Tesserae Brown Bag Exchange

Saturday, November 1, 2025, 12:00 pm: Hilton Orlando, Florida Ballroom Foyer

Give and get a tesserae surprise! We are bringing back SAMA’s original brown bag exchange! Participate and return home with new materials and a new friend. Bring a small bag filled with tesserae from your own mosaic supply, materials you would be excited to receive. Maybe the tesserae are significant to you, rare or unusual, or particularly beautiful. Consider choosing materials indigenous to your region, found on a trip, or unique to your mosaic style. Your offering may spark a colleague’s creativity or just make them smile. Your tesserae must fit in a brown paper lunch bag. Double-bag your pieces for extra strength, and wrap any items with sharp corners so that the bag does not tear. Please include a slip of paper with your name and street or email address, and a note telling why you selected the tesserae. At conference registration, a SAMA volunteer will take your bag in exchange for a ticket to be redeemed for someone else’s bag during the exchange.

What are the guidelines for the Brown Bag Exchange?

Use a lunch-sized paper bag.
Be thoughtful with the tesserae you select to go in your bag. Give items that you think might inspire someone, or that have a special meaning to you. This bag will be a gift to whoever selects it – make sure the contents are something that you’d like to receive. This is not an opportunity to give away your discarded bits and pieces.
The bag doesn’t have to be full to the top. Don’t make the bag really heavy – remember that the recipient will be packing it in their suitcase to carry home.
Wrap the items tightly or put them in a sealed plastic bag inside the paper bag. The bags get tossed around quite a bit, and you don’t want your bag to tear open.
Put a note with your name inside the bag or insert a business card. It is fun to know who contributed the bag, and the recipient may want to send you a note. It is a nice way to meet someone new (if you don’t already know them!)
Seal the bag with staples, tape, string, or ribbon so that the contents don’t fall out.

What are the logistics for the exchange?

When you arrive at the conference, take your bag to the SAMA registration desk, hand it over to a volunteer, and receive a claim ticket in return. Make sure to put that ticket in a safe place (like your neck wallet). That’s your ticket to be able to pick out a bag for yourself on Saturday morning.
On Saturday morning, volunteers will arrange all the bags on tables in the ballroom foyer. The paper bags may be simple brown bags with a stapled top, and some may be colorful bags all closed up with tape or ribbon. Inside each bag is one artist’s offering of meaningful mosaic pieces to another mosaic artist. You don’t know what is inside until you open it!
Participants who want to select their bag from a full array of offerings start lining up earlier than the opening time of 12 pm.
The orderly selection process will begin at 12 pm. Participants present their claim ticket to a volunteer and then are allowed to select a bag.
You can eye the bags, but you cannot pick them up nor touch them. Go with your instinct and pick a bag!
Find a nearby spot to open your bag and admire the contents. It is a lot of fun to watch other participants open their chosen bags to see their expressions of surprise and delight.