Still snowed in! Dangit

So while you’re at home, use the time to organize your stash and get ready for Tucson Preview Night at The Artful Bead.

This is a small selection (really, less than .05% of what we’ve bought) to whet your appetite. ( please note that I’m running on ZERO caffeine here. That should explain a lot abt photography)

We’ve finally found the bread & butter cafe! Two days of cursing the garmin and typing “the best place to eat breakfast in tucson” have paid off!
Val has made me promise not to take a pic of her- challenge accepted!

Boy, are we glad we got out of town when we did! We leave and All Heck breaks loose?

What did you do?? We had a bit of rain on the road, and it is just a bit cold, but the sun is shining and it is rather pleasant here.

Oh. What did we buy on our first day this year? Chain chain chain!!! Lots of all new base metal plated chain, some of it nearly too cool to deal with, really. Pictures will be posted later tonight. And we got some FABULOUS raku for the Carrollton store.

And some unusual brass stampings.

And letter stamps in New Fonts!!! And some with shapes! Like spirals and hearts!
Insert Squee here.

It never fails.  You forget to send the email announcing the Czech Glass Trunk Shows when you’re supposed to, then you can’t get the new addresses to import into the emailer correctly, you can’t find the template you want to use, you forget the picture, and THEN, to set the whole thing off, you delete some teeny marker that tells the emailer to insert the first name from the database when it’s sending you the email.

So you send out all of those emails with “Dear (Contact First Name),” in the first line. 

I apologize profusely, we really do know your first names if you entered them when you signed up for the newsletter.  I truly am the Airhead in Charge of Communication this week.

And my animal cracker Bunny (bag purchased because I’m being thwarted at every turn) is broken in half. 

Insert long whine here…

Do you see that pile of purple and gold fiber over along that wall, and the blue boring pile on the other side?  That’s our socks, which were knocked off by the response to our Groupon Deal on Wednesday.  Really.  We are stunned, grateful, and a teensy bit shocked.  Who knew earring classes would make that much of a splash? 

Don’t get me wrong, we all did the HappyPants Dance (for about 10 minutes), and then immediately went to work scheduling more and more and then even more Beginning Earrings classes, and calling our suppliers and saying “uh, those beads??  We need a lot more.  A Whole Lot More, as in Boat-Load, OK?  And soon!”

Very exciting it was, for all concerned!

So that’s all taken care of, and now we have several Important Announcements:

First of all, the “We’re Bringing Tuscon to You!” Czech glass trunk shows are next week!  Tuesday from noon till 8 in Carrollton, and Friday in Fort Worth.  Our wonderful Czech Glass Guy is on his way to Tuscon, and we bullied convinced him to stop by our stores first!  So grab it while you can, the really wonderful stuff won’t make it back, you know how that goes, right?

And then on Monday, January 31st, we leave for the Annual Tuscon Buying Trip, so watch this space for all the fabbu finds nightly.  Or the “too many miles, too little sleep, ooooo! shiny!!!”(drool) that seems to always happen.  I guess you never get immune to Bead Fumes, huh?

Again, a huge Artful Bead THANK YOU to all of our new Groupon friends!  We can’t wait to meet you in person, so come in any time and look around!  (Oh, but don’t look under the table bottoms, pleeeeeese, because nobody has dusted in a little while, OK?  I’m just saying…)