Los Angeles Downtown Earrings-Pink Acrylic Beads

These earrings are all about the beads -- a pair of plastic diamonds, very 60s looking, and 40 cents apiece in Downtown L.A. These are totally vacation earrings -- they are all about the beads, not the work. Hope you like them, and you keep your eyes open for cool beads wherever you go this summer.

I love downtown L.A. -- not so much the "hip" new downtown (although that can be fun), but the old downtown of small factories, fashion design, discount fabric stores, discount jewelry stores, discount...., well, discount just about everything. When I lived in L.A., I loved the bustle of the old streets, but I went mostly for the food. I didn't need to buy small plastic toys at wholesale prices. It wasn't until my sister moved out here and started doing costumes for theater that we discovered that downtown was also the BEST place on the earth to buy fabric. It beat even the old New York City fabric district, where we had practically grown up. When I started selling (and making) jewelry, we also discovered it was a great place to buy fashion jewelry, and beads and chains and findings, at wholesale prices. Now, I go downtown whenever I visit L.A.

So on this trip, yesterday was my day downtown (there may be another). I had my six year old son along, so suddenly we did need to buy small plastic toys at wholesale prices. And I looked for beads -- both at bead stores and, as I love to do, at fashion jewelry stores. I combed through the clearance racks, where bracelets and necklaces can be had for a couple of bucks.Yesterday I found a store selling last year's crystal bead bracelets at a buck apiece. I got them in eighteen different colors. I also got yards and yards of gun metal chain in a $7 necklace and bought a few pairs of cool beads at Beadshines - one of my favorite stores b/c of the bins and bins of beads that they sell individually. The pink acrylic beads above came from Beadshines (305 E. 9th St, Ste 105B, www.beadshines.com.)

And the six year old got a new stuffed Domo doll, Pokemon cards, and a giant ruby-colored glass "diamond" for his pirate hoard.

Yay summer, Yay L.A.