Victoria Lapidary & Mineral Society Annual Show - March 18-20, 2016

As the show flyer said "Fun for the Whole Family", indeed it was!There was a lots of ongoing fun with several raffles and the many activities for everyone attending the show.We had visits from our existing customers and new customers all shopping for inspiration and to complete their jewellery designs with our products. Some used our free stone setting service and enjoyed learning to set their own stones or having their beautiful stones into our settings findings by a professional stone setter.Our display booth at the Surrey Rockhound Club Gem Show October 2018Customers shopping at our booth at the Surrey Rockhound Club Gem Show October 2018A glance at our stone setter at work at the Surrey Rockhound Club Gem Show October 2018A customer getting help with selecting the right setting for his stone at the Surrey Rockhound Club Gem Show October 2018

The last show in November is the London Gem & Mineral Show. The show is located in London, ON. It is approximately 2-3 hours drive from Toronto. We finally can rest for a few days. We visited the biggest mall in Toronto - The Yorkdale Mall. It literally has all the stores that I could think of.  The show has a very interesting live auction. The host is one of our vendors. He is very professional in the auction. When he speaks, we can barely hear what he's talking about because he speaks so fast.  We love going to shows like this one, and it's always a bonus when you can find a new wholesale customer. Lucky for us, we meet a new friend this time. They are actually vendors too. We found out that a large percentage of our wholesale customers we have are found when doing shows together with us.  Toronto is so pretty at night!!The two weeks business trip ends here, now we are heading back to Vancouver for our last show of the year.

Nelson was away that week, so Marble and I manned the booth on our own, and this blog post fell to me to write.The Delta Rockhounds put on their gem & mineral show in the South Delta Recreation Center so besides all the wonderful gemstones & sundry, we were fortunate enough to see some hockey, some figure skating practice in the adjacent ice rink, and even a ceramics craft fair in one of the other showrooms! In the gem show proper, of particular note was the terrific line-up of demonstrations on subjects as diverse as lampwork beadmaking to freeform stone carving to gold panning! The club members also hosted a terrific baked goods table as well (the cranberry scones were delicious!).All in all we had a terrific time; made lots of new friends, got reacquainted with several long-time friends among vendors and customers alike, set lots of stones and most importantly made lots of people happy!