The Lima Beads Blog News, Contests, Fun & More

This week, we’re adding 70 selections in Lillypilly metal and over 50 selections in hemp. Also, we found some more African paper beads, but they’re a special buy, so act fast if you want some!

Lillypilly

I must say that Ali and Cathy went a little crazy on our latest shipment from Lillypilly. Today we’re adding a bunch and it’s only 1/2 of the shipment! If you’re not familiar with Lillypilly sheet metal, you have to check it out. The new colors and patterns are fantastic. They offer full lines of both anodized aluminum and copper sheets and discs in a variety of colors and funky patterns. Some of the sheets are so thin, you can cut them into any shape you’d like. There is a huge variety of uses for these sheets. See all of the new Lillypilly now.

Special Buy: African Beads

We found more! Last year, we got our hands on these for the first time and they sold out in record time. We found more quantity this time, but there still aren’t many, so you can find them in the special buy section. That means — when they’re gone, they’re gone! There’s a great story behind paper beads too — learn more.

Hemp

We’ve just added quite a bit of hemp to the shop. There are some great colors and even new packaging. You can buy packages that have 2 small spools, which saves you from having to purchase the large spools if you don’t need so much. See it all now.

We have three product additions this week: Ezel Findings, a new raku artist, and some sparkly high quality gemstone beads.

Beautiful Sparkly Gemstones

We just received a shipment of India-cut gemstone beads. Most of these are hand-cut from high quality material with great color. I think the golden pyrite is my favorite addition — here are 5 sparkly little shapes! We’ve also added hessonite, labradorite, pink opal, tanzanite, tourmaline, and more. The labradorite freeform slab is the nicest labradorite we’ve ever had in the shop — it glows. See all of the gemstone bead additions now.

New Ezel Findings

Today, we’re expanding our line of Ezel Findings. The additions are full of links, pendants, and bead caps. Ezel Findings manufactures high quality metal components. They are always releasing innovative new designs in fantastic metal tones. See all of the additions.

Amy Mealey Raku Beads

We’ve been looking for a great raku artist for almost 2 years. We were pleased to find Amy. She has intricate pieces as well as simple accent pieces. Amy created pottery for 10 years before moving into raku. If you’re not familiar with raku beads, you have to check them out. The colors and textures are so beautiful!

Here it is on an iPad

Over the last few months, we’ve been hearing a lot of people asking us to let them shop the Big Green Bead Machine on their iPads, smartphones, and computers that don’t have Flash installed. Well, a couple of weeks ago, we did just that.

One of the goals of our new website was to make sure that everything looks and works on mobile devices just as well as it does on our desktops and laptops. Now that we’ve updated the Big Green Bead Machine, every product is shoppable, every video is viewable and every page is accessible from your smartphone or tablet.

How Lima’s Big Green Bead Machine Works

For those of you who prefer to think of what we do as “magic” and don’t really care exactly how this stuff really works, you can tune out now.

When we first developed the Big Green Bead Machine back in February of 2008, the iPhone was just over a year old and nobody had ever heard of an iPad. Back then, we had to use a technology called Flash to build  interactive features on our site. Now that iPad and smartphone usage is on the rise, Flash is one of those things (along with mice) that is being left behind in what Steve Jobs called the “Post-PC Era.”

Most of the new web browsers out today allow you to build things that are pretty and interactive without the use of Flash. In fact, even Adobe, who owns the Flash technology, has decided to move away from it in lieu of these new browser technologies.

Now that we’ve removed the Big Green Bead Machine’s dependency on Flash, you can use it just about anywhere.

Over the last two years, look at how much mobile web browsing has grown! In March 2012, 13% of all visitors to our website were using a mobile device. Last March, it was 5% and March of 2010 was 1%. What do you think these numbers will look like in 3 years?

We hope you like this update to the Bead Machine. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment!

It’s a huge week today at Lima Beads. Did you expect us to say something different? Haha. In all seriousness, we have 160 new products including designer Czech Glass, gemstones, and new freshwater pearls.

New Czech Glass

Our line of designer Czech Glass has been so popular that we couldn’t help from expanding it. Back on March 15, we added about 100 shapes. And today, we’re adding another hundred. They’re absolutely awesome! We have some new shapes, too… my favorite is the ammonite fossil. There are also some tiny little teardrops, daisies, ovals, and even a few owls. Check out all the new Czech!

Gemstone Bead Additions

We added a smorgasbord of gemstone shapes & sizes to the site today. There are 30 total, and they range from small rounds to big drops in a variety of stones. Many of the stones bring back the memories from almost 10 years ago when we first started selling gemstones online–mookaite, bronzite, carnelian, tiger eye, and more. There’s also a little titanium druzy nugget that caught our eye–love it! Check out the pics for all the new gemstones.

New Freshwater Pearls

It’s been a while since we’ve been able to tell you that we added over 20 freshwater pearls. So we’re happy to do it today! The freshwater pearl additions include 8 pearly white shapes, a few peacock shapes, and some brand new colors.

Today, we’d like to announce a new feature on our website that we think will make it easier to stay on top of everything that’s going on at Lima Beads. We’re calling it What’s Fresh and you can find it by clicking the “Fresh” option at the top of the website. We really hope you like it.

What’s the big deal?

I’ll be very honest with you all. With the hundreds of Fresh Picks, design ideas, tips & techniques, new products, restocks, and more that happen here every month, it’s really hard for us to keep track of it all. So we started thinking of ways to combine it all into one easy view, organized by date. We’re thrilled with the results.

When we were creating this page, one thing was abundantly clear: we have our customers to thank for so much of what goes on around here. We’re grateful for everyone’s willingness to share their design ideas, Fresh Picks, comments, pictures, and more. We wouldn’t be here without you.

Your feedback is important to us!

As always, we would love your feedback on the new What’s Fresh page. You can leave your comments below!

TOHO 11/0 Round Seed Beads

We’re continuing to grow our TOHO seed bead selection, and we’ve got almost a hundred new 11/0 rounds for you to see. There are tons of bright colors and fun finishes. Check out all the pics.

New Gemstones

We have some new brightly-colored agate, druzy pieces, cool drops & some old favorites. See all the new additions.

Glass Garden Additions

Now if these aren’t the coolest embellishments, I don’t know what are! These bottle caps and glass pieces from Glass Garden remind me of summer–and are extra cool because they’re recycled materials. See if you recognize anything from the list of additions. I knew a few, but didn’t recognize them all!

Well, it’s on from one thing (Easter Egg Hunt) and onto the next (Spring Rain Contest Wrap-up). The winners have been selected… and you’ll find the results below.

The Winners

There were 50 Spring Rain designs submitted, racking up over 700 “Add to Favorites!” Based on the number of favorites and activity, here are the three winners of the Vintaj Spring Rain contest:

First Place: Spring Rain – Dance in the Rain by JustImagine – Val

From the designer:

“Made from the Spring Rain Necklace Kit. I did a little play on words and made my own “Spring(s)” for this design. This was so much fun!”

This was by far your favorite design in the contest. Not only were there a ton of favorites, JustImagine – Val also received a lot of praise in the comments. Here are a few comments:

“Very beautiful and creative. A one of a kind piece.” – R Grizzuto

“Absolutely stunning! The “springs” are a wonderful detail! I love the colors!” – Violet D

This is such a beautiful piece and so creative. I would love one just like it. And the photos to display it were very unique. Good luck, Val!

Second Place: Raindrops & Posies by D Beach

From the designer:

“The thing that I love most about Spring rains, is how the lingering raindrops seem to bring out the beauty and color of the flowers. I wanted to create a bracelet that combined the beauty of raindrops and flowers.”

Designer D Beach mentioned in her comments that this was the first time she entered a piece into a contest! So much for practice makes perfect…

Third Place: It’s Raining, It’s Pouring! by Bucci Handmade Jewelry

From the designer:

“I made this piece for the Vintaj Spring Rain contest. I made dangles of all the glass and pearl beads and hung them from some Arte Metal chain. The simple S-hook clasp allows you to adjust the length of the necklace to suit your desire.”

The pearl and glass drops in this necklace are the perfect metaphor for the “Spring Rain” theme. It’s great to see how far super-creative people like Bucci Handmade Jewelry can push the limits of a basic kit.

All of our winners will be contacted shortly with their gift certificate codes. Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest, and we want to give a special thanks to Vintaj. This was our first time working this closely with them, and we hope that you had as much fun as we did! We’re looking forward to working with them again in the future.

We have 3 big product additions this week: Czech glass 2 hole tile beads, incredible Patricia Healey copper, and a huge expansion of our Soft Flex line.

Czech 2 Hole Tile Beads

We’ve added about 50 colors of these 6mm tiles. 2 hole tile beads have been very popular lately. Because they’re flat and square, they’re perfect for joining two strands together. They can also be stitched together on a loom or by using a variety of different stitches. The possibilities are endless!

Patricia Healey Spring Collection

Patricia has really outdone herself this time. We’re in love with this collection of beads, charms, pendants, findings, and even CHAIN. It’s all in her ultra colorful copper finish and the designs are so much fun. If you like the look, shop the entire line of Patricia Healey copper.

Soft Flex Expansion

We’ve added about 40 new items to our Soft Flex line. You’ll find lots of fun colors and finishes. Many of the new styles are meant to match gemstone colors. These include: tanzanite, red jasper, turquoise, emerald, and more. They’re beautiful.

Vintaj called us early this year and asked us to be their April online bead partner. They wrote a nice blog post about us and posted some photos of Ali’s work. You can see it here:

Spring Rain Online Bead Partner – Lima Beads

This was exciting! We’re really enjoyed working with Vintaj on the Spring Rain promotion this month. They’re a talented group of people!

The 2012 Easter Egg Hunt was a crazy ride! 4,338 people hunted for eggs and every egg was found at least once this year. I’d like to announce the winners and address some of the concerns from this year’s hunt.

The Winners

First of all, congrats to the winners of the 3 $25 “Golden Egg” gift certificates! Here are the winners:

• GypsyMom
• Jeanne S
• B Miller

If you’re one of the three winners above, we’ll be sending you a gift certificate by e-mail. Congratulations!

Now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The winner of the $250 Lima Beads gift certificate is… J Pilkington! She found a total of 77 eggs, which put her in 9th place on the leaderboard with a chance to win the big prize. You can watch the video of how we picked her name on Facebook. Congratulations, J Pilkington!

The Second Prize is a $100 Gift Certificate, awarded to Snowy, who was in an 8-way tie for 65th on the leaderboard with 55 eggs found.

Congratulations to you both! We’ll contact you directly with your prize.

The Golden Eggs

We never imagined how quickly the golden eggs would be found this year. We thought the hiding places were super hard! Here’s a picture of where the three golden eggs were hidden:

The pictures above show the golden eggs on the following pages: the 12mm Winter Shell Pearl Mix, a search for “golden egg”, and on the “Add to Fresh Pick” screen for the Abalone 1″ Silk Ribbon. Congrats to those who found the golden eggs first. We’ll contact you directly about your prize.

The Hardest Hunt Yet…

It’s been widely publicized that the hunt was more difficult this year than last year. We agree! We thought it would be a nice surprise to launch a new web site for the hunt, but doing so made the eggs difficult to find. We weren’t able to gauge how good our hiding places would be because we hadn’t had a chance to spend much time on the new site. As it turns out, they were very good hiding places. We’re sorry it was so difficult. We hope that the extra prize helped and YES, it’ll be easier next year

Shipping Fees

Some people expressed displeasure with the shipping fees. Our goal is to make the Easter Egg Hunt as cool as possible, and we wish we could ship the prizes for free–but we just can’t afford to. We always put a statement in the rules about how normal shipping rates apply to set expectations, but some people were still disappointed–and we want you to know that we totally understand. We know it’s not the cheapest thing out there (in fact, it costs us MORE than the $4.95 we charge you). Even though it’s a little more expensive, we keep using USPS Priority Mail because it’s fast and trackable. It wasn’t the most popular choice, but rest assured that we are never out to make money on shipping fees.

Thanks Again!

Even though it was hard, we hope that everyone had fun finding those blasted eggs. We’re turning our attention to the rest of 2012 now, and we have some awesome things in store. One thing is for sure… we think we have the best customers on the planet, and we’ll continue to try as hard as we can to put together fun & crazy promotions for everyone to enjoy. Thanks again for making this the most exciting week of the year for us, and keep your eyes on the blog for more fun in the future.

There’s a bunch of crystal and shell pearls that just got added to the special buy section. Special buys happen at Lima Beads for a number of reasons. In this case, some of the items in a shipment didn’t match the colors of our previous stock. We’re very picky about the color consistency of our crystal and shell pearls. So, if it arrives here and doesn’t match perfectly with the color we’ve sold you before, we won’t sell it as the same color — we make it a special buy. If you like the colors you see, you can pick them up at a discount, but you may never be able to get them from us again. When they’re gone – they’re gone! See all special buys now.

The 2012 Easter egg hunt is here! This is the fourth annual hunt! If this will be your first Lima Beads Easter Egg Hunt, it’s simple. We’ve hidden Easter eggs (a lot of Easter eggs) on our web site. Find them and win beads, supplies, coupons and even gift certificates.

This year’s hunt is very similar to last year’s with two exceptions:

1. We’ve tried to make the hunt a bit easier by not hiding eggs in any blog posts, designs or fresh picks that were created before 2012. So, you don’t need to go digging through thousands of blog posts, fresh picks and designs…
2. Second, there’s a BIG twist this year. We’ve just launched a completely new web site. We’ve been working day and night to get it ready for the hunt, which is why the hunt launched a few days later than normal We hope you love it. We set out to make it as easy as possible to find what you’re looking for… Unless you’re looking for eggs. We hid those really well!

100 Easter Eggs

That’s right, there are 100 eggs hidden on the web site RIGHT NOW (plus an additional 3 special GOLDEN eggs). They’re scattered all over the Lima Beads web site. The only pages where you won’t find eggs is on blog posts, designs or fresh picks that were created before 2012. As you find eggs, you’ll see this status bar:

We don’t want anyone to go crazy, so we should tell you up front: finding all the Easter eggs will be difficult. Some of them are very well hidden. It’s not really about finding ALL of the eggs this year, it’s about finding the most and getting to the top of the leaderboard!

The Leaderboard

Just like last year, there’s a leaderboard that shows the top 100 hunters. See the Leaderboard.

Prizes

The more eggs you find, the more prizes you get. When you reach 10, 25, 35, 50, and 75 eggs a new set of prizes will be unlocked. You can choose from a variety of FREE beads and even a collection of coupons worth 15% – 20% off various items. There are also prizes associated with the Leaderboard. At the end of the Easter Egg Hunt, the top 10 people on the leaderboard will be entered to win The Grand Prize, a $250 Lima Beads Gift Certificate. Everyone else on the leaderboard will be entered to win second prize, a $100 Lima Beads gift certificate. See all the prizes.

The Golden Eggs

This year, we’re also hiding 3 special golden eggs (in addition to the 100 eggs, making a grand total of 103)… If you’re the very first one to find a golden egg, you’ll win a $25 Gift Certificate to our store! If the same person finds multiple golden eggs, that lucky beader will win one $25 gift certificate for each golden egg they find. Yowza! The golden eggs don’t count towards your leaderboard total, and you can keep an eye on who’s found the golden eggs on the leaderboard.

Rules

• The contest ends at 11:59pm on April 8, 2012 (Easter). This means you need to make sure and do the following by this time:
  • Collect all the eggs you can find.
  • If you unlocked any prizes, add them to your shopping bag and place your order—all prizes (except the discount code explained below) must be redeemed by the end of the contest. Normal shipping rates will apply.
  • If you unlocked the coupon prize, write down your coupon code (you can use it any time until the end of 2012)
  • Watch the blog for an announcement about the $250 drawing
• There are a total of 100 Easter eggs plus an additional 3 “golden” eggs that we’ve hidden for you to collect. Those are the only ones that count toward the prizes, and you must click on them to collect them. You might see some picture of eggs in promotional materials (like the ones in the grass at the top of this page)… those don’t count toward your total.
• We can’t offer rain checks on the prizes, so make sure to place your order when you’ve unlocked the prizes, because they’re only available while supplies last!
• We think we have enough free beads to go around… but in case we run short, we reserve the right to substitute a product of equal value as your prize (hey, it’s free, right?) . We can’t offer rain checks on unavailable prizes. We also reserve the right to update this list of rules if it needs clarification later.
• Normal shipping rates apply. As much as we’d like to, we just can’t afford to give away free beads AND ship them for free too. If you add your prizes to an order over $40, you’ll get the same free shipping you always get (inside the USA). If your order is under $40, normal shipping rates will apply to it.
• Please don’t share the locations of the eggs. This ruins the fun for everyone Also, you must find the eggs yourself–you can’t have a robot (or a computer) do it for you. Location sharers and robots will be disqualified from winning prizes! Gotta keep it fair for the rest of us!
• The most important rule: have fun!

We’re sorry for the delay on the Easter Egg Hunt, it’ll be live shortly. We’re working on something big…

We have some beautiful gemstone additions this week. There are over 40 different gemstone strands AND 20 styles of gemstone bead chain.

Fine Gemstones

This week’s additions are cut from some of the most sought after gemstones on the market. My two favorites are beryl morganite and kunzite. Their light, happy natural coloring couldn’t be better for spring. We’ve been looking for a good factory for these and we finally found one. The price and quality are outstanding. Not to be outdone, the new kyanite has a deep blue color that makes me want to dive right in. There are over 40 total additions. Other stones include: apatite, sunstone, black onyx, golden pyrite, labradorite, spinel, rhodochrosite, and more. See them all now.

Gemstone Bead Chain

This isn’t your average metal chain — it has premium gemstones wire wrapped into it! You’ll find silver and gold chain with stones like tourmaline, labradorite, green onyx, moonstone, and pink sapphire. All of the styles are very light and elegant. The silver chains are all sterling silver, the gold ones are gold plated over sterling silver. The manufacturer selects a high grade of stones when making these chains and it shows. See the gemstone chain now.

UPDATE: The contest winners have been chosen, and will be announced on April 18th! Stay tuned to the blog for the results!

A few weeks ago, the designers at Vintaj picked out some of our beads to use in their “Spring Rain” theme. They made some fantastic pieces using a combination of their own items and the beads we sent. The color scheme they chose was so beautiful and their designs turned out so well, that we thought it’d be fun to turn their Spring Rain theme into a Lima Beads design contest!

We’ve packaged these items into kits that you can purchase below. Here’s how it works: purchase a kit, design some jewelry, and add it to the Lima Beads design gallery and be sure to select “Spring Rain 2012” from the seasonal options at the bottom. The people with the 3 most popular designs will each win a Lima Beads gift certificate. Full details are available below. Happy designing!

Embellish your design

As you’ll see in the pieces Vintaj designed (below), they chose to use patinas to color the piece of Arte Metal from the kit. They also chose to use ribbon in their bracelet. For the contest, it’s OK to make these sorts of additions, as long as the majority of your piece is composed of items from the kit. For example, you could use leather cord or chain in place of ribbon. You could color your metal with gilders paste, acryllic paint, or just leave it alone. It’s up to you!

Designs

Here are a couple of designs from Vintaj that were inspired by the “Spring Rain” theme. See all Spring Rain designs as they’re uploaded.

Spring Rain Bracelet by Jess Italia Lincoln from Vintaj

Spring Rain Earrings by Jess Italia Lincoln from Vintaj

Official Contest Rules

1. To enter your design in the contest, you must start with one of the two kits above. We have a limited quantity available… when they’re gone, they’re gone!
2. You can make anything you want–a necklace, bracelet, earrings, or anything else. Just make sure that about 75% of your design is made up from the items in the kit.
3. To submit your design to win, you need to add it to our Design Gallery. Make sure to choose “Spring Rain 2012″ from the seasonal options when you upload your design–that’s important! When you’re finished, your design should show up with all the other Spring Rain designs.
4. There will be three winners. First prize is a $100 Lima Beads gift certificate. Second prize is a $50 gift certificate. Third prize (you guessed it) is a $25 gift certificate.
5. Winners will be chosen based on a combination of how many times their design was viewed and favorited–the most popular designs win!
6. All designs must be submitted to the gallery by 11:59pm on April 15th. The winners will be announced a week later.
7. The MOST IMPORTANT rule is this: Be yourself, get inspired, and have fun!

It’s finally a wrap! We’d like to send out a big THANK YOU to everyone who took the time to follow along with the Crossword Puzzle Sale during January. Hundreds of people solved the puzzle, and thousands of products went on sale over 31 days. We couldn’t be more thrilled with your participation. But that’s probably not why you’re reading this post…

The Winners Are…

As we mentioned in the rules, there were three winners to be chosen to receive one of the bonus prize packs from Nunn Design, Vintaj, and TierraCast. And the winners are…

1. Anna C from Minnesota (she’s Anna C WonderChick if you’ve seen her around here)
2. Maria from New York (known as NY Bella on Lima Beads)
3. Joan M from beautiful Nova Scotia, Canada

CONGRATS! I’ve e-mailed the three winners, and I’m awaiting their choices for the bonus pack they’ll receive. In the meantime, I’ll take one last look at the bonus prizes before we pack them up and ship them out to the winners.

One Last Special Thanks

We want to give one more special thanks to our friends at Nunn Design, Vintaj, and TierraCast for sending along these awesome prize packs to give away. It was a great gesture, and we’re grateful to be able to pass along these cool collections to our customers. Thanks again!

Now… off to think about the next big promotion right around Easter…

The Crossword Puzzle Sale of 2012 ended with a bang, and we’d like to thank everyone for playing along. We’re doing a mad rush through all the bead shows in Tucson right now, but we haven’t forgotten about the bonus prizes. We’ll be contacting and announcing the winners in the next 24 hours… so keep your fingers crossed! We’ll be posting an update right here on the blog.

Good luck!

The Lima Beads offices will be officially closed from Tuesday (1/31) – Friday (2/3) next week for our annual trip to Tucson for the big gem and jewelry shows. Last year was my first year making the trip, and it was waaaaay bigger than I expected. You can’t possibly prepare yourself for that many beads.

Shipping and Customer Service

During these 4 days, you’ll only be able to reach us by email. A small (and super dedicated) portion of our team is staying behind, so orders will continue to ship, but it may not be as quickly as you’re used to. If you need something urgently in the next week, be sure to place your order by Monday (1/30) and if it’s super time-sensitive, it would be a good idea to choose UPS as your shipping option.

Stay Tuned for an Update

We’ll be sending along an update next week, so stay tuned! Don’t forget, the Crossword Sale ends on 1/31–and watch the blog for an update on the winners of the bonus prizes. Adiós!

This post is part of a series for the 2011 Holiday Season… Follow along on the Holiday Page!

Give your handmade gifts the wrapping they deserve! Forget about the box and the paper, the tag is what can really separate your wrapping job from the pack. Using supplies that you already have at home, you can easily make handcrafted holiday gift tags for that special someone.

On the paper tags, I just cut out some shapes with nice, thick paper and covered them with varying combinations of alcohol ink, acrylic paint and stamps. The hardest part is waiting for the ink to dry before you can write anything on them. I used a refillable ink pen for the lettering, but a permanent marker would work just as well. To finish it off, use ribbon or hemp to attach the tags to your gifts.

As an alternative to the paper tags, consider picking up a few letter pendants from The Lipstick Ranch. I embellished this letter ‘K’ with a couple of wire-wrapped charms and some twisted hemp. The best part is that you can also use it as an ornament!

Shell pearls are an alternative to cultured and glass pearls. They look and feel more genuine than glass pearls and offer the consistency of size and color that can be difficult to achieve with cultured pearls. Shell pearls exhibit the weight and feel of a natural South Sea pearl. They’re available in an array of beautiful colors.

How they’re made

The production process for shell pearls is similar to the process that crystal companies use to make glass pearls. The major difference is that glass pearls have glass in the center and shell pearls have a solid carving of real seashell at their core. Stone cutters cut and polish pieces of this giant shell until they have a perfect shape (10mm round for example). Once the piece of shell is finished, they’re ready to coat it. The coating, which is made in the USA, contains genuine mother of pearl that has been ground into a fine powder. This mother of pearl content is what gives shell pearls their deep luster. The coating process is what differentiates some shell pearls. All Lima Beads shell pearls have a thick multi-layer coating that ensures durability and high luster.

Great things about shell pearls

The core of a shell pearl

Genuine look and feel: Because they have a real seashell at their core, shell pearls look & feel more genuine than glass pearls.

Resilience: Shell pearls are more resistant to sweat, perfume, and other contaminants that commonly affect cultured pearls.

Availability: The controlled manufacturing process ensures that we can continuously restock items in the same shapes and colors.

Shop our Shell Pearls >