[Caitlin]

General Types of Brick and Mortar Bead Stores- Local Sources for Craft Pearls.

Do you want to learn to restring your own pearls? Replace a lost or broken clasp? Take a strand of pearls apart and reuse them? Replace a peeled akoya pearl? Glue a pearl back in place? Then you need a bead store.

I got a PM from a member asking for more info and links on beading and crafts. Let’s put them in this thread. There are several types of local bead stores in your town. I will discuss them in this post. Another post will be added for online stores. Or you start one.

I am thinking back over the beads I have bought and where I bought them and I want to take this opportunity to both reminisce about and review some of the bead stores I have known. I started beading by making necklaces, but I soon moved to making circular medallions and then free-form patterns sewn on leather for barrettes and purses. I also made a few styles of earrings. I mastered peyote stitch with a number of projects, but do not really have a great gift for that stitch, but I just kept beading through the years.

The first store on any list for me is Yone’ in North Beach in San Francisco. I bought the ingredients (seed beads and monofilament line(!)) for my first string of “love beads” there in 1966. Yone’ is the reason I fell in love with beads. I saw my first Aurora Borealis beads there and was a goner, forever. I also got my first abalone shells beads there. Yone’ is still there and hasn’t changed one bit, (not even the layers of dust) though the owner has. Many of the same beads I made friends with in 1966 are still there (and probably still have my drool on them). And many other vintage and unusual beads you will never find anywhere else. Yone’ is not cheap. The store itself is something out of Harry Potter. You gotta see it to believe it.

I always check out the second hand stores and the bead stores whenever I go to a town for a visit. In Los Angeles, I once stopped at Berger Speciality Co, maybe 73’ or ‘74. I have no idea if it is still there, but I got some of the best aurora borealis (ab) seed beads at the cheapest prices I ever saw there. I used to order over the phone from them after that. I got every color bead in ab from them. Maybe 40-50 varieties total. (I just stopped typing and went and looked and found hanks with original price tags on them from Berger’s 30 years ago. I decided to take a picture of it.)

I went to New York City for a few hours I 1981 and managed to fit in a visit to about 3 bead stores. I can’t remember their names or addresses right now- 36th -39th St possibly? They were in the garment district. Overwhelming numbers of beads stacked up the walls. I remember some flamboyant beads-great for costumes. These stores were/are in a similar style to Yone”-time hasn’t touched them. I would love to hear a current report.

In the 70’s my hubby and kids and I all moved back to my childhood hometown, Tucson.
Tucson had 2 classic bead stores at the time, both still in business, Jay’s Indian Arts and Piney Hollow.

Jay’s Indian Arts is a classic trading post style bead store that has been in Tucson since before the name became politically incorrect. It’s currently at Broadway and Swan. Jay’s sells a lot of finished work and jewelry by First Nations artists in the front and the supplies to make stuff in the back. They have Pow Wow accoutrements and that includes a large selection of seed beads, pony beads, stone beads, and many kinds of thread and findings, books, tools. Jay’s is the first place I saw Chinese FW pearls- the little rice crispie ones, dyed pretty shades of silver, bronze. I immediately added them to my supplies- after all they had that AB glow I so love! With a resale number, the price goes to half at Jay’s. Great store. No pretensions, just good stuff, cheap.

Piney Hollow was and still is on 4th Avenue. It always had a better selection of the Czech glass cut beads than Jay’s (whose cut seed beads came from Japan). They had the first bead classes in Tucson and had a bevy of pretty maidens beading up a storm at any given time. They are much quieter now and really don’t have much to offer except personal attention and basic cut beads and a very nice museum quality display of beadwork and beads. The people at Piney Hollow were always the nicest and the most supportive to beaders.

One other old-time store in Tucson that is useful for beaders is Starr Gems on Drachman near Oracle. This is a store for jewelers, but they sell to anyone. Best place for good tools and many kinds of SS findings. They have some Thai Silver findings and beads right now at best prices

Two other bead stores have won Piney Hollow’s former premiere place in Tucson.
The first new guy in town was Beaucoup Conge’ located on Fort. Lowell near Stone.
Their major supplier is Westrim Beads- same folks who supply Michael’s (a craft store chain) and Ben Franklin’s. They have a lot more beads, findings, classes, and attitude, than anyone else in town and a $50 minimum for wholesale, which is still higher prices than many an online bead store. Their CFWP are limited.

Across town is a bead store I like, though I have not patronized it much. Strung Out On Beads at Broadway and Craycroft. They have great CFW pearls and gemstones at retail prices- the same stuff I like to buy at the gem shows, so I know they are there if I need them. This is the store to get a single akoya to match a peeled one on your strand. Also offering classes.

Now look around your town and check out the bead stores. They will probably fall into one of the above categories, each useful for a different reason. I live outside of town in a rural area so it is often easier for me to buy online. I have some favorite sources there too. I'll be back with some of that.

[knotty panda]

I was cruising one of Valeria's many a delight-filled recent posts and she had a link for Daniel Lopacki which I followed. At the end of the link was this little note which details his method for strand graduation and stringing.


"STRINGING BEADS When I finish all of my beads, whether they are for one strand or twenty, the first thing I do is visually separate them into six or eight piles. I arrange them in groups from the smallest to the largest.

Starting with the beads in the largest group I use the dial caliper to measure the beads as I place them flat on a table top: I put the largest bead in the center of the strand, then place the next smaller bead to the right side, the next smaller bead to the left and so on until I have placed all of the beads in their proper order.

Once I have done this I then string the beads onto a good bead cord (I use saddle stitching thread). Starting with the smallest bead on one end, I string them up in order, tie the ends off and have a prefectly tapered strand of finished beads.

Happy bead making ! If I have inspired you to make a bead or a strand of beads and you would like to send a photograph of your beads, please do.

You can also email an image, please limit the image size to less than 500k.

Daniel Lopacki Co.
P.O. Box 144
Cliff, N.M. 88028

©2000/2006 This WebSite & All Of Its Pages Are Copyrighted By DLC & Daniel Lopacki... And the Owners of any Proprietary Logos Or Graphics"

Saddle stitching thread ... I would have NEVER! But you know I'm going to look for some now! Here's a pic of some wonderful jelly opals. Unfortunately the pic is not detailed enough to show the clasp finishing treatments.