A Quick Update.

[This was originally going to be a blog entry on my personal blog, (on New Year's Day, I challenged myself to write a blog post every day for a year) but then I read through it and saw that the whole thing had to do with jewelry making and the business side of things as well. I also owned up to the fact that I had been neglecting this blog for far too long. So I yoinked it from the grips of my personal blog and decided to put it here, where it really belongs...]

Well, I am all out of my spiral bracelets. They have all been sold! [Insert happy dance break.] So now I have money from buying them and I get to make some more, which is fun for me. So this is a win/win situation. Another win, is I get to buy one of those 6 ft. folding tables that are much better than the one that I have. It’s really heavy and is such a bugger to move every time I need to, even though Rob does most of the moving. It also takes up more space than a folding table would. My next major purchase will be a new pop-up-style canopy for my booth. The one I have now is on the cheap side, and it’s the kind with the splayed out legs. I want a sturdier one with legs that stand vertically. They allow for more room because they’re 10’x10’ top to bottom, where as the one I have now is debatably 10’x10’ at the feet and about 8’x8’ at the top. Splayed out legs are also easier to trip over. The straight legs would be safer for me as well as anyone around my booth. The way things are going, I feel like I’ll be able to do that soon.

Right now I have to go into super-productive mode. I have the Silver Lake market on the 9^th which means that I need to restock my booth. I should have been doing that since the end of the holiday season, but I needed a bit of a health break and I have been working on commissions. Getting back into doing the booths and all is something I am rather excited about. I am going to have a small part of my booth set up for seasonal products. For this month, it will be Valentine’s Day jewelry. Next month will be Spring themed with maybe a bit of the green stuff for St. Patrick’s Day. The market in April is on my birthday, so I might do birthday specials something like “guess my age for a 10% discount.” Hmm, maybe I won’t, because NO ONE would guess right unless they were very lucky. I have the family “curse” of looking WAY younger than I actually am. My mom says it bugs her to no end but I know deep down inside she likes it. 

So that's a brief update and I promise that new posts are coming really soon. Most will even have pictures!

Pantone Color Forecast -- Spring 2013

So these are the colors that are forecast for Spring 2013:

Challenge Accepted.

Okay, so I thought it would be really bad-ass if I just ended this with "Challenge Accepted" and strut off without looking back like there's explosions going on behind me. But I have to say that I'm really excited about these colors! Look at them! They're so Preeeeeetttty! And I can see myself combining them in ways that I may not have thought of before. Another bonus is that I'm pretty sure that I have all those colors in my stash already. I also have nail lacquer (that's what they call it now) that is the color of Monaco Blue that I bought a month ago or so. I feel like such a trendsetter! But I digress...

In a nutshell: 

*I'm super-excited about the colors. 

*I'm planning to start early. 

*Buckle your seat belts and be prepared for the awesomeness to come. <--Too much? Maybe, but we'll see.

November 1st "Eureka!" Moment

So this month I've decided to take part in the NaNoWriMo challenge. But I'll still be doing my beading of course. In fact, I have a boutique to sell at this Saturday in Signal Hill. It's at an Antique Mall so I'm sure to have better results than at Glendale a couple weeks ago. But none of that is the main point of this post...

Okay, so this may be a little hard to explain but I'm going to try anyway. Besides, I think it’s a great technique. So today I’m working on a bracelet and I need to add new thread. I already weaved in the end of the end of the thread I was already working with, and I was ready to add the new thread. Now, I would normally add the thread to my needle, go back a few rows, and weave and knot the new thread through to come out at the point where I would continue my rows -- dragging most of the length of the thread through the beads...

This time, what I did was go through the point where I would usually come out to continue beading, and I would only pull through a short portion of the thread and weave that back a few rows. When done, I put the needle at the other end of the thread and continue. This made adding new thread go quicker so I can get back to adding more beads as soon as possible . Quicker, except for this first time because as soon as I did it I felt the need to put a post about it on Facebook, but it turned into this blog post instead.  Anyway, I now have less chance of getting tangles just in the process of adding thread. Also, I don’t have to make any awkward twists and turns to make sure that the thread came out at the right spot.

I don’t know if a lot of people do it this way or not (have I just stumbled upon something that everyone does and I’m just out of the loop?), but I thought it would be a great idea to share and it’s something I’m going to continue doing from now on.  I hope people find this to be a very helpful tip! :-D

Today's gratuitous picture is of a cute, tiny snail that I saw on a leaf as I was leaving a friend's house on Halloween night: 

Smallest I've ever seen! About the size of my fingertip.

Necklace Display Templates in PDF

So here they are, the templates for the necklace displays that I posted a couple of posts ago. See the previous blog post to see how they are put together. You can attach them with velcro tape or double-sided tape. I hope these templates will give you a lovely yet functional display.

Here's the Low Profile Template

Here's the High Profile Template


Um, I guess that's it. I feel like there should be a picture here or something...

Oh, I know, here's an instagram pic of a teabag tag I had once:

I liked it because it mentioned beads :-D

Glendale and Bust

So Sunday’s swap meet at Glendale College was a bust and I wish I hadn’t stressed out so much about it the night before.  I should’ve taken it as an omen when after I finished setting up, I began to feel so sick and dizzy that I almost passed out. It was quite scary, but after laying back in the van for a while, I felt much better.

There were good points to the swap meet though:  My mom got to visit me which is always fun. I also got a visit from a friend who I hadn’t seen in a long time. She was the one person who bought something. She didn’t have to but I’m glad that she really liked what she bought. Another good thing that happened was that I got to see my new display and booth set up in action. I really liked the way it turned out, despite the fact that I’ve forgotten the connectors for the grate cubes that I was going to set up. It still looked nice though. Unfortunately, I only got the one picture because I wasn’t feeling so hot. Lastly, today's set up taught me what I need to fix or ad to the booth to make it work right. For one, I need lots of little weights to keep things from blowing over. I also learned that if you see someone coming towards you wearing sheer tights for pants (hint, just because they're black does not mean they are not see-through), avert your eyes before you see something you don't want or need to see. 

The swap meet seemed more like individual yard sales all in one lot, a bunch of people getting rid of things they didn’t want. I thought it was going to be more “retail”. You know what I mean?  I spoke to this one vendor who had been going there for several months says that it’s always low sales for her and she regrets prepaying for the next 4 months. But I learned that at the end of the day. It was good though to talk to someone who has been there often enough as opposed to setting my opinion of the site just on my personal observations. I also overheard one lady say that she usually packs up and leaves by 11. The swap meet opens at 8 and closes at 3. If the crowd thins enough to want to leave by 11, then I should be finding a better use for my time.

There’s a few other markets that I want to check out, granted that I have the funds to get a booth at them.  Hopefully I’ll find one that I can attend regularly with beneficial results.

The Long Awaited Necklace Display Entry

Between helping my mom with schoolwork and prepping for the Glendale Swap Meet next weekend, I haven’t had the chance to post this blog yet, but here it is.

So one day, I was looking through Google Images for something, and I came across a picture of a necklace display that I thought was rather interesting. That got me to searching for more necklace displays that I can make myself.  The displays I wound up making were a sort of amalgam of a few I saw plus a few ideas of my own. I fixed some things that I thought could have been designed better or made more practical.

First it started off with sketches of what I wanted to make.

Then, I used Word and the Insert Shape function to modify into the forms that my displays wound up taking.





I printed them out on cardstock and taped the templates together.

I found this poster board and foam board at the dollar tree.

I then traced the templates onto the poster board so I could cut them out and have templates that are one piece, and without tape.

This ankle weight made it easy to hold down the pattern for tracing onto the poster board. I used it for tracing the pattern onto the foam board as well.









After the pattern is traced onto the foam board, use an Exact-o or craft knife to cut it out. Don't use scissors. It will weaken the edges of your display form from all of the squeezing. Also, do it as neatly as possible but do not fret if it doesn't look perfect. When you cover it with shelf liner or whatever you will cover yours in, it will smooth it out enough to not be noticeable.







One tweak in design that I am especially proud of was my decision to use sticky Velcro tape to join the displays so that I can dismantle them to lie flat for transport. The instructions that I have come across used double-sided tape, but that meant that it would stay in it's standing position and be cumbersome to store and transport. This Velcro tape is VERY strong and I don't regret using it one bit!

Use a sharp edged ruler to help fold your display where needed

At Marshall's, I found this awesome shelf liner to cover my necklace displays. I'm planning on using it to cover several other things for my booth, including the earring displays I will be making this week. Included in this picture are some inexpensive cardstock pads I also found at Marshall's for a great price!

(I just realized that I didn't take any pictures of covering the displays in the shelf liner. I might do that in a part 2 if I get the chance to do that soon. I must say though that this shelf liner was VERY easy to work with and ease around corners and such.)

 And here's the finished products. It's hard to tell from this picture but the slope of the taller one is quite steeper than that of the smaller one. I feel the different heights will give my booth a lot of visual interest.

 Another thing I would show in a second entry is how the back of the display looks and how the part that props it up is attached to the back. Hopefully, I'll get to that second post this week but I wouldn't quite count on it because this week will be SUPER busy as I prepare for the swap meet. I also plan to make PDF documents of the templates so that others can use it, that is, if they don't feel like designing their own.

Blog quickie: April’s Homemade bead spinner

This is what the most common spinners look like

When I first heard about bead spinners, a contraption that helps you speedily string up long strands of seed beads, my first response was, “Wow, what an awesome idea!

When I looked them up, my second response was, “They cost HOW much?!?!” Yeah, I wasn’t having that...

Then one day I was stringing up a bunch of seed beads for a project, probably one of my beaded flowers, and the bead spinner popped into my mind. I had already gotten tons of Pringles caps from people because I asked for them to use as trays for beads that I was working with stuck something through the middle of it to use as a spinner handle.

Hey, it works for me! :-D

I’ve used many things as the handle but I have settled on using a large nail.  The cool thing about the nail is that not only is it removable, like most things I've used, but you can heat the tip of the nail to make it go through the plastic cap easier. 

Speaking of heat, if the hole in the cap gets too big or doesn't fit around the nail snugly, I just take the nail out, and pass the hole in the cap over a lighter flame. That warms the plastic enough to be more malleable so you can push the plastic down to make the hole smaller. Much of the time, just holding it over the flame is enough to make the plastic snug up the hole on it’s own.

The Pringles caps work for me now but if I ever need to do much more beads than I normally use, I’ll probably find a new container.  Maybe a yogurt cup, not the Yoplait type but the short wide Chobani type. One day, I’ll probably even try getting the long curved needle to see if that makes it work even easier.

Lastly, here’s a hilarious video of someone trying to use one of the pricier, electronic bead spinners:

Bead Spinner Fail

I'm glad I didn't shell out the money for THAT gem lol