catching up

I had a ton of catching up to do once I got back from NYC, hence the blog drought.  But I never really got to tell you about my trip!

DAY 1

The MJSA show was awesome!  So full of vendors and new resources for me.

The third floor was mainly loose stones, diamonds, and beads.  The second floor was all of the tool and machinery manufactures and suppliers and the first floor was casting services, refining services and lots of chain manufacturers.  I left with boat loads of brochures...

They even had Free seminars through out the day.  The best was what they call "At the Bench Live" where an expert jeweler sat at a jewelers bench equipt with a tiny camera and demonstrated techniques.  I would have paid for that info and it was free- as was entrance into the trade show- if you pre registered and showed your business licence, EIN and resale certificate.

 

 There were also some other boring panel discussions.  These guys look like they are having fun...

 I highly recommend the show, they have it every year in NYC  Many of the manufacturers had wonderful displays where you could see and touch the tools in person- which is something I never get to do since there is such a lack of resources in the Carolinas I have to order everything online.  Some of the people even had demonstrations and of course they were glad to give you catalogs, pricing and any other info you were looking for.  A great way to get a lot of info in a short time and really with little effort.

This machine reads autoCAD drawings and makes wax models that can be cast into jewelry.  It can produce amazing detail that really can't be done by hand.  It is pretty amazing but you have to have abput $40,000 to have this baby in your shop  Here is what the machine produces...

I was at the show all day- I didn't even break for lunch.  I talked with some other attendees and grabbed my suit case, headed to the subway for the trip to my hotel.  This was not the original plan.  My shuttle from the airport was 45 minutes late picking me up and the van was full and of course my hotel was the last stop so I opted to just get off the shuttle at the show instead of checking into my hotel.  Plus my very nice van driver was a little scary, I am pretty positive he had tourettes.

So after walking many blocks in the wrong direction lugging my suitcase and all my show treasures I made it to the hotel.  Then it was off to dinner with Emily- my sweet friend that let me stay with her and then right to bed to get some beauty sleep for day 2.