Walking into Grandma’s Jewelry Box floods the senses with strong, sweet scents of candles and incense, awes the eyes with beads of every shape and size, mirrors and mystical enchantments, and has customers itching for their pocketbooks.

This unique jewelry store, located at 2530 Lincoln Way, has excited both the university crowd and the community of Ames in a unique phase of artisan work – beading.

“This is the coolest place because it draws all sorts of people from all walks of life – not just the hippies, but yuppies, and little old ladies, and guys, and rich upper-class women, and kids of all ages, and not to mention Iowa State students,” said Christy Ardach, store manager.

Tables in the back of the store are covered with materials for making jewelry, such as leather, wire and hemp.

Then come the beads of all colors, shapes and sizes, from various metals – copper, nickel, pewter and brass – to semiprecious stones, shells, woods and Czech glass.

At Grandma’s, customers can buy beads in bulk with deals such as “seed beads by the scoop.”

“If a customer can’t find it, we’ll get it from a supplier or order it on the Web,” Ardach said.

The store was a great find for Kristin Jenkins, junior in political science and international studies.

“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve beaded,” she said. “I was happy to find a place to come for supplies and workspace when I moved here for school at ISU.”

Jenkins said she visits Grandma’s Jewelry Box because the shop is easy access to hard-to-find products.

“It’s the best place in Ames to find this sort of stuff,” she said. “Otherwise, a consumer has to purchase wholesale on the net, which is not feasible for the individual beader.”

The store also attracts students working on class projects, Ardach said. Students, especially art and engineering majors, come from all different areas simply for pieces for their models.

“The name [of the store] is deceptive because there’s lots of stuff for everyone,” she said. “We get an amazing variety of people that come for a wide variety of services. It really is astonishing.”

Some of the store’s popularity comes from the economic recession, Ardach said, because making jewelry is cheaper than buying ready-made items.

The beauty of the store comes from the originality and creativity it inspires, she said.

“If you can walk in and say, I’ve already seen all of these things someplace else, we at Grandma’s Jewelry Box aren’t doing our jobs correctly,” Ardach said. “This is about having fun and being unique. This place is just nuts with variety and selection.”

The art offers stress relief and “instant gratification with great creative rewards,” said store owner Joan Dau.

“People are getting back to the basics, doing things like knitting and sewing and making their own traditional gifts,” she said. “People like to do things with their hands.”

Dau also attributes her shop’s success to the unique niche Grandma’s serves.

“We are different,” she said. “We service a specialty that whole wholesalers have trouble filling. We have a service here that you can’t find elsewhere.”

Grandma’s Jewelry Box began as a vintage and costume jewelry shop with a small tray of beads in the back, Dau said.

In fact, the shop’s name was created with the intent of reminding customers of digging through their own grandmothers’ jewelry boxes, she said.

“There’s a warm feeling about being a grown-up and digging through an old jewelry box and trying on its old, gaudy contents,” Dau said.

All the employees at Grandma’s work because they love the art, Ardach said.

“All it takes is one time and people are hooked – that goes for employees as well as customers,” she said. “Beading is highly addictive. We need to post a sign on the wall to warn customers before they get started.”

Although the beads are the store’s biggest attraction – customers come for them from as far away as Omaha – the store sells custom-made, vintage and costume jewelry and repairs and refurbishes other pieces.

Ardach custom-makes and designs hemp jewelry, but all other pieces are purchased through wholesalers, estate sales, out of the backs of RVs and Toyotas – even African traders, she said.

“There’s really no one source of purchase for the products we sell,” Ardach said. “We never know where we’re going to find what.”