I had the good fortune to visit two of my best friends in Austin, Tex the weekend before last and while my one friend, Chris, was working, my other friend, Lisa, and I hit the bead stores. Lisa is one of the most talented beaded jewelry designers I know and specializes in Japanese beading. You can see her blog here and her Etsy store here. Check ’em out.

Front room at Bead It
One of the stores that Lisa and I went to is called Bead It and is located in South Austin – which, when Lisa, Chris and I went to school at the University of Texas was kinda a place you didn’t want to be in after dark. Here’s my main memory of that neighborhood – a buddy convinced me to go see our first X-rated movie there. Actually, my only X-rated movie. Yeesh.
But now, that part of town is hot and happenin’ and has all kinds of cool stores and boutiques – not the kind you need a million bucks to buy anything in, but the kind that remind you that Austin is still weird, still a bit on the wild side, still a place where you can get away from the strip mall mentality of much of the rest of the country. Bead It is the perfect embodiment of that.
Lisa and I were not looking for prayer beads, or prayer bead materials – which is probably

Zoe, the great sales associate
why we found one of the coolest rosaries I have ever seen. It seems that one of Bead It’s specialties is vintage beads, and there in the front case was a rosary, probably from the 1950’s or a bit earlier, that had directions written on each Our Father bead! Each Our Father Bead was three-sided – like a little Toblerone bar – reminding you of each mystery you should prayer for on a given day. It was like a 3-D rosary map! Very cool! Here’s a BIG picture. Click on it to see the whole thing:

Mapped out rosary
They also had a small case of Tibetan pendants blessed by monks! Pretty cool, huh?
- Tibetan prayer beads

Rosary window
The store is in an old house and it was extremely fun to wander from room to room and dip through all the treats and treasures – some vintage, some not. They also have a great classroom, and while they do not have a rosary or prayer bead making class, they did have a rather fabulous display of rosaries in their window.
I also noticed that they had a really good collection of crosses and other pendants that would work well for prayer beads and rosaries. Some of the crosses I had never seen before – and I have seen a lot of crosses!
If you go to Austin, definitely check out this fine, funky store. Make a set of prayer beads or a rosary from vintage glass. We were helped by a lovely, young knowledgeable girl named Zoe, and Pake, the manager, or Sarah (the owner?) can also help you out. I plan to visit my friends in Austin again before the end of the year – I hope – and I am going back for sure. I just might have to have that vintage rosary.