Seattle Gift Show
It’s always nice to spend time in our college town, even when we’re working. Our booth at the big Seattle Gift Show was next to a few cool people with really creative products: Nina J Design Studios,
who make colorful accessories, and Shupaca,
vendors of creative Alpaca products. Also Great hand made soap and hand lotions by Good Fortune.
We previewed the new Fall/Winter Lavaline, featuring sparkling Murano glass, gemstones and pearls, plus a few dozen new twists on the Nautilas line. Buyers are here from all over the West. We’ve met store owners from a dozen states and several Canadian provinces.
Falling in Feathers
Hello Broadway!
Back in the Big Apple: New York City. There is a new excitement on the fashion scene when it comes to feathers. They are not just for the new and exciting Broadway play, "Priscilla Queen of the Desert." (By the way, we saw it in previews and it was hilarious - a must see.) Back to fashion: The new fashion-forward trend this season is feather earrings: short, long, thin, fat, bright colors of the rainbow and oh! so natural. So on to the garment district we went. Nestled between a trimmings store and Bambino's Express, up a few flights of stairs we found Feathers Place.
They buzzed us in and within seconds we were surrounded by streams of the most amazing boa's - and I don't mean constrictors. Peacock, chicken, ostrich, whatever kind of poultry feather that you might desire is there. So I decided to go with some semi-natural, some dyed lime-green and some purple - definitely 70"s. And some natural bronze, deep-green, and beautiful off-white and chocolate browns. It is very interesting how they sell them. Someone stitches them like a hula skirt and then rolls them like a crown of feathers. They're sold by the yard execpt for the peacocks, which are sold individually by length and eye size.
So I picked a half-dozen colors and planned to design the earrings in the upcoming train from New York to Miami. Before we left New York City, though, we enjoyed designer Mexican food at Dos Caminos with our good friends Liz and Sal and a great room and rate at the Indigo in Chelsea. And we did stop twice before rolling all the way to Florida on Amtrak's Silver Star: once for a Fat Tuesday celebration with our friends Jen, TJ and Jack in Middle River, Maryland and once more to deliver jewelry to Cindy, the owner of Progressives Salon in Rockville, Maryland. She is a new account for me and as I could tell in a few seconds, a very successful business owner who's team provides hair, nail and spa services in additional to terrific retail space.
The Annual Tucson Whirlwind
We left 82-degree Maui for 28-degree Union, Washington and a week of studio week before the annual slog south to Tucson. Along the way we discovered a few swanky new spots in Portland: the Irving Street Diner and the Ace Hotel.
Our unique room in Portland at the Ace Hotel
After that, we hit the pavement hard, John doing most of the
driving while I created the gem stone shopping list and built this new website.
The Tucson Gem Show is unlike any other convention or
trade show. It completely takes over the town. Thousands of hotel rooms are converted into little retail stores by day, then back to bedrooms at night. Right next to a room of beautiful Dominican Larimar, I found some fabulous Polish Amber. Three doors down was a Brazilian vendor selling the rutilated quartz I wanted.
A few miles from the downtown hotels is the Holidome and an adjacent collection of Barnum & Bailey Big Top tents, where another thousand vendors display gemstones in every color across the spectrum. Each aisle offers constant distractions: shimmering blue topaz here, sparkling drusy there, and oh those piles of pearls.
Jolica in a Sea of Pearls at the Tucson Show Gem
I have a shopping list, and I have a budget, but I could easily lose both and simply fill a cart on every aisle.
I know what my clients want, so I have a good idea what I’m going to buy on this annual biz-binge fro the start. Ultimately, though, I don’t create final designs until after the shopping is done. We do have that 1,589-mile drive back home, so that gives me almost 24 hours of creative time on the ride from Arizona back to Washington.
And shopping wouldn’t be any fun if I didn’t get to look for, buy and experiment with new items. Two years ago, I found Japanese Porcelain beads. Last year I met nephrite jade pendants for the first time. This year I discovered opaque aquamarine cabochons from Brazil and Amethyst Stalactites from Uruguay.
Amethyst Stalactites from Uruguay
Each Tucson trip also gives us a chance to catch up with our friends
Mike Gerrard and Donna Dailey, travel writers who live in Arizona part-time, England part-time and highways and byways between the rest of the year. The two write guide books and travel websites, including www.pacificcoasthighway.com