YourDesign Ltd

If you are a creative person, you will probably like YourDesign. I have been there many years ago with two friends and I really enjoyed myself. The workshop, located in Bettendorf, one of the Quad Cities in the USA, is divided in two different areas (apart from the entrance), all of them with very colourful walls : the scent blending area, on your right when you enter, and the beading area (at the back).

In the entrance, there was a lot of products aimed at making creative activities (scrapbooking, sewing, customization...), for example ribbons, coloured papers. It is thus a good place for buying original tools for creating more original stuff ;D

The beading area

Though I have not been making jewelry while I was there, I could not help going to this section to have a look to the hundreds of different beads that they had. It was really beautiful with all those different colours and shapes. The choice was very broad, I would even say chosing must have been the most difficult part. In this section there were huge tables where you could sit to make your own ring, bracelet, necklace or earrings. Every type of bead was priced and I thinkyou paid according to the beads you had chosen.

And I believe you could also buy « take away beads », by which I mean that I think you did not have to make your jewelry there but you could just come and buy beads or even buy ready-made jewelry.

In this workshop you could also take beading lessons.

The scent blending area

This section was also pretty impressive even though less massive. This is the one I tried when I went to YourDesign.

On small round tables, there was a whole bunch of tiny bottles containing various scented liquids. Some of them had pretty straightforward names like « lemon » or « pear » but others had funnier, more obscure names like « sunday at the beach » or that kind of stuff. It was really pleasant to smell a lot of them, try and decide which ones you liked and then try to combine them and see how the smell changed,sometimes for the best, and sometimes for the worst. I don't remember exactly which scents I put inside my perfume, but I think I finally used 4 of them, the last one being a touch of « pear ». I tried to add something that smelt like lemon but in the end I thought it ruined the smell that I had already created so I stuck to the pear and the previous ones.

Once we had chosen all our scents, somebody from YourDesign asked us if we wanted the scent as a perfume, as a shower gel, as a shampoo, as bath salts or other beauty products. Then again I think to remember the price depended on what product you chose to make and in which quantity.

We all chose to make a perfume. Then she would mix the smells we had chosen, add preservative and ask us which colour we wanted our perfume. I chose purple and one of my friends blue. I still have it today andI can tell you the smell and the colour lasted so every time I use it I give a thought to that special day.

It was the first time I had done such a workshop and I found it really original, fun and interesting at the same time. I'm sure you'll have a good time there !