[photo credit: Garan-Beadagio, LLC]
The Pasadena Bead & Design Show has taken over 30,000 square feet of the Convention Center with more than 300 exhibitors, which is three hundred more chances than the mall was ever going to give you. Hand-cut gemstones. Lampwork glass. Hill tribe silver, painted silks, eco-dyed textiles, pearls, natural fibers, and the kind of findings, tools, and specialty supplies that make a hobby start looking suspiciously like a practice.
Expanded this round: what the organizers call “select vintage and antique exhibits offering jewelry, textiles, collectibles, and other unique finds” — the exact sort of table you plan to walk past and don’t.
If you’d rather make than buy, workshops and live demonstrations run through the weekend and take all comers. Jewelry design, wire technique, metalwork. Clay, mixed media, painting. Open to all skill levels, which is a kinder way of saying nobody is going to look too hard at your first bezel.
What lifts it above a shopping trip is the range of the work itself. Traditional beadwork and lapidary sit a few tables down from contemporary craft, wearable art, and artisan clothing, which means you can buy the finished piece, buy the raw stones and make your own version, or buy neither and spend twenty minutes asking a lampworker how the glass does that. Ask. They came to talk about it.
You won’t have the aisles to yourself. The Star-News sent a photographer, who caught exhibitor Maralinda Irmakesen squaring away her booth, and the paper reported “thousands of people” through the weekend doing what one does at a bead show: staring very hard at very small objects.
Not all of them are hobbyists, either. The exhibitor list runs to studio artists, tradespeople, and creative suppliers from across the country, and the buyers match: designers sourcing stones, collectors hunting one specific thing, small businesses stocking up. The organizers held a room block at the Hotel Dena at $189 a night. Nobody books a hotel for a craft fair. They book a hotel for a supply run.
Some backstory, because it’s a good one. The show is run by Garan-Beadagio, a family company out of Nevada City that’s been staging shows since 1992 and setting up in Pasadena since 2008, first at the Hilton and now at the Convention Center. Casey Kennerson is the show manager. Eighteen years is a long run in one town for a show that travels.
Ten dollars at the door, free for kids 17 and under with a paying adult, and the ticket covers all three days with re-entry — of which you have precisely one left. On-site parking runs $18; the Paseo Colorado–Marengo garage is $12 (take the garage, and put the difference toward glass beads).
Doors close at five. Go be the only person at the party wearing the thing nobody else can find.
Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E. Green St., Pasadena. Sunday, Aug. 2, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. $8 online / $10 at the door, free for ages 17 and under with a paying adult. BeadAndDesign.com
NEED TO KNOW
The Pasadena Bead & Design Show runs its final day today, Sunday, August 2, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., having opened Friday, July 31. Admission is $8 purchased online in advance or $10 at the door, and a single ticket is good for all three days with re-entry; children 17 and under get in free with a paying adult. The show fills 30,000 square feet at the Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E. Green St., Pasadena, CA 91101. On-site Convention Center parking is $18, the Paseo Colorado–Marengo garage is $12, and street parking is also available. For more, including exhibitor applications and workshop registration, visit BeadAndDesign.com.
Tickets / Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pasadena-bead-design-show-tickets-1991418972755
