beads beads beads

Many of you know I have a thing for beads... you would think that's so obvious because I use them for my jewelry... duh! But that's not the whole story...

This past weekend I was at an event and the booth next to mine belonged to a sweet guy selling antiques... We got to know each other a bit during the moments of slower traffic, but while we were busier, I could feel him watching and listening to me talk to the people at my booth... It made me a little self-conscious... Not that I felt he was judging me or anything like that, but more that he was truly and genuinely paying attention to what I was saying. When people are browsing my work, I try to explain everything I can about what I've used to make something... All my soaps and essential oils are fragrances that I can talk about... frankincense does this for your body, lavender can help with this, eucalyptus is good for this and this... so on.. same with my beads... fluorite can help balance this, rose quartz is best for this... I do my best to learn as much about the different crystals and stones and oils as I can, and then I try even harder to relate all this information to my customers in an interesting way. That's always seemed like a natural thing to do, but here was this guy who wasn't interested in buying anything from me... he was just listening... it felt so different.  At the end of the day he told me that he enjoyed hearing all the stories I told about each item and how he was surprised there was so much to learn about beads! I started thinking about how often when people are looking at my jewelry, they are seeing it simply for what it looks like... sometimes they love it just for what it looks like, and sometimes I'm sure they say to themselves "that's just another necklace" and don't have a second thought about passing it up... but once I see which piece they have their eye on and I start telling stories about what the beads are and what they can do and where I get them, it becomes more than "just another necklace"... and the ones who liked it just for what it looked like, now love it even more... I love building a connection between something meaningful and the simple string of beads.. and as much as I love and enjoy it, I had never really given it much more thought than solely passing the stories onto my customers - until this man told me he just enjoyed listening. He gave me an idea....

Of course all this information about beads and essential oils is out there ready to be taken in if you just search for it... but maybe you've never even thought to look! I'd like to make short posts about the beads and oils that I use, so that maybe you can learn something new, get inspired to use these materials yourself, or just enjoy a story or two! Subscribe and stay tuned!