Venice 2011

"Hey, David! Look over there!"



Just kidding, that's not a photo of us standing in the middle of the water. Even with my wooden platform Steve Maddens I can't walk on water...yet.



Venice... it's still awesome. Even in the rain. Which it did for 38 of the 44 hours we were there.

That's ok, it doesn't rain in the bead shops.

Remember Alessandro?




He makes most of the beads that I use in my jewelry.



This year I got to design my own beads. It was an almost paralyzing experience.

I know, it should have been fun beyond recognition but I, well, I started to panic. Some of you may know from personal experience, or heard me talk about my lack of decisiveness. Only my mom can go shoe shopping with me because she has the patience of a saint/life time teacher (same thing) and, well, she's my mom. And then there is junk food shopping when I'm in the States. It really does me in. I stand there in the soda and the snack food aisles knowing that I have only so many days to fill my body with fizzy drink varieties and fried corn and potato products. I can't have them all in all their wonderful combinations, so I have to decide. Root beer and cheese popcorn? Vanilla soda and sea salt potato chips (don't knock it 'til you've tried it)? Cream soda and sour cream and onion pretzels? Or do I stick with the classics, cherry 7-up and nacho Doritos? Whoa, I'm losing my breath just thinking about it. EXACTLY how it was with Alessandro.

"What color?" (there are about 1 million)
"Crystal or opaque?"
"And what color for the accents?" (same 1 million)
"Crystal or opaque?"
"What shape?" (any you can think of...about 100 million)
"What size?" (well, infinite possibilities here)
"Acid washed or polished?"

Totally paralyzed by choices. Finally, David gently said to me, "honey, decide. Alessandro needs to go to lunch."

I guess it was the thought of holding an Italian back from a meal, but I did make some decisions. We'll see how I did when my beads arrive in a couple weeks. If you never hear me mention these beads again, just imagine that I'm eating some plain chips drinking a diet coke, drowning the sorrows of my poor decisions.

We stayed, as usual on the island of Murano. Here are a couple views from the balcony of our room.





We also caught up with the artisan Giovanni, who I get a lot of stuff from.



He did a demo for us to do a photo shoot. Here's the process, if you've never seen it...















Yeah, ok. I left a few photos out of the process. Anyway, you get the idea.

Then we found a new (to us) group who makes these amazing pendants



Whoa.

We also ate and drank a little





Not such a bad way to spend 44 hours out of the rain.