The Whole Bead Show: NYC...

A big component of my trip to New York was the Whole Bead Show.  It was actually the motivating factor to finally get me back to the City after being away for five years.  Ava and her team do such a nice job at finding awesome vendors – balancing artisans and importers.  The show, centrally located and easy to navigate to, was a comfortable size and had a lot of beautiful things on display.  I was scheduled to teach and I wanted to pick up some goodies for the shop.  While I was there I ran into lots of familiar faces!  It was a treat to see friends from the bead community, who I don't get to see often.

On the left is Anne from Gardanne beads.  She had a juicy selection of her lampwork beads and enameled components.  On the left is Ashley Bunting.  She was demonstrating and selling tools for Xuron.

Even though we only got to see each other in passing, it was delightful to run into Jenny Davies-Reazor, Colin Mellars, and Diana Ptaszynski.  They had to catch a train, so our encounter was brief, but good.

I've been friends with Kristi Bowman-Gruel (pictured on the left) on Facebook for years, but this was the first time that we met in real life!  It was nice to finally connect in person.  On the right is Amy from The Bead Goes On.  It is always a pleasure to see her!

Both of my classes went really well!  I wish that I snapped more pictures.  Here are two of my students from the first class I taught on making faces out of polymer clay.  On the left is Norma and on the right is Alain.  All of the students throughout the weekend were a lot of fun, really patient, and picked things up quickly.  The classes were small, so I got to spend a lot of one-on-one time with each of the students.  

I definitely recommend this show.  I had a really good time and hope to attend again in the future!  Hopefully I will be invited back as an instructor and can have an another excuse to go back to the City!