Raleigh's Wide Open, but where do I park?

Are you coming to Raleigh Wide Open? It's this Saturday, and downtown Raleigh will be CRAZY.  My recommendation? Park at Ornamentea and take the R-line in. We're stop R-4. You'll get off at the Convention center (right after you see the shimmer wall) and be right there...
You can visit our booth on Fayetteville Street and make a souvenir bottlecap magnet for only $5. Fun and good for you!

New beads at Ornamentea

These lampwork glass beads are from Whirled Peas and are all created by Denise Sachs-Mishalanie. They feature lovely, smooth colors and the large focals might just be the perfect addition to your next project. Come see them in person at Ornamentea...that mustard-yellow heart is calling my name...

A hard task...

Today I had to send out a hard newsletter to all my customers telling them we would be closing one of our stores. You can read it here. We opened Panopolie almost five years ago to great fanfare and high expectations and it has been so much fun. The current economy and an expiring lease brought us to the decision to close the store at the end of April. I have been overwhelmed with responses from our customers and fans. Everyone seems to understand that this was such a hard decision. The biggest concerns were about how we would accommodate some of the best parts of Panopolie in Ornamentea's smaller, funky space. Folks told me they would really miss the paper crafts, the clubs and events, the accessibility, the sweet birthday party and class locations. I want those customers to be happy when they come to Ornamentea and so I wrote this post for them. Here are some changes I want to make-hold me to them!

Some changes we will be making to Ornamentea:
Creating a Paper Room
We'll be opening up a small doorway to make a larger one and also opening up the kiln room to create a space for art papers, book making kits, Decopatch papers and all our fabulous glitters, binding threads, scrapbook papers and other paper arts goodies. These items have been so popular at Panopolie and we won't let them disappear. This room will also function as a special entrance to our remodeled back classroom.
Adding 'new' events
One of the best things we did at Panopolie was organize parties. We held book readings, slumber parties and club meetings of all kinds. We had a weekly breakfast crafting event where friendships were made. These fun events will move to Ornamentea and we really hope all the Panopolie customers make the trip to join us.
Opening up the sales floor
You'll see less furniture, more open floor space. We need to do this to accommodate our customers with mobility issues and to make room so we don't all bump elbows. We have already traded two large fixtures for three airy spinners and that was a big help. You will have to look a bit to find some of your favorites but the change will be worth it. Oh, and we have staff to actually help you do that looking!
Improving the back classroom
This room was never supposed to be a classroom. It has really ugly carpet and a weird half wall that makes it much smaller than necessary. You enter it through a store room where we keep the kiln. That kiln room will go away when we create the paper room. We painted the classroom and did a good bit of sprucing on the Inventory day recently, but now we'll remove the half wall and get new tables that will allow us to seat 16 for parties and 8 really spaciously for day-long classes. The front classroom will get some sprucing done as well...

Other things? Well, I am sure there are a few. We may try to have two smaller work tables in the store, or add a coffee-table at the couch for overflow crafting. I am not sure. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them. Our budget is about $0 but we have so many talented hands that we actually can make something from nothing.

I'll miss Panopolie. The store is really beautiful. It is spacious and airy and that sky-blue open ceiling (which our landlord did NOT want us to do!) is so nice you almost forget you are in a strip mall. The sun shines in the windows late in the day, making all the beads sparkle. Those big work tables make me just swoon...over the next month I will cherish the days I am able to be there working but I know that the energy and excitement we will all bring back home to Ornamentea will make that store even better.

Designer's Downtown Market this weekend!

This Saturday we will have another Designer's Downtown Market here in Glenwood South. There will be artists from all over the Southeast with handbags, jewelry, handmade soaps, outdoor art and dog collars. I am hoping to pick up a new favorite tee shirt and maybe a springy tote bag. I might even get organized enough to pick up Mother's Day and end-of-year teacher's gifts.

The Market takes place in the parking lots of Ornamentea, Get Dressed and Hipsteria right here on West Street in Raleigh. We open early, at 9:00, when the market starts. There will be lots of parking in the area and the weather will be lovely.

To learn more about the market, click here.

Of course, we always have some special marked down items on Market day; this year look for some nifty vintage decor items, bead strands at 1/2 price, discounted books and magazines and probably a few more things I am forgetting to mention.

See you Saturday!

Make a Sweet Heart Suncatcher!

Join us Thursday night at Ornamentea and you can make a sweet heart suncatcher at Technique Thursday. Hang this on your sweetie's rear-view mirror on Valentine's day or just put it in the kitchen window for some sparkly love...

If you can't make it to Technique Thursday at Ornamentea you can make your own suncatcher at home with 18 or 20 gauge craft wire and an assortment of sweetly colored glass beads. I might make tiny ones for my friends to wear as pendants...

Class photos from Saturday

From Tracy Thommason's Resin Sampler class, some pendants drying on the table...


From the second half of Sarah Tector's Introduction to Wax Carving.

It was a great day!

Steampunk Book Reception...a fun Friday night!

I took a few quick pictures at the start of the Steampunk Style Jewelry book reception and wanted to share them. We had a great time, with yummy sweet treats from L'Espiga and wine from Seaboard Wine which we drank in fancy teacups. For future reference: white wine looks just like very weak tea.

Kathy King article in the paper today

There is a lovely article about the talented Kathy King in the News & Observer today. She is the author of the new beadweaving book, Bead Quilled Jewelry, and a Cary resident. If you haven't seen the book yet, stop by the stores and look at it. Kathy turns the beads sideways and creates designs that use both the beads and the thread in an unconventional and new way. She'll be teaching her technique at Bead & Button this year and we'll have classes at Ornamentea this spring.

You can come meet Kathy at Ornamentea on February 12th. She'll be signing her book and showing off her detailed work. If you'd like to reserve a copy of her book please call the store at 919-834-6260.

Read the entire article here. See more of Kathy's work on her website here.

Busy at Ornamentea today

today at the shop...cold, snowy and a good day to bead.

Shameless Self Promotion

Here I am on Triangle Blvd TV. Nice scooter necklace!

Lost and Found

Folks lose stuff in our stores all the time. Car keys, toys, water bottles, jackets and even prescription glasses. We have Lost & Found boxes and we put the items in the box, labeled with the date we found them on the work table, or in the bathroom, or in the parking lot. The items remain in the box for about a year and then we take them to the local thrift store or throw them out, depending on their re-use value. I think this is okay. I haven't ever researched the legality of donating junk people left at my place of business. I don't claim the donated Happy Meal toys on my taxes as a Charitable Contribution.

I find the car keys to be really odd. I always think, gee, you had your keys when you DROVE to the bead store, wouldn't you remember to look around the bead store at least once? We have a set of keys from a Nissan at Ornamentea we've had for two months. We found them in the bathroom. Personally, if I spend enough time someplace to use the bathroom I might remember that event when my car keys came up missing. At least, I hope I would.

So, what do you lose? An American Eagle jeans jacket, size small? We have it. Black-framed sunglasses, cute but they look like you got them on the rack at Wings? Right here. Library books from the local library? Well, actually we take those back to the library since the books weren't yours to begin with but I think you get my point. The next time you are in your local bead store or coffee shop or nail salon ask them if they have that jeans skirt from Forever 21 you can't find. You never know.

(and what do I lose? mostly I lose things in my house; my phone, the book I am reading, my slippers, my drink. Stop laughing. You do it too.)

Um, those keys at the top are not in any of our Lost & Found bins and I am pretty sure they won't unlock a vehicle of any kind. The do make nice adornments, though.

Buggy Staff Challenge

We do a monthly Staff Challenge here at the stores. We have secret ingredients or sometimes a theme and the staff members all compete to see who can come up with the best project. This month we had a box of some of our new brass bugs and each person got to pick a few to create something with. This month the prize was Fame as each winner will be featured in a how-to tutorial on our website and in the stores. This month it was really hard for me to decide. I drew on the expertise of our web site designers and we finally decided upon the ones that we would turn into tutorials. After we were finished, however, I kept thinking that maybe you would like to tell me which one should be a tutorial. Would you? Go right there to the side of this blog and vote.

Bee Garden Hair Clip


Beetle Drop Earrings


Bee Hoops Necklace


Triple Spider Drop Necklace


Sacred Scarab Necklace

Posey Garden Box

Golden Beetle Ring


Felted Beetle Necklace

Winged Scarab Pendant


Beaded Web Brooch

Picnic Necklace


Collaged Bee Brooch


Dragonfly Fringe Necklace

Metalfreaks at Raleigh Wide Open

This year the Raleigh Wide Open celebration included a new art show and we got to play a small part in it. The Metal's Club hosted a tent where they helped people of all ages make a stamped metal pendant necklace. There was a bit of rain but it didn't slow the metalfreaks down one bit. They even survived some winds that threatened to blow the tents over!
Sharon and Stacy debate the finer points of a leather mallet.
Sarah and Tiffany are, um, acting weird?

For the record, we did not allow the stuffed lion on the left to make ANYTHING. We think he had been drinking. The little girl, however, made a pendant.Ndidi teaching how to do the top secret endless knot on the leather cording we used. Come in and ask for a demo. We are not allowed to post this type of information here on the blog. It's Top Secret. And Endless.
Everyone enjoyed themselves and the day ended in a bit of a wet mess, but it was fun. If you see a Metal's Club member, ask them about their special Metalfreak teeshirts!
Big thanks (from me!) to Ndidi for organizing this whole venture. When the folks from Raleigh Wide Open contacted us about having an interactive tent at the show I was reluctant at first but Ndidi made it happen. She coordinated the Metal's Club members and staff and even got them swanky new tee shirts. Thanks also to Tracy, Nathalie, Tiffany, Stacy, Debbie, Joanna, Sharon, Sarah, Boo (work+photography), Jeanette, Amy, and Becky for making this possible. I hope you made a few more Metalfreaks on Saturday!

Win a True Love Necklace

I love the work of Raleigh artist Kristen Townsend of Mood Swing Studio. She has paired up with San Francisco artist Mati Rose to create these beautiful necklaces and now artist Kelly Rae is giving one away on her blog. Kelly Rae has a fabulously inspirational book that makes you drool visually and swoon emotionally. I love it.

Go, enter the contest here. Do it now, it closes soon...

If you want to see Kristen's work in person check out the Handmade Market on November 7th at Marbles in Raleigh...the place to get all the gifts you don't make yourself. Kristen is a Handmaiden and one of the 'old' Ornamentea customers from way back in the days of the tiny store...

Free beads to celebrate our anniversary!

Happy Birthday to us! We turned 10 this month and we have celebrated with $1 tee shirts, lots of great classes and events and now, with 100 strands of free beads! Come into Ornamentea starting Friday September 25th and you can ask for one free strand from a specially selected grouping of semi-precious stone strands. These strands range from $2.50 - $14.50 in price and there is a great variety but hurry, we are only giving away 100 free strands and you must come to the store in person to receive your free strand.

One per beadfreak, you must be a registered beadfreak card holder to receive a strand!

Yes, we still have a few tees for $1, medium, large and extra large. Not in town? You can still get a $1 tee with your ornamentea.com order. Read all about it here...

Mess in the classroom

I love to make signs and rearrange the stores. This is one of my favorite parts of my job. On Tuesday I had to work the evening shift and it was all I could do not to rearrange the entire back wall at Ornamentea. I mean, it needs a coat of paint and some new shelves and we could add a chandelier or two...only the fact that I really could not work until 2:00 a.m. kept me from doing everything I wanted to.

Instead, I did do a bit of rearranging and tried to get the new cases better integrated into the store. We have added more cases in the metals section to get ready for a big expansion of tools and metals. We are adding nickel/German silver and expanding our selection of fine and sterling silver strip and sheet metal. We are adding some fancier new tools and do-dads. I get to make a lot of new signs (!) and I even bought a new paint marker. It was a really, really good day. The only 'not good' part of the day was the mess I made in the classroom. See that mess? I took this picture on THURSDAY so it was a Two Day Mess. Sigh...I just cleaned it up today to make room for a class. Basically, that means I transferred the mess to the back classroom and will deal with it later.

Back in the beginning days of the store I would have stayed up until 2:00 rearranging the whole thing. Actually, the 'whole thing' was smaller, so I might have gone to bed earlier and still rearranged a lot. Either way, I moved it all around a lot more. I wasn't so respectful of my body's need for sleep and we didn't have the girls at home so if my husband wanted to see me he just hung out with me at the store and helped me. We'd stay up late painting or building and I would make a few signs while he re-wired a lamp or installed a camera. They were like date nights! We actually joke about that now and say we are going to get a sitter and have a date night where we come into the store and repaint the floor or move a big display. That sounds kinda pathetic when I type it here, like we have no romance in our lives, but we enjoy working with each other on an actual project. I think we would have made good pioneers or homesteaders. Beads on the prairie.

Hear about us on Inspired At Home

You can hear lots of great crafty talk on Inspired At Home with Tiffany Windsor. Ornamentea will be mentioned in the next episode, this Sunday!

Listen to the program here.

Celebrate our birthday with a $1 beadfreak tee!

You can get a swanky beadfreak tee for just $1 at either store or order on line.* These tees are a great way to say "I'm not just any kind of freak" to the world. We've been shipping boxes of them to bead clubs around the country...enjoy! Order here.


*on line orders require a $20 purchase, some restrictions cause, hey, it's a $1 tee shirt! click link above to read the nitty gritty.

ancient history, staff photos

In all the years we have been in business (did I mention Ornamentea is 10 this year?) we've had some really talented folks working here. I feel incredibly lucky to have had them join me on this road and I am amazed at what some of them have done after they grew out of the Ornamentea nest.

Kiona, second from the right, is a founding member of the Handmaidens and the designer of Lucky Accessories. Her work is worn around the world and she's also a wonderful mom. I'd like to say that I knew how fabulous she'd be when I offered her a job but honestly, I just liked her.

Leeannn, under the hat second from the left is one of the owners of Epona and Oak and also a founding Handmaiden. She's amazingly talented and I would like to point out at this time that when she left my employ it was because all the ordering and pricing of merchandise was making her crazy. Um, how's that new store going Leeann? (note to readers, it is going great!)

Natalie, in the center in the green is now a mom. Kathryn in the far right is married and working at a great job. Sierra just had a sweet baby boy and is living way out west.

Oh, that is a much younger me sleeping in the middle. I may have been drunk on margaritas. We often drank margaritas at the shop in those days, or at least, we talked about it a lot!

This is a photo we took as a staff photo for the store, way back in the olden days. There were a few folks missing but I seem to remember we photoshopped them in. I hope they wore flowered shirts!

Artisan Workshop this Friday

Come take a class with me this Friday night...we'll play with resins and add text and images to Elaine's ceramic bezels, beads and pendants. There may also be a nice 10th anniversary merlot and some cheese straws. So, it's a date then?

Call 919-834-8634 and ask them to save you a seat.

Details here.