Puerto Vallarta Part 1

I'll warn you, I'm going to ramble on a bit on this one, not my usual pictures without much text. But there are pictures at the end...trust me!!! Bead Porn at the end of this post!

Just returned from a week in Puerto Vallarta, we had a wonderful time. Perfect weather, warm but moderate. Got lots of sun, did lots of walking, ate great food what more could one ask for.

Before I left I searched online to try to find places that carry beads, didn't really find any good leads. So we spent a good amount of time walking from place to place following the directions of local shop owners and our Concierge trying to find bead stores. I am very thankful to my traveling companions for going along with me, and for supporting my obsession with Pelicans, more on that in a future post.

First of all, trying to convey to them exactly what I was looking for was not easy. My Spanish is very poor, I can pick out words here and there but this was beyond my meager abilities by a long way. I was sent to a couple of places that had small sections on the wall of small seed beads and small plastic beads, not what I was looking for.

On our last night we were on the way back to our room after having dinner and my husband spotted a store where he saw lots of ribbons and said we should check it out. After a number of disappointments I was not convinced it was worth our time to look, but he convinced me to go in. Yup lots of ribbon and flowers and crafty items, I thought we'd hit another dead end. Then I hear my husband calling from the doorway of another room so I went to see and there they were, a small room with 2 big walls full of beads and stones, not the little ones but the big ones, we had finally found the mother load!!!

Many of these beads I could probably have found elsewhere but it's fun to use beads I've purchased from another country, ads to the back story of the jewelry made with it don't you think. My big regret that I didn't buy the black coral they had, now I've come to find out it's not that common. I've searched for it now that I'm home and I see that would have been an excellent purchase. We did try to go back the next day but the store wasn't open early enough, we had to get to the airport for our return flight so couldn't wait for it to open.

OK, here are most of the stones I got in Mexico.

Above you can see Pearls in Diamond and Heart shapes, have never seen those before. Then Pink Turquoise, the red beads she called MOP which typically means Mother Of Pearl but we both agreed they are not. They are very pretty, very red but have a sort of matte finish. there are rounds, smaller faceted rounds and disc shapes. Then Composit Coral and really light blue turquoise in 12 and 17mm rounds. So rustic I just LOVE THEM!!

Beautiful Pink Turquoise Briolettes in 2 sizes, so soft and pretty but with all that matrix a little rough around the edges too.

Turquoise and Tiger Eye Carved in Butterfly shapes, these are so pretty!!

If you're ever in Puerto Vallarta and you want beads go to Manualidades La Perlita and speak to Ingrid, she's very nice and we had fun talking to her. I'll be happy to share the address and phone number if you contact me.

I'm sorting through the 1,000 plus photos I took and will post non jewelry pictures in a post in the next few days.

Kristi
http://dreamsome.etsy.com/
http://www.artfire.com/users/kristibowmandesign