components, and be featured in a future email announcement or blog.

Click here to read the Design Challenge Rules.

We’ve put some select items on sale that you may want to use in your jewelry. I can’t wait to see your wonderful creations!

Warmly,
Vicki Lapp

The Results are in for our Staff Lucite Design Challenge!

We are excited to reveal the winning entry from our first staff jewelry design challenge! Thank you to those of you who took the time to vote for your favorite submission, either through our online poll or in our retail store.

And the winner is:  Entry #5. Congratulations to Lydia Chapman for her winning entry!

Nature's Nectar Earrings

Fresh Off The Vine Necklace

Staff members of Bead Inspirations were asked to blindly select two “goody bags,” each containing two lucite flower beads and 50 green seed beads. Staff were allowed to expand their design ideas using other beads and materials.

Check out our full selection of beading and jewelry-making classes and learn to make pieces like the ones you voted for!  We also have lots of jewelry design ideas, free videos and technique sheets on at beadinspirations.com.

Here’s the identity of the other esteemed entries:

Entry #1: Carol Bernau
Entry #2: Edna Shum-Ma
Entry #3: Jan Grigsby
Entry #4: Jen Martin

Staff Lucite Design Challenge

We are excited to unveil the submissions for our first staff jewelry design challenge! Staff members of Bead Inspirations were asked to blindly select two “goody bags,” each containing two lucite flower beads and 50 green seed beads. Staff were allowed to expand their design ideas using other beads and materials.

Please vote for your favorite grouping of jewelry submissions at the bottom of this page! Each entry (Entry #1, Entry #2, etc…) contains multiple pieces of jewelry.

Votes will be accepted now through end of day Sunday, October 2nd. You may also vote for your favorite entry in our retail store in Alameda, CA.

Entry #1 Bracelet - front view

Entry #1 Bracelet - back view

Entry #1 Ring - front view

Entry #1 Ring - back view

Entry #1 Earrings

Entry #2 Earrings

Entry #2 Necklace

Entry #3 First Necklace

Entry #3 Second Necklace

Entry #4 Earrings

Entry #4 Necklace

Entry #4 Ring - front view

Entry #4 Ring - back view

Entry #4 Ring - side view

Entry #5 Earrings

Entry #5 Necklace

Check out our full selection of beading and jewelry-making classes and learn to make pieces like the ones you see here!  We also have lots of jewelry design ideas, free videos and technique sheets on at beadinspirations.com.

Grant me the Serenity…

Autumn Gingko Earring Kit

to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.

By now, you’ve seen this verse/ prayer around.  But did you know that this thinking will also free your mind to enhance your creativity?

It’s always a little heartbreaking to have someone come into the shop looking for a bead of a specific color, shape, size, and material, and not have to offer exactly what they are looking for.  These people are on a mission for one specific thing, and for some, nothing else will satisfy them.  It seems that there is nothing I can do about it except to offer my regret that I cannot help them more.

I will always show them what is similar to what they are looking for, and other options that  they have for completing their project without that specific thing.  Some people are receptive to this and some are not.  Some people get quite upset that we don’t have what they want.  I suffer a little bit with them.

In a past career as a corporate trainer, I took away a valuable visual model for freeing the mind of unnecessary distress.  We can put all the things we can put our attention on into one of three categories: what we can control, what we can influence, and what we have no control or influence over.

What we have no control or influence over: the past, the economy, terrorism, the weather, the seasons, the price of silver, what we find when we are looking for something, what other people want and need.

What we can control: our own behavior, our choices, our willingness to learn something new, our actions in educating ourselves, our flexibility in opening our view, whether we seek help or go it on our own, whether we focus on what is available to us or what is not available to us, the requests that we make, whether we make requests or demands, whether we are open to receiving.

What we can influence: other people’s behavior in responding to us, our health, our community and society, our satisfaction.

We have just introduced our next session of classes, including more from Marilyn. Check them out!

The more we put attention on what we have no control or influence over, the more we increase our stress, and the smaller our circle of influence becomes.  Putting our attention on what we can control, reduces our stress, and as a nice side effect, increases what we have influence over.   We can influence how people respond to us by whether we are focusing on things we have no control over or things that we do.

We had Marilyn Peters teach a class at Bead Inspirations last weekend.  She helped people design their multi-dimensional bracelets, using the materials we had in the shop, including Swarovski pearls, crystals, and seed beads.  What was delightful for me to witness is how she helped people focus on what products we had that they could make their projects with.  There was never a comment about what we didn’t have.  I was heartened because I knew that this focus would help the students’ creativity flourish.  I loved seeing the pallets they chose and can’t wait to see the finished bracelets!

Autumn Love Necklace Kit

For those who live outside of the area, take heart! We are in the process of putting instructions for our kits on our website.  It will take time, so please have patience, and stay tuned.  Those on our email list will be notified as they come online. The first one done is our popular Autumn Love necklace.  Thanks to Carol Bernau, Bead Inspirations instructor and staff member for writing these up and putting them online.

It is a good reminder for me to remember to be open to receiving the blessings of the universe.  I’m choosing to be open to where my blessings will come from, rather than try to control this.  I will also choose to be grateful for what I do receive, and free up my creative spirit to do its thing.

Vicki Lapp

The Joy of Co-creating

Jean making her own Sundance-inspired bracelet

We have a regular gang for Bead Night at our shop in Alameda, and I love the sense of comfort and belonging that we share.  What I’m really delighted by is the opportunities that arise for co-creating.  There is an excitement and synergy that are present when someone adds their contribution to another person’s design.

Last night, Jean Wolslegel mentioned how much she liked the new necklace that I made during the week.   It started off with my decision to experiment with Gilders Paste.  I had put Gilders Paste on a Vintaj brass filigree and then polished up.

Gilded Lace Necklace

Our customer Amy Allen was in the shop and had inspired me to use the particular combination of Swarovski crystals and faceted glass rondelles.  Another customer helped me decide on the combination of bead caps from Nunn Design and Tierracast.  Lydia Chapman helped with the finishing touch of the dangle hanging from the filigree. I was proud of what “I” had made, and until I began writing this, I had forgotten how many people had helped me co-create  it.

Annie Rutter at Bead Night

So last night, after Jean commented on the new necklace, Annie Rutter got curious about the gilders paste.  So we got it out and started playing with it on some other components.  I loved how Annie used it on the Mythical Wings from Vintaj.  Even more, I loved her input on a new necklace that I was putting together. I used a Vintaj princess filigree around a blue hemimorphite focal bead. This got wired to another filigree. I strung up some harlequin beads, Swarovski crystals, and Swarovski pearls with little spacers.  I stayed up late to finish it, but relished in the creative flow.

Gilded Luna-Sea

It’s so much fun when it is a group effort!

Vicki Lapp

P.S. It was great to see Evan and Holly at bead night too!

What are you letting go of?

In order to make room for the emergence or birth of something new, we may need to let go of something first.

When I traveled to Nepal many years ago, I was fascinated to find that one of the most popular of the Hindu deities there was Shiva, the god of destruction.  It made sense that sometimes something has to be destroyed before you can build something new.  However, I never felt comfortable that on the dashboards of some of the busses I rode were statues of Shiva.

Last month we opened up our staff meeting by having each person name something that they were letting go of and a quality that they were bringing forth.  I declared that I was letting go of a sense of hurry and bringing forth presence.  Another said that she was letting go of frustration and bringing forth calmness.  As each person named what they were letting go of, a spirit of light-heartedness came forward as we laughed at ourselves for what we have been hanging on to.

Some of my happiest dreams are of flying, though they don’t happen often.  When I have those dreams it is after I have let go of some type of emotional baggage that I had been habitually carrying.

Recently we were selling at a local bead show and after finishing our set up we were waiting for customers to arrive.  When I am in the shop and there are no customers, there is an endless amount of computer work and inventory work to do.  This was an odd sensation: without my computer I had no work that I could do!  So having let go of work, and surrounded by beautiful beads and a few beading tools and jewelry findings, I made jewelry. What fun! The creativity poured through me as I made three new necklaces.   It helped to have beautiful lampwork beads from Unicorne, Vintaj filigree, and Nunn Design chains.  But more importantly  it helped to let go of the computer.  By the way, the new necklaces have become jewelry kits: Mystical Ocean, Passion, and Silver Key necklaces.

What are you willing to let go of in order to create something new?  If nothing immediately comes to mind, consider letting go of one of these: thinking you aren’t good enough, telling yourself you are not creative, comparing yourself to others, or trying to please someone else.

Letting go doesn’t have to be an event, like you have to get divorced before you can marry again.  It can be a daily practice to enrich your creativity.  Everyday you can ask yourself: what am I letting go of and what do I want to being forth?

Vicki Lapp

Choose to go to your happy place

When I got started beading, I was in a stressful job with a long commute (tiring and stressful).  At a friend’s suggestion, I took a class at a nearby bead store.  After work I came home and started making jewelry.  I would feel the tension leave my body with each bead I would put on the wire.  I felt better at midnight after hours of beading than I had all day long.  Beading became my “happy place.”

Soon I started teaching beading classes out of my house in the East Bay, which led to opening a bead shop, Bead Inspirations.  In the past 6+ years, I have heard so many customers tell me how fun, relaxing and therapeutic beading has been for them.

But even in a fun business like beads, I can get focused on stressful things:  surviving a difficult economy, dealing with employee issues, making sure we have products on time for classes, etc.  So what I’ve learned I have to do is to keep choosing to go to my happy place.  It is a mental habit to spend so much of my time focusing on the stressful aspects of my life.  But, I’ve got a choice!

Sometimes it is enough to interrupt the stressful thinking and think about a time when I was relaxed and happy.  I can remember how it feels to be in the creative flow and dwell in that memory for a while, taking the time to feel into the joyful serenity of it.  Other times I need to actually disengage completely from all the other activities in my life and physically go to my favorite happy place for a time.  Either way, I can choose.

In one of my spiritual reference books we affirm: I can choose peace instead of this.  We don’t have to live with stress all the time because we can choose to go to the happy place, either in our mind our in the physical world.  I hope to see you there.

Vicki Lapp

P.S. If you’re in the SF Bay Area, come to our shop in Alameda for Bead Night on Fridays from 6-9pm.  Check our calendar to make sure it is happening, as sometimes we don’t have Bead Night because of other events in the store.  You’ll usually find me there in my happy place!

Creativity and Criticism

It has been striking for me to notice how different it is to teach beading to a class of adults compared to a class of kids.  Everyone can typically follow the step by step instructions to learn the techniques easily enough.  But when it comes to jewelry designing, the two groups as a whole approach it very differently.

I have a little speech that I give adults so they can feel safe letting their creative side express itself.  I remind them that everyone is naturally creative.  I suggest that they don’t compare themselves to anyone else.  Don’t put pressure on yourself to make your design perfect; designing is a process of trial and error.  You don’t have to figure it all out in advance, beads are forgiving; get started stringing and if you change your mind, you can always change it.  As I speak these words to the adults, I can visibly see them relaxing.

After having taught beading classes to adults in the San Francisco Bay Area, I taught a kid’s class and started to give my “everyone is creative” speech.   The kids showed no signs of interest; they were ready to start creating now!

Why the difference in the two groups?  I believe that it is because the kids have not yet had so much criticism that it debilitated their creativity.  As adults, we have a stockpile of memories of when someone told us that what we were doing was not ________ enough.  The more we heard it, the more we believed it.  Even long after the outside critical voice has gone silent, the echoes live in us as our inner critic.   It is not the criticism itself, it is how we relate to it, that affects our creativity.

I have learned to evaluate whether to hold the other person’s feedback with more weight than my own point of view.  A friend told me that she has learned, “Just because someone says something doesn’t mean that it is true.”  Sometimes the gift is learning to trust myself to discern how much to value the other’s feedback.

One Friday at Bead Night I was putting a necklace together.  I had decided on a filigree-wrapped pink calcite focal bead.   Something was missing for me, and I hooked on a piece of chain with a pearl and asked the other gals if they thought the addition worked.  The lack of enthusiasm in their response (which I sometimes hear as criticism) told me it wasn’t working.  Still I felt that I was on the right track and stuck with my inner vision.  I shortened the chain and then the feedback was unanimous approval.  The finished necklace design is now a bead jewelry kit on our website called, “Softness“.

I believe that feedback is a gift, although it doesn’t always feel that way at first.  Warren Wiersbe is known to say, “Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.”  I use this as my guide, and make sure that the love, the heart that someone puts into something, does not go unacknowledged amidst my “constructive feedback”.

I do not always get to choose when, from where or how criticism may come.  When it comes my way, I can look within my heart to see what I can learn from it.  If I can be in touch with the beauty of who I am deep inside, a goal that is not always easy to accomplish, then I can keep the criticism in its true perspective.

Vicki Lapp

Local Treasures

I was out shopping (Oh, no-that’s not right. According to my nephew I’m not allowed to call it “shopping” when we’re looking for tools) and headed for Urban Ore in Berkeley. He stumbled upon a solid oak work bench and an older (think solid iron) table saw, both in amazing shape. If you’re not familiar with Urban Ore, it’s a huge warehouse filled with “stuff” in various stages of usefulness from vacuum cleaner filters to office supplies and desks, speakers to clothes and lots of building supplies: tools, doors, doorknobs, kind of like a giant perpetual garage sale. They’re a “for profit” organization so they take things in trade or sometimes pay a bit of cash for the better offerings. Their mission is to get folks in the habit of re-using as much “stuff” as possible to keep it from the landfill. (Unfortunately, it’s not great for beads or jewelry-I checked.)   Urban Ore is a local treasure. One of those places not everyone knows about but when you find it you tend to tell your friends.

Bead Inspirations is one of those places in Alameda. It’s got a great selection of findings, beads and stringing materials as well as metal smithing and metal stamping supplies but more important is the atmosphere. They know many of their regular customers by name, host Bead Night every Friday (where beaders new and experienced come to chat while working on their projects) and they really listen to the people they serve. You can ask for advice on a current project and someone will work with you to help you design or puzzle out a construction issue. Those of us who make jewelry in Alameda are very fortunate to have such a great resource right here in town. Lots of people drive from not just Oakland, but all over the bay area, including from the peninsula, San Francisco and out from the Livermore Valley to shop and take classes at Bead Inspirations but for us, it’s “just down the street”.

We’re so lucky in Alameda. You can pretty much get everything you need right here on the island, or so we believe. But if we want to continue to have this luxury, we have to get in the habit of supporting our local businesses and organizations. I discovered that the hard way.

There used to be a wonderful little grocer on the corner of Park and San Jose called Williams Bros. (Party Warehouse is there now). Every time my husband and I went in there, we commented on how pleasant it was-high quality food, really nice staff, old fashioned feel-but we didn’t go in often. We loved knowing it was there and it was our “go-to” shop for last minute needs or for specialty items. We assumed they’d always be there – right around the corner. Then, suddenly, they were closing. We were really sad but realized too late that we hadn’t supported it enough to keep it alive.

Here in Alameda, we love our local treasures but we’re starting to lose more and more of them to the vagaries of the economy. So, if you like the convenience of having a high quality shop “just down the street” don’t forget to support it. I know being able to run in for the clasp I need or the crimps I have to have to finish that necklace I’ve been working on is a tremendous convenience. I love having the opportunity to take classes 5 minutes from home.

Oh, and speaking of local treasures, another one to remember is Rhythmix Cultural Works.Did you know Rhythmix has all kinds of fantastic adult night out options? Ever heard of performance art Bingo? Every month has a theme. Past goofiness has included Beach Blanket bingo, Secret Agent Bingo-August 11 is Bollywood bingo. This is a combo of comedy, and bingo with a full bar and food. “Not your Grandmother’s bingo” said the Alameda Sun. This madness has also been touted by East Bay Express, and the S.F.Chronicle. Rhythmix also has regular art installations in its downstairs gallery, “Comedy Jam” on the second Friday of every month which have included Will Durst, Johnny Steele and Mike Bossier, among others, and many concerts from folk to rock to world music every month.

So appreciate your local treasures! Join in and support them! We’re really lucky to live in Alameda. We’re close to everything cool and many of those cool things are right here in our own little island town. And if anyone else has “local treasures” they’d like to share, post them here!

Happy Beading!

Penny

Last Few Days of our End of the Year Sale!

Save big during our End of the Year Sale!

Give yourself what you really wanted this holiday season!

Save on inspiring
items rarely on sale, including tools,
findings, cord, beading kits & more!

For Webstore Customers:

Receive 10% off purchases over $50
Enter code w10off at checkout

Receive 15% off purchases over $100
Enter code w15off at checkout

Holiday Beads & Charms – 25% Off!

Offer good through January 1, 2011.

Discount applies to webstore purchases only.
Discount does not apply to gift certificates, class fees, or class kits.
No additional discounts apply.

For Retail Store Customers:

1544 Park Street Alameda, CA 94501 510-337-1203 After Christmas hours: Sun. Dec. 26, 12pm-6pm Mon. Dec. 27 thru Thurs. Dec. 30 11am-7pm Fri. Dec. 31 (New Year’s Eve) 11am-4pm Sat. Jan. 1, CLOSED Happy New Year! Sun. Jan. 2, 12pm-6pm Mon. Jan. 3, 11am-7pm Tues. Jan. 4, CLOSED (for inventory) Discount does not apply to class fees, class kits, gift certificates or repair services. No further discounts apply. Offer good 12/26/2010 through 12/31/2010.      Promo codes: 10off, 15off, 20off

Storewide End of the Year Sale 10%-50% Off    Bring this coupon into our retail store to receive your discount! Holiday Beads & Charms – 25%-50% off   All other items: Any amount – 10% off Over $50 – 15% off Over $100 – 20% off