Beads and more beads!

Dennis and I went to Ikea a little while ago and ended up bying an inexpensive, huge tub of Hama beads. You remember Hama beads, right? Those little plastic cylinders you put on a special little pegboard in pretty patterns. Then hopefully you get to iron them together before something terrible happens to it and you have to start over again. It's tedious and actually pretty hard to do, it's a wonder kids like them so much. I'm not yet convinced Dennis has the patience for them, but I ended up finding lots of inspiration at an awesome blog called Sprite Stitch. I love old school video games and have been wanting to incorporate them into my crafting for a long time. So I decided to make a set of coasters featuring the mushrooms from Super Mario Brothers!

They'll be up in the etsy shop soon. I want to do some with Final Fantasy characters on them and some PacMan ones too. In other news, I've got a bunch of new kinds of beautiful vintage beads for sale in The Slug. My personal favorites are some I found at an antique store in Alameda:

Unfortunately I don't have many of them, I want more so I can make a big strechy bracelet for myself. I hear tell there may be some floating around the flea market next month, so keep your fingers crossed! They remind me of toadstool mushrooms, a theme I've been really into lately. Hopefully soon I'll have some mushroom-themed goodness in my etsy shop as well.