Back to School Beading

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Kids: run!

Parents: rejoice!

It’s that time of the year again, when the mumbles and grumbles of school aged children can be heard miles around as they anticipate their march through the sleet and snow away from the warm embrace of summer and straight into the cold harsh grasps of the new school year…at least that’s how it probably seems to students.

Whether you’re for or against it, the school year is just about to start up again, and Brazos Collection knows that you’re just itchin’ to flex your beading muscles! Why not fortify a student you know with some home made beading projects?

We know that some students aren’t going to be flaunting their sparkling bracelets made of cracked glass beads, or magnesite beads, but who knows, maybe your younger ones will! You can send some first day gifts for teachers, like a beaded tissue box holder, or maybe even a custom beaded bookmark. We live in Texas, and like they say, everything is bigger here! Why not make it a start of the school year to remember?

If you have some students starting their first day of high school, or middle school, or even elementary school, you could ease their nervousness by beading them something special and from the heart to keep them calm and collected during their initial foray into the new and exciting years of school.

Whatever situation you’re in, there is always a way to apply your beading skills for the greater good. Whether it’s sending a quick gift to a teacher, or giving a student a cool accessory to show off to their friends, you can’t go wrong by flexing your beading prowess and making a positive statement at the same time.

So get to it, and bead on!

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Behind The Scenes

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
We thought you might be curious as to how a website looks like behind the scenes. There is a lot to a website that you don’t really think about until your knee deep in beads and baskets.  I mean, where are all those beads anyway?  The first step in the process is to take the pictures. This sounds easy but have you ever taken a picture of something and when you put it on your computer, it’s too dark. Well, we used to have “YouTube” sales and that was the #1 complaint, “The picture is too dark, I can’t tell what the beads look like.” In all seriousness I understand, if your going to spend the money on it, you want the picture to look like what it LOOKS LIKE!  That is one of the most frustrating things, I bought a book from Amazon the other day and when it came in it was a Mini-book that was no bigger than my phone! Talk about mad, $15.00 on a “summary mini-book”, you bet I was mad. That is why we started taking all of our photos in this photo tent and putting the dimensions in the description, that way there is no distraction from the woodgrain table or misunderstanding of the size of the bead.
This is where we take the pictures

  While you take the pictures you also have to make these identification cards, each with a number that corresponds with the product number on the website. Put one thing in the wrong spot and nobody can find it later, or name the product wrong and absolutely nothing will match up. Needless to say, there are a lot of details involved in uploading and taking care of a website. Especially when you have 1,500 items and are running out of room. We now have baskets all over the floor!

Baskets of beads up to our eyeballs!

So this is your Brazos Web-crew: Starting from left to right; Isela, Jessica, Adrian, Vicky, Judy, & J.T.
We have a lot fun in between the headaches and plan to keep on building the website with more great items.
The web crew

If you have any specific products that you would like to see more of, or maybe somethings we have never had before, just let us know and we will try to accommodate your wishes. Also, if you have any helpful ideas to make your online shopping a better experience then please let us know.  We want to make this your favorite bead shop no matter where you are.

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World Cup, way back, and way hungry.

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Check out this cool bead related story:

http://www.livescience.com/history/090413-georgia-beads.html

In solidarity with Spain winning the World Cup, today’s post combines a little Spanish history with one of our (if not the) favorite things to blog about: beads! About 70,000 ancient beads were discovered off of the coast of Georgia on April 13th, 2009.

What would you do with 70,000 beads? We’re sure your mind is racing just at the thought of all those beads. Images of fashion jewelry, craft projects, jade, cracked glass, and clay beads are probably dancing through your thoughts at this very moment…but have you ever thought of broadening your beading horizons? Have you ever thought of burying yourself with your beads? The Spanish did! Apparently only 2,000 of the beads were found in the Spanish mission, and the rest of the beads were excavated from the cemetery. The people of higher status tended to have more beads buried with them than others. Those beads must have been absolutely gorgeous and simply to die for! While this was the case for Spanish missionaries most of the time, it was sometimes quite the opposite. These missionaries didn’t live to bead, but they sure did bead to live!

According to the article, “St. Catherines was a frontier mission, but it also was a bread basket for the east-coast Spanish empire,” said Pendleton. “The missionaries at St. Augustine were always starving — you can read this in the letters written at the time — because that area was too humid and hot for corn to grow easily. St. Catherines was able to trade corn for beads.”

That’s right, beading to live. While that’s not too far off a concept for us (thanks, loyal customers!), it’s probably not what people think when they think of beading. It’s true that beading is mostly recognized as a hobby and artful expression these days, but back then people used beads as currency for trading, and sometimes it was there only means of survival.

Beads have ran the gamut in their functions from art, to social status indicators, to currency, and back to art again. While you might not elect to have yourself buried alongside a myriad of cracked glass beads, jade beads, magnesite beads, or crystal beads, it was a popular decision back in the days of the old Spanish missions, apparently.

So as you continue on your week, think about the different ways in which beads have been used throughout history. It’ll help add to your already deep appreciation for these wonderful little pieces of art that give life to our thoughts and prove a gorgeous medium for our creativity.

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