BEAD AND BUTTON 2011: PART 2

Tuesday started bright and early with Melanie Potter's WildFlowers Necklace class. Here is Melanie getting ready for class with one of my fellow students in front of her. We are in the Hilton Hotel, which has elegant meeting rooms.

Here is most of our class project; I am still working on the neck chain part. This was my first exposure to the chevron chain stitch and I love the fact that it looks like lace done in beads. It didn't hurt

that Melanie was a patient teacher and her instructions were very clear.

Tuesday night was a get-together for Facebook beady friends and anyone else who wanted to join us. Here is Suzanne Golden showing off some of her understated jewelry.

Here is a lovely purse embroidered by Liz Thompson.

Here is a shot of part of the Facebook group. That is Stacy Creamer in black. She was wearing a very intriguing necklace made of lightweight metal rings.

Wednesday's class was "Light and Shadow, The Art of Phtographing Glass and Jewelry" taught by Doug Baldwin, photographer and glass artist. This is a photo of part of his postcard for the

class. Doug showed us how to build inexpensive light boxes, explained how to take good photos, and demonstrated how to make them even better in Photoshop. I learned a lot in this class.

After class I spent some time with some of my new friends in the meeting place in the Hyatt Hotel. Here are (from left to right): Katharin Pfannschmidt, Petra Tismer (in back), Evelyn La Hirschel (showing off a little leg), Sabine Lippert, and Elke Leonhardt-Rath. They are all carrying the same purse as

members of the Bonn beading group.

After dinner, it was off to "Meet the

Teachers" in the Frontier Airlines,

where we had a chance to meet the teachers, buy kits and supplies from them, and catch up with friends. The Toho Bead people were doing a nice thing this year as they set up a table where you could donate to the Japanese Red Cross by buying donated kits and glass beads. All of the proceeds went to the Red Cross. I bought a fun bracelet kit donated by Dallas Lovett.

Thursday brought a class in

freeform netting at the Frontier Airlines Center--you can see why I called the Hilton's classroom elegant in comparison. I am reluctant to say much about this class because I was not happy with it but I am not sure that it was the teacher's fault. How can anyone who brings chocolate to class be bad?

This was the class project. I think

part of my unhappiness lay in the fact that I was expecting a class in freeform netting and got a class where you did 2 rows of netting, piled on fibers and then tried to pin everything down with more loops of beads. Since the teacher kept saying that we could do anything that we wanted to do, I decided that what I wanted to do was leave class early and redesign the necklace to my satisfaction. Still working on that.

Thursday night was the shopping premier and we all spent 5 hours browsing, buying , and chatting with friends.