Fort Bragg Sea Glass Festival - Part Two

In the last post, we left off as we were walking the path to the beach in Fort Bragg. The path forked and not knowing which path led to the famous Glass Beach we decided to go right. This path ended in a patch of pink blooming ice plant and a glorious view of the coastline. You will note the rocky landscape in the above picture. I was surprised as most of the beaches I'd been to were easily accessible.
There was nothing to do but hike on down to the beach.

Here I am looking a bit unsure of the climb. But it turned out to be a gentle hike down through sand and rocks to the beach.

I don't know what I'm thinking here, except that my husband can stop taking my picture so I can look for sea glass. It was a negative tide so I started off toward the water. Almost immediately, I found sea glass. I was in heaven. It seemed that everywhere I looked there was sea glass. Most of the glass was tiny, but I didn't care. I lost track of time, as I looked for pieces of glass. There was a lot of white, green and brown glass which is natural as they are the most common colors. What was unusual about Fort Bragg sea glass as compared to Mazatlan sea glass is that Bragg's glass is much thicker and I'd guess older. The texture and frosting was delightful. As I moved closer to the water I found larger deposits of sea glass. As you can see in the next picture the glass was as thick as gravel on a road. Later, when I talked to Captain Cass, who owns the Sea Glass Museum, I'd learn that I wasn't even on Glass Beach - I was north of Glass Beach because I'd gone right instead of straight on the path. Oh, well, at that moment, I didn't know any better and I was happy as a clam to do my beachcombing. Steve and I stayed on the beach for a couple of hours then we had to return to the motel where my sister Julia and her husband Gary were waiting for us. Julia and Gary had come to Fort Bragg to spend time with us all and Friday was the only day we could do things together. I wanted to stay on the beach all day, but hey, sometimes you have to be a team player, right? My other sister, Shirley, partner in Sisters Jewelry Design, had arrived the night before with her husband Pat and become suddenly ill with the stomach flu. She loves beachcombing as much as I and for her not to get out of bed, I knew she was really sick. I was hoping it would be a one day illness as this was a free day, but tomorrow we'd be selling our jewelry at the Sea Glass Festival. I had my fingers crossed that Shirley would recover.

This is a picture of Julia and Gary at a restaurant, we'd gone to the night before down at the wharf.

Anyway, we went back to the motel, checked on Shirley, she was sick, sick, sick. Pat was going for a two hour bike ride and we decided to go with Julia and Gary first to a botanical garden, then we planned on locating the sea glass museum so we'd know where to set up our tent for the festival.
At 18220 North Highway One, is the Mendocino-Coast Botanical Gardens. They are really magnificent and worth a visit if you are in the area. You can visist their website http://www.gardenbythesea.org/ to learn more about the gardens. There are incredible rhododendrums twenty feet tall and amazing sculptures by California artists. There are 46 acres of trails and gardens so you can spend a lot of time just wandering around. Here are some of the pictures we took of garden as we walked out toward to the coastline.

First view of entering the gardens. Following are all pictures taken in the botanical garden.

Julia and my husband Steve stand by one of the many garden sculptures. Here is another shot of the glass sculpture. Some amazing photos of flowers in the park taken by my sister Julia.

As we walked through the park and walked and walked, I coughed and blew my nose constantly. My headached and I wished I was back at the motel in the bed, but I hadn't seen my sister Julia in a long time and I wanted to spend time with her so I gutted it out. I must say when we reached the end of the gardens at the ocean it was well worth the walk as the view was gorgeous - inspiring to say the least.

After we left the botanical gardens we drove a few blocks south on Highway 1 and turned into the spacious driveway of the Sea Glass Gallery & Museum. The exact address of the museum is 17801 N. Hwy 1, just 11 miles south of Fort Bragg. The museum is open daily from 10 to 5 with free admission. Be sure to talk to Captain Cass who owns the museum. His website can be found at http://glassbeachjewelry.com/

Cass is a wealth of information on sea glass and the beaches surrounding Fort Bragg. You can also pick up one of Capt. Cass' Glass Beach Guides and Map. I was beginning to love maps after the fiasco in San Francisco. From Cass and his map, I learned that I'd gone to one of the newer glass beaches I should have gone straight on the path then left. Fort Bragg has three glass beaches - each site was once a dumping area for the town. The oldest site, 1906-1943, is hard to reach without a kayak. When a dump area filled up, the townspeople would move further down the coast. The second oldest site, 1943-1947, is off the Old GP Mill Site and it has a "No Trespassing warning" - people still climb down the rocks and kayak around to this site. Not me, as I don't have a wet suit and I don't kayak. You can contact Captain Cass as he offers ocean kayak tours to this site weather permitting. Then there is Slag Pile Cove, 1949-1967 and Glass Beach 1949-1967. Suddenly, I couldn't wait to get back to the beach and find the older site.

After getting the information about where to set up for the festival the next day, we headed off for lunch down at the wharf. A quick sandwich, then a stop at a bakery for cookies. At the motel, Shirley was still sick as a dog. Julia and Gary wanted to go up the coast to see the seals lying on rocks.

I wanted to go to the beach, but the tide was coming in and my head was pounding so I went to lie down. Took some aspirin, but couldn't relax, the beach was calling my name. Finally, I got up, coaxed Steve into going and stopped to get Shirley's husband Pat. We drove down, parked and walked the path to the end where land dropped off to rocky cliffs. Then we had to follow a narrow path to where we could drop down into the rocks. (the path was like a ledge of dirt over hanging a cliff!) Yikes, I was glad I was wearing tennis shoes. Finally, we made it down onto the sand - well, you really couldn't see much sand it was all sea glass. Sea glass in layers and layers. We'd hit the "mother lode." We stayed until it was dusk picking up sea glass. I found some beautiful pieces. When they finally dragged me away from the beach I thought I'd go collapse on the bed as I was still sick and coughing like a maniac, but when we got to the motel, my brother Marty was there. Marty had ridden his Harley down from Oregon to see us all. A family reunion, so of course, I stayed up and talked with my brother. We went to dinner and then all talked some more. Poor Shirley couldn't even leave the bed she was still so sick. Here's a shot of my brother Marty on the left, my husband Steve and my brother-in-law Pat. I think they were having a "happy hour." We made an early night of it as we had to set up our jewelry booth at eight in the morning at the Sea Glass Festival. Cass had told me when I'd talked to him that some of the vendors weren't coming - in fact, there would only be three of us. I went to bed worrying about the festival - would anyone come? Would we sell any jewelry? Would Shirley still be sick and not able to help me?

Find out in Part Three what happens.

Fort Bragg Sea Glass Festival - Part One

On May 26, a Wednesday night, we started our Fort Bragg adventure. We were going to a festival as vendors and we were going to find sea glas on the glass beach at Fort Bragg. At least, I hoped we'd find sea glass. Living in Palm Springs and hours from Fort Bragg, we decided to drive first to Los Angeles and leave our standard Poodle Dylan Thomas with Steve's parents and stay over night to get an early start Thursday morning.


Dylan Thomas was not happy the next morning when we got up at 4:30 and started packing up. He could tell he wasn't going when his food bag wasn't carried out to the car. He knows our routines - who says poodles aren't smart? I told him we'd be back, but he refused to look at me and curled up in the back bedroom to pout. I felt horrible as I do whenever we can't take him, but I knew there would be no place to keep him at the show.



Feeling like a guilty parent going off on a vacation, we headed north out of Los Angeles on I-5. My sister Julia and her husband Gary, who would be meeting us in Fort Bragg had given my husband Steve copious notes on how to get to Fort Bragg - something like take I-5 then cut over and go to San Francisco and then up the 101 highway to highway 20 which ends in Fort Bragg. I suggested to Steve that he study the route on Google maps, but he said he had it down. Yeah, right, how many women have heard that before. We moved right along. Not much traffic as the Memorial Day rush out of town hadn't started yet. I was excited to see my sister Julia and also my sister Shirley, my jewelry business partner, as she and her husband would be coming down from Medford, Oregon. A family reunion, sea glass hunting, and selling our sea glass jewelry at a Seaglass Festival what could be more fun?

Sea Glass Eye Glass Holder

Six hours of driving and we reach San Francisco - now here is where we needed a map. Instead of going straight, I think this is where the mistake was made, we veered to the right and suddenly we were in downtown San Francisco - 6th street, 8th street, Geary Street all whizzed by. Steve was grousing that driving in the city was his worst nightmare. It got tense in the car. I suggested we stop and ask someone. No, couldn't do that. Finally, at a red light, I got the attention of a cabbie and he pointed to the right and said something unintelligible and we were off again - still lost. Suddenly we were on Van Ness, then Lombard Street near the top where the zig zag street is located. Steve's jaw was clenched and he was muttering. I yelled head for the water. At Fisherman's wharf we found a sign pointing the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. As we crossed the bridge I tried pointing out Alcatraz and other sights, but Steve wasn't really into sight seeing at this point. Later, I'd joke that our detour had given him a quick tour of the city. We'd laugh later but at that moment, Steve had lost his sense of humor. Needless to say, I didn't mention the fact that we didn't bring a map.

Steve thought Fort Bragg was maybe an hour out of San Francisco. It isn't. We had four more hours to go. Beautiful scenery, especially when you turn onto highway 20 and drive 33 miles of curvy roads through the giant Redwood forest. We were both tired and cranky when Hwy 20 deadended in Fort Bragg. Oh, did I mention that I was fighting a sinus infection and chest cold?

We drive to the Travel Lodge where we have reservations. Julia and Gary come out to meet us. Julia is a little upset that the motel doesn't have a view. I tell her that it doesn't have a view because it is cheap and that's why I picked it. Like I said I was a bit cranky.

We settle in and head off for the famous glass beach. Yeah, I'm tired and sick, but, hey, I'm in Fort Bragg, California, home of the famous Glass Beach. Also, there is a negative tide happening and I'm sure we'll find better glass in the tide pools. Little did I know that there is sea glass everywhere. I'm not sure where Glass Beach is so I call Captain Cass who owns the Sea Glass museum in Fort Bragg. He isn't in, but my sister tells me that she knows where it is as she asked around before we got there. Also, the desk man at the motel gives us a MAP.



Our motel is situated right on Highway 1 that goes through the town. Two blocks north down on Elm Street is a Denny's restaurant. You make a left on Elm past Denny's, then head toward the water and come to stretch of grass and a path. Park where you can and take the path, which is what we did. We follow the path, carrying out bags, and it is really pretty. A short walk and we come to a fork in the road. Now what? Do we go right or go straight. The map doesn't show the fork in the road. We go right, but is it the way to Glass beach? Did we find the Glass beach? Find out in part two of our adventure.

Art Shows - Are We Making Money Yet?

As I've written in earlier posts we started doing some arts and crafts shows. Mainly, in our neck of the woods - meaning Palm Springs and out to San Diego. As total novices we didn't know how to get connected to the shows so I subscribed to the "Craftmaster News," - yes, you have to buy a subscription, nothing is free, but I digress. I'd read the shows listed by month and of course, noted the price of shows which has so far determined whether we go or not as we don't want to put out the big bucks for shows until we know what we are doing. One of the art shows that caught my attention was "Recycled Treasure," in Paso Robles, California. Reasons for applying to this particular show: 1. entry fee $40 (price is right), 2. sea glass is definitely recycled treasure and 3. the clincher - my sister Julia, who doesn't do jewelry lives in Solvang so we can stay with her, get in a visit, then do the show. Perfect. Well, not quite.

I applied to the show, sent in pictures of our sea glass jewelry. Got accepted, then learned that sister Julia and her husband were going to be in Key West, Florida that weekend. So we'd get in a dinner and stay at her place alone on the way back. Disappointing, but hey, I'd committed to do the show. We left Palm Springs in the morning drove to Los Angeles and left our black poodle, Dylan Thomas, with Steve's parents then headed up to Solvang. We had a great dinner with my sister, then drove another two hours up to Paso Robles. I'd booked us into Motel 6 - hey, I have to save money where I can. It was late when we arrived. We got lost and then finally found the motel. Now it was really late in the evening and we were exhausted. First lesson of the road trip - don't save money on a motel if you don't know where the motel is located. And you know of course, that Motel 6 is no longer $6 if it ever was - "They leave the light On," but that is about it for amenities. This particular motel was $79 a night with tax. Once in the room, I noticed that there was no coffee pot, so much for bringing tea and apple cider drinks, and no shampoo. I hadn't brought any as I'm used to hotels having shampoo. Anyway, I went up to the desk and asked for shampoo - nope, they don't provide it nor do they have any to buy. So bring your own shampoo if you stay in a Motel 6, (must be one of their cost cutting schemes). My husband suggested we go out and find an all night drug store, but we'd gotten lost once and I didn't want to get in the truck again. The room was clean and the shower hot so that was good. The bad was that the Paso Robles Motel 6 is situated right next to the freeway about two feet away. I could swear that if a semi-truck pulled over to rest it would be in our room. The freeway noise was loud and all night long. So be careful of where you book your stay before a show.

We got up early, found out how to get to the Paso Robles park, then headed off to Starbucks for coffee (remember there was not pot in the room). The Recycled Treasure Show was held in the downtown park. We found our allotted space, unpacked, then Steve went to park the pickup. Now, you'd think I'd be setting up while he is parking. No. I wait for him to return because our tent/gazebo is like stiff and hard to erect. I see other people putting up their tents and it looks easy. Believe me, for me it's not. I could maybe do it if I had all day - I'm not mechanical and I hate contraptions that can pinch fingers and crash on my head. I couldn't put up the tables either because instead of buying light weight folding tables at say WalMart, we were using our old banquet tables that weight about 500 pounds (a little exaggeration) and they too have folding legs that pinch fingers. Finally, Steve gets back and we start setting up our space. First, we erect the tent and I have to drag the sand bags over to secure to the legs so the darn thing doesn't fly away, then we do the tables, then the table cloths, then the display boards, then we have to take all the jewelry out of plastic bags and display it prettily on the tables. Oh and the earrings, hundreds of them, it seems like hundreds, have to all come out of tiny plastic bags and be placed on earring boards (something we've just designed and are trying out for the first time. These boards are all heavy too - made out of plywood and not the thin plywood.)

(Here is a picture of one of the earring boards. The board works, but I'm not in love with the way it looks so we're still on the hunt for an attractive way to display the earrings. ) When we are finally set up it is about 8:00 and the show doesn't start until 9, but people were walking in the park and started to stop by the booths so it worked out fine.

Angles of booth. Sorry, didn't get a straight on shot.

While we waited for customers, Steve started leaving the booth to get food. He was hungry. He started with a hot dog and then went back for tamales and sodas. Then later, he made a run to a nearby coffee shop for frozen coffee drinks and scones. This is another expense, you have to consider when doing shows. Either bring your lunch or plan on spending your profits at the food vendors who always seem to have the most customers of all. Hmmm, what does that tell you?

We made a few sales and that always makes me happy. One of the biggest sales was my sister Shirley's gray sea glass pendant necklace, but that money would go in her pocket not mine. She had split the $40 entry fee and I was in charge of selling at this event. Anyway, when I started to add up my expenses in my head, I knew we were in the red big time. First, we had gas expense, not cheap when your husband owns a 1 ton pickup truck, 2. dinner in Solvang with my sister at restaurant, 3. Motel 6 at $79 for the night, 4. Food vendors, - and I knew there were more expenses to come for the trip home. On the bright side, I saw my sister Julia which was a treat, we got to see a little bit of Paso Robles which is a really lovely little town with old time square and shops and we got a little more show experience.

Handmade Spark - SistersJewelryDesign

Handmade Spark - SistersJewelryDesign

Art Fairs, Craft Fairs, Sidewalk Sales

Picture is table set up. We're getting ready to go to a Kite Festival in Ocean Beach, outside of San Diego, where we will have a booth to sell our Sea Glass and Other jewelry. The festival is on Saturday March 6, 2010 at 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. - outside. The weather forecast is now calling for some rain showers - oh, great. We were juried into the show, meaning we had to send pictures of our work and hope they like it, then we were accepted and had to pay a nonrefundable fee and now it might rain - I'm quickly learning that outdoor venues have a major drawback - the weather.



As I've explained in earlier posts, we are new to making jewelry and marketing. We've had home jewelry parties and we've had one indoor art fair, an easy one as it was up the street and one side walk sale that no one attended, and a few sales on our internet site Etsy. How do we get our jewelry out there for people to see and buy was the next question we asked. Luckily, there are nice people who share and one such person told us to buy the magazine "Craftmaster News," which I did. It's not cheap, but it lists almost all the big events on the West Coast - 2,500 evens to be exact.



So now I have the magazine and I begin looking at all the events listed by months. I looked at the location - we can't be driving to Idaho, right, then I looked at the cost of the event. We're small and right now we can't afford to put out $500 or more for a weekend event. I circled the shows in our area and in Oregon because the other half of Sisters Jewelry Design is Shirley and she lives in Oregon (a long way for us to drive, but I can see my sister so it's worthwhile). And I have to look at the type of show - if it is an auto show or farm equipment show for example, I know that sea glass jewelry won't be a big seller.

Okay, so now I have three criteria for picking an event - location, type of show and cost of show. The first show I picked is the one mentioned above, The Kite Festival in Ocean Beach, San Diego. It is a two hour drive for us, but it is near the beach which is a great location for a sea glass jewelry artisan booth, and it is realitively inexpensive at $35 for a 10x10 space. I took some pictures of our jewelry and submitted to the fair committee and waited to hear if we got into the show. We are accepted - yeah.
Back to the garage and the table set up. We've got our first art fair show lined up, but now we have to get ready. I learn that a lot of art and craft shows have rules - for example - they want all the tables to be covered with the cloth falling to the ground, they want fire retardent table covers, and of course, they specifiy the size of the booth. Originally, when we had the home shows and the one show up the street, we just used a bolt of material from Wal-Mart and cut it to size. Now, we realize we have to have something that looks professional. My sister suggests we have the table covers made - that idea turned out to be quite expensive so I went on the internet and found these black covers made to order - not cheap, but fire retardent and cheaper than having a seamstress make them. (There are a lot of sites on the internet that sell table covers and booth setups - ranging in price from low to high. You can even have your company's name or logo on the skirt of the covers, of course that is not an inexpensive option.)


I forgot to tell you that for tables, we had a bunch of banquet table legs, so Steve went to Home Depot and bought plywood and made the tables to fit the 10x10 space. We saved on not having to buy professional convention tables that fold up, they can start at $100 and go up, but our tables have two drawbacks - heavy and you need a pickup to carry them to the site as they are long. Luckily, we have a pickup and Steve is strong so he's in charge of setting up the tables. I am thinking that if we are successful at selling our wares at art fairs we may eventually buy the fold up tables - for now, we're on a shoe string budget.


Okay, we've got the tables and the covers, the next big questions to solve is how do we display our jewelry. In the past, we'd just put everything on the table flat - easy, but not really attractive. My sister and I hashed over some ideas, nothing grabbed us. I decided to go to an art festival and see what other people were doing which led me to The Southwest Arts Festival in Indio, California at the Empire Polo Grounds. This fair charged a $10 admission fee and you had to pay for parking in a big dirt lot. Approaching the Polo Grounds, we could see a myriad of tents set up on the polo grounds grassy area.

The art fair included a myriad of artisans from rug weavers to fine artists, watercolorists, sculptors, leather bags and of course, jewelry artists. There was food and music and lots of people milling about. We mapped out our course of how we would see the booths - doing the full circle then the inner rows.
(I've learned there is actually an art to picking where your booth is located as psychologically, most people enter say a room and turn right, often not seeing the row down the center or the left side booth area - interesting, huh?)


There was a lot to see and as we went along I asked if I could take photos for my blog and some people graciously said yes, and some were paranoid that I might copy some of their work - not, but that was okay too. One of the artisans I really liked was a woman from Albuquerque, New Mexico - Karen Carlson - she creates with leather and her bags were simply stunning. Another artist, I really liked was Cameron Kaseberg from Redmond, Oregon, who does solvent transfer of images. He had wonderful images of crows and as I'm a big fan of crows I was drawn to his work. Note in the above two pictures, you can see the two different booths and the set up. We also saw several jewelry booths and their set ups.

Note the plastic boxes and the large photos of jewelry on back and side walls of booths. These last two pictures show very sophisticated booth layouts. Hopefully, as we do more shows and learn more about the business of selling our jewelry at shows, we'll develop more of a look for our booths, but right now time and money dictate a simpler look for us. We left the art fair with more knowledge and more questions in our mind. So much to learn and yet, I'm confident as we sally forth to do a few shows this summer we will answer a lot of questions we have on "how to."

As I write this and look at these pictures again, I realize that most of the pop-up tents are white.

We bought a pop-up for this weekend because of the forecast of showers, but they didn't have white. I hope our light brown one will be okay. I'll let you know in my next post which will be after the show coming up.

Blue Moon and A Learning Curve

Before I get started just had to share this shot of Palm Springs mountains with dusting of snow. We had a big rain storm last week and voila - snow. It is warm outside today if you're in the sun, but not warm enough to swim.

Took Dylan to the dog park where he ran around in the mud and had a great time after three days of rain and no walks. Here's a shot of Dylan lounging. And a shot of his cousin Bogey up in Oregon -

Bogey loves walking with Dylan when we are in Oregon. Black and white, the color of the dogs and my new long rope necklace of black and white beads and white sea glass which you can see more of on http://sistersjewelrydesign.etsy.com/ Here's a picture to entice you to go to Etsy -

As you have already discerned this blog post is all over the board. Where's the beginning, middle, and end? I don't know, I'm in a rambling mood and trying to figure things out as I bumble around the internet today.

I titled this post Blue Moon and Learning Curve. We'll get to Blue Moon in a bit, now I want to focus on Learning Curve. Lately, everything is a learning curve for me - the jewelry, the marketing, the internet marketing etc. Designing the jewelry is really fun. Ideas just pop in my head. But once the piece is made it has to have a price point? How much should I sell it for? I try to take in the scarcity of the sea glass, the components cost and also the time it takes to make the piece. A few days ago, I started listing the sea glass rope necklaces in my Etsy store at a low price. The first one, made by Shirley, sold within the hour . Wow, that was fast. It's a gorgeous necklace, but what made is sell so fast? Was the price point too low? Thinking about it more, I realized that there is a lot of sea glass in the necklace (hard to find, and time consuming to drill all the pieces), so I adjusted the price upwards to reflect the work and components of the piece. Naturally, I should have thought this out earlier before listing, but hey, it is all a learning curve. Here is a shot of the necklace that sold so fast -

It's very pretty and can be worn in one long strand or looped over the head for a double strand look. We have other sea glass ropes on our Etsy site.

After I adjusted the prices in my Etsy store, I went on Twitter and posted a few tweets. I've been gathering followers and finding people to follow. Sometimes, I click on a person's tweet and read their tweets and even go to their websites. If I do go to the website, I'll go back to Twitter and make a comment to that specific person. Everyone is tweeting and most are tweeting about their products or businesses. I'm wondering what percentage of people on Twitter actually go and look at my store or blog? Is it worthwhile to be on Twitter? Is tweeting helping my jewelry business? All unanswered questions that bounce around in my brain. And the biggest question of all is - Am I even tweeting correctly to really interest others to stop at my store or blog?

And I'm on facebook http://www.facebook.com/sbrin1 and again, is this social networking site reaching anyone out there or is it just another place to go and post. Do people see my Facebook page? Do they click on my Etsy logo from Facebook? Are we really all connected? Again, I feel that I don't use my Facebook correctly or even know how it all works, yet I'm on there posting and sharing like crazy. Again, the learning curve comes into play. Is it for naught? I don't know.

I'm even on several nings like Handmade Artist Hangout and Seaglasslovers.com. I finally figured out if you're in one ning you have the same password for all of them! Geez, what I don't know could fill a book. It's all trial and error with me. I'm like a character in Alice in Wonderland stumbling around the ether world - bumping into this and that.

I could go on and on about the learning curve with topics like Art Fairs and Shows - what is needed, how do you get in, what kind of display do you need and so on. But I want to get to the Blue Moon part of the title - Blue Moon is the title of one of my favortie songs, I especially like how 10,000 Maniacs sing it and it is the name for my latest long rope necklace just listed in my Etsy shop

.

Any suggestions or help on learning my way around the social networking sites, please email me or comment here on the blog. I need all the help I can get. In the meantime, please check out my Etsy site at http://sistersjewelrydesign.etsy.com/ P.S. I should have labeled this post All Over The Place, but I won't because it is too hard to redo this darn blog and get it to look right - LOL.

Quartzsite - Rock and Gem Show

We just spent two days in Quartzsite, Arizona - a dusty, flat place that has for most of the year a population of about 200 people, but in January of each year it becomes the third largest city in Arizona. January is when vendors from all over the world descend on Quartzsite to sell their wares which range from beads to bananas. There are three venues, one right in Quartzsite on the main street behind a huge metal building called Gem World, then if you go down the street and cross over the over pass you'll find two more venues which are so big all you see are tents for miles. The venue we went to was called Tyson Wells. We were looking for beads and jewels to use with our sea glass for necklaces and bracelets. There were so many bead sellers our heads were on swivels - looking, looking, looking.


There were tents and awnings and booths and some metal buildings for the big sellers. There were people selling giant slabs of rocks, crystals, marble. There were tool sellers, fashions, roots, nuts, silk, tribal treasures, jewelry, opals, paintings and more. And in the middle of all the aisles, there were food vendors selling all those greasy and inviting foods with thousands of calories like corn dogs, home made potato chips, carmel corn, burgers, lemonades, and everything fried you can imagine. We had hot dogs and fried onion rings and French fries and a stomach about 20 minutes later. When we went back the second day, we had sandwiches from a deli before hitting the vendor area. Here's Steve with a corn dog for breakfast that first day. Later, he ate a burger. What can I say? Men are always hungry.

The venue we went to was called Tyson Wells and they have had this event for 32 years at Quartzsite. Some of the events there are as follows, just in case you want to venture over there - Rock and Gem Show - January 1-10; Sell-A-Rama - January 15-24; Art & Craft Fair - January 29-February 7, 2010. If you want to visit or even sell next year you can contact the promoters at tysonwells@tds.net.

Across the highway is another venue called Rice. We didn't get over there. Shoot, two days and we didn't even see all of Tyson Wells. It was fun and exhausting and dusty. Quartzsite is the desert so it is dusty and in this area very stark. We found wonderful beads, crystals, turquoise, glass beads and more so the two day trips were a success. A two hour drive from Palm Springs so another two hours to get back home each day which was tiring. You're probably thinking why not stay over night? There is no place to stay in Quartzsite unless you have a tent or RV. We saw hundreds of trailers, rvs, tents and camping sites all full of people. But we don't camp or trailer so that's why we did the drive each day. Just a few of the beads we picked up. If you work with beads and semi-precious stones, you'll want to go to the event next year - it truly is amazing. And the prices are so low compared to sites on the internet or those large catalogue companies. Great deals and savings.

This last shot is of us - two sisters tired yet still smiling at the end of the day shopping in Quartzsite.

We love making sea glass jewelry and finding natural stones and crystals and beads to use in our necklaces, bracelets and earrings. Here are a few shots of pieces we've created with some of our finds.

Please visit our website on Etsy to purchase Sea Glass jewelry hand made by Sisters Jewelry Design - http://sistersjewelrydesign.etsy.com/