The Boxes' Albuquerque Visit

(Written by Nikia. Posted by Carol Dean.)

The Best Little Bead Box is here.  I just finished the minimum amount of work I HAD to do before I would allow myself the luxury of opening the box and rolling in the contents…no, really I’m gonna!

Because I’m going to be taking pictures along the way a quick tidy up of the bead table was in order….done.  Now to open the box!  I’m so excited!  The box arrived at the perfect time at the end of a stressful week.  This is my reward!  

At this time I didn’t even know that this was just the FIRST box! LOL!  There was another one on the way! 

I restrained myself and started opening the bags one at a time.  There were really great things in here!

I worked my way slowly through the box, looking at everything.  Then I went back through to gather.

Soon after that I emailed Carole to tell her the box had arrived and that’s when I learned there was another box coming!  O.M.G.!  

The next morning the second box was dropped off.  I followed the same procedure.  Pulled everything out a bag at a time and looked at everything.  Then I went back to gather.

Here are the fruits of my labors.  There were some great tubes of delicas, a wood needle case (that I’ll bead over of course).   Then I found some really nice focal pieces, a fimo cabochon, a couple of dichroic fused glass cabs and a trefoil focal.  There was a couple of really cute Golem Studio clay pieces with coordinating beads, a nice tube of long magatamas…what else…I found some nice gold pearls I had an idea for along with an aluminum bracelet cuffs.  I’ve  been wanting to try a aluminum one.  I got some cute Czech glass hearts and other  shapes and a great bag of acrylic flowers in black and silver.  I have an idea for those! There were some really nice chunky pieces of what I believe is chryscola that will make a great bracelet with some beaded beads in between...a pietersite cab that will look great with some other pieces that I have.  Oh! And I got some parawire in silver and black to play with too.  I found some paua shell pieces and an ammonite that will look great on a bead embroidery piece I’ve been thinking about.  There was a nice bundle of silk cords that caught my eye too. Last but not least I found a lovely selection of clay pieces that I’m looking forward to making some sweet pendants with.  What fun!

I also had the pleasure of meeting the Beads of Courage Tiger.  We called him Boc…like Bach! LOL!... he was squinched up from being crammed in the box with all the treasures so we decided to go outside to get some fresh air in the garden and plant some peas! We even found him a pair of sunglasses to protect his eyes from the bright New Mexico sun.

Boc took a little rest after that and lounged around on the straw bale while I raked and moved dirt around.  He went and checked out the dandelions and then played in the bamboo “jungle”.  Tiger’s native habitat includes bamboo jungles I believe.  He was very at home!

Later that afternoon we took a quick trip to Santa Fe to the kitchen gadget store and lunch. Boc played tourist. He climbed a tree and I took a picture of him with the Sangre de Cristo mountains in the background. It was a pretty day!  I tried to get a picture of Boc with my own tiger cat “Spartacus” but he was feeling a tad shy that day.  We ended the day with a great lunch at the Blue Corn Brewery.

I had begun collecting things to put into the box for some days before it’s arrival.  After perusing the Best Bead Boxes some more to make sure there wasn’t anything I couldn’t live without, I packed them back up into the two large priority boxes.  I wasn’t sure everything would fit but it did.  Here’s what I added:

I started with some kits I just happened to have laying around.  I collected several bags of lampwork beads and cabochons and then I got into the vintage glass!  I put together a nice selection of vintage Czech and West German glass cabs to play with along with a bag of glass globs.  

I have a nice selection of metallized plastic beads and pewter so threw some bags of those in.  I included a few bags of “Czech mix” and some of my beadiots wanted to come along so there are a group of them in there.  There are some old rosettes, some turquoise pearls, a nice mix of seed beads and a couple of cool tools.  I’m sure there’s a few things I forgot but that’s the gist of it.

I’m so happy to have been a part of this.  It was great fun and looks like there’ll be a lot of cool stuff to auction off at the end!  Thanks!