Participating in the 3/50 Project

I feel that small business is important to community and in the past I made a commitment to patronize small businesses when possible regardless of where I was at the time.  I've kept to that commitment in a way that makes me feel proud.  While I would prefer to spend my money in my neighborhood, city, county and state, when I am out of town I don't think twice about making the purchases I need at the local small business.  In an effort to share this enthusiasm I am going to add these purchases to my blog.  Besides, it is fun to share the eye candy.  :)

I recently learned of the 3/50 project which asks people who are actively employed to spend $50 at each of three locally owned small businesses.  You can learn about why this is a great thing to do at the following link.  http://www.the350project.net/home.html  The information there is better presented and more complete than I could ever hope to describe here.  While I don't agree with every single principle in the project, I do agree with the general philosophy.

For the last three weeks I've been visiting Evansville, IN.  I haven't had much opportunity to explore the area, but a friend came to visit me and we did get to do a little shopping.  Yay for local bead stores!

The first store we shopped at was The Bead Angel store.  It is a combo metaphysical/spiritual/bead store.  My friend and I had a friendly competition going on to see who could spend more money in the store.  I was clearly in the lead until I pointed out a display of magnetized "pearls" in the back corner of the store.  After ransacking the magnets Beth beat me by a small margin, but I still managed to spend $65.20 before tax.  Not bad for impulse shopping in a store that stocks less beads than I have in my personal stash.

Our next stop was to a store called Busy Beedz.  It was a lovely store filled with unique hand made jewelry with something for everyone from the baby to the bride.  I managed to spend another $16.88 there.  I admit that there wasn't a lot for me to choose from though the store held a good amount of pearls and semi-precious stones.  I, however, am a seed beader and there is only so much I can do with a lump of kyanite regardless of how pretty it is in the bowl.  I did leave with a nice handful of lampwork which I will turn into necklaces for my Etsy store.

We had a trip Killer Skate Park & Shop, LLC where our third member decided to spend his time.  He not only purchased a skating session, but in an extra effort to support the business he bought a skate deck that he didn't really need.  I love to see young people (Dan only just turned 18) making a difference.