new stuff

What's up doc?! We've been watching the Looney Tunes Collection that Grandpa Nick sent us. Whenever Bugs Bunny comes on Max wants a carrot and says "What's up Doc?"

He rarely actually eats the carror however. If it's not candy it's not worth eating apparently to this kid. Although he does like broccoli.

The ups and downs of being self employed in the jewelry business has been driving me crazy. One day no sales and then the next we are swamped. I've only been doing this for about 20 years but you'd think I'd get used to it.

I did manage to make, photograph and list some new items:

Little Unikite Wirewrapped Ball Earrings

Little Teal Glass Marble with Olive Green Earrings

and the matching Teal with Olive Green Glass Marble Pendant.I love those colors together.

Green Aventurine with Amethyst Ball Pendant


Ruby Red Glass Marble Pendant

This one really makes me think of the holidays.

and the matching Ruby Red Glass Marble Earrings.

A new design-Tiny Swirl with Fresh Water Pearl-cute and dainty

and Three Little Swirls all in a Row.

I came up with this link and can't stop playing with it.

This weekend begins the Eugene Holiday Market. I will be there selling every Saturday and Sunday and a couple of other days thrown in until Christmas Eve. I expect to be utterly exhausted and hopefully full of cash.

Now back to work-after coffee. Sweet wonderful ,life giving,blood pressure raising coffee.

Clutter Extreme

My crazy messy work area is out of control. I am unable to maintain any sort of order or system or just a simple clear space without stuff. There is one tremendous improvement that has been made. After living here for about 15 years and working in this corner of the dining room in the dark it finally dawned on me that we have an open unused outlet behind my desk. Nick had the perfect heavy base lamp and it is now perched above my desk (unfortunately blocking some of my father's impressive painting .) Now I just have to remember to turn that thing they call a lamp on. I keep forgetting it's there.

This is the very heavy stack of boxes that just arrived from my glass supplier -Fabricas Selectas. They are part of the Mega Marble conglomerate. They provide great prices, huge selection and had the most awesome deal on shipping. These suckers are heavy. Each box weighs about 38 pounds. Normally this much stuff would have cost $132 just for the shipping. They are running a special this year on all orders over $300 and the shipping was FREE. I'm really impressed and pleased with the service.

Here's just the tip of the iceberg of all the new goodies. I will finally have large turquoise glass cabs for the big glass pendants we do. And lots of other new stuff that I need to unpack and sort through and find logical storage so that I can know where it is.

I haven't made anything new but I did take new pictures of these Teal Frosted Like Beach Glass Earrings.

The frosted glass comes from the glass people I just mentioned.
New stuff will be on it's way soon. Time to get to work.

bloodblisters, halloween and pumkin slime

In honor of Halloween here is my newest icky bloodblister. Same thumb as the last time but a new postition. Part of the hazards of being a jeweler or wire smasher.

The traditional scooping out of the pumpkin being performed by Max. He kind of missed the point and started piling it all back in again when I wasn't paying attention.He also enjoyed just sticking his hands in there and squishing it all and smearing it everywhere.

Henry was very very serious about the job.

The farmer and the monster before heading out for our first round of afternoon downtown Corvallis trick O treating.

The nighttime gang including friends Logan the pumpkin and Hunter the ghoulish ghost .

I am unable to maintain any sort of control on the candy orgy going on here.I have completely failed inthe candy discipline and am just hoping it will all be gone soon. Luckily Max takes a bite or two and spits out most of it. He's mostly just covered in sticky slime. I guess that's lucky?

cheese and hair and family again

Well the guests are all gone but the bloated weight gain lingers on. Here is a picture of our wonderful cheese orgy. 7 different types of exotic cheeses, the blue cheese stuffed and garlic olives I had been eyeing for the past year at the new Safeway "gourmet"section that I could never bring myself to justify buying before, the Soyrizo (vegetarian sausage), the sliced pears , Betsy's sweet plate of honey, molasses and jam and of course crackers.

Betsy and I happily admiring the spread in between gorges.

I bought this at the Asian Food Store when it was Nick's birthday in September and I was buying stuff to make him sushi. I though maybe it would go well with the theme and it intrigued me. Well Nick wanted to have nothing to do with it but I knew when Betsy came she would join me in this culinary adventure. According to Wikipedia it is a root used in Thai cooking.

We were just about to open the jar when Betys noticed something. If you look in the upper right hand corner of the jar above the lable you might see it...

Here is the much better view- a long dark hair pickled in with the roots.

Yummmm

I think not. We decided to skip this culinary adventure.

More family visiting pictures

Henry arranged these pictures. Here is the great Prince Henry with Grandpa Nick and Nick(dad)

Then he wanted one with just the girls-me, Grandma June and Aunt Betsy

Crazy cuddling lovefest with the boys and grandparents

The Carters

Nothing new and exciting in the jewelry world right now. I skipped yet another saturday market and now am obligated to go next weekend according to market rules . Here is one of our newest lsiting on Etsy of an old stamped design of mine. I carved this die back when I had lots of free time to spend confusingly carving in reverse.

This one is called "Kneeling Woman Finding Her Bliss Sterling Silver Pendant with Turquoise".

It is a chubby belly and boob , not two sideways boobs which I just realized it kind of looks like when looking at it.

Pendants,chains and family

We hit an Etsy milestone this past week when we made our 1000th sale! It was a goal we hoped to reach by the end of the year and it came in mid October. We were put over the top with a huge sale to a lovely woman in California that really made our week.
I've been refocusing on pendants. It is a common discussion amongst jewelers as to whether to sell a pendant alone or on a chain. So I decided to sell some pendants that are just on the simple black cord that adds just about nothing to the cost of the pendant and have a sterling silver chain with our handmade clasp available in our shop as well that you can purchase if you want a chain too. Surprisingly the chain has been selling quite well on it's own and the pendants have been selling well without the chain. I haven't had a customer yet purchase a chain to go with one of our pendants too.



This is our Sterling Silver Celtic Heart and Spirals Pendant .

This is the Sterling Silver Flat Cable Chain with Handmade Clasp.

The Steaming Cup o Joe with Garnet Pendant...

and the Dragonfly Wirework with Saphire Blue Sterling Silver Pendant.


We have been having lots of family visit us the past two weeks. It's been a lot of fun.Here are cousins Peter, Victoria and baby Harry. Peter appears to be contemplating his empty beverage and Nick is trying to scare Harry.

SupermessyMax

Cousins hugging (Max and Harry)

Upside down swinging Henry who insisted that I take his picture.

More Harry and M.ax at the park

Grandma June and the boys

Nick the elder,crazyface Nick and cousin Peter

A slow haggard morning still in my Spongebob jammies with all the boys.

Max picking a winner, Henry picking his toes, and Harry wondering how he ended up in this crazy place.

We had Henry take this picture. He was sitting on the couch which increased the already skewed childsize angle and managed to emphasize all our middle aged double chins except for Nick's cleverly concealed by his beard.

Aunt Betsy in the middle of couch mayhem.

Max delighted over his pumkin "no man" (snowman)

Around the dinner table admiring Henry's large dirty feet.

Pliers and plants

After destroying 2 pairs of pliers ,Nick, my tool obsessed and loving husband gave me a stronger pair. But those left a nasty burred edge on all the wire. So he went off into his shop the other day and emerged with these newly modified heavy duty pliers that now give me the almost perfect cut. I say "almost" only because it still leaves the tiniest of raised lines but it is really a huge improvement and a pleasure to work with. I love that guy!

Here it is in action.

The results! Notice the clean edge.

What the old pliers used to do. See the pointy angled edge. Well good bye jagged ugly edge.

More hot plier action

A clean finish.

And now for some fall photos from around the homestead...

Sweet Max

Henry emerging from the barn where he goes to escape from his brother and play with the big boy trains.

Happy Max

A typical bramble of honeysuckle berries,poison oak,blackberry brambles,roses and other assorted weeds. Yummy goat food.

This beautiful bright red and shiny plant is the evil poison oak which flourishes on our land.But it's so pretty.

One of the flowers that continues to return each year despite my neglect. A carnation of some sort I believe.

Fidel relaxing

Fame and fun

So I think I'll just shut the heck up and the next time I am whining about lack of sales y'all can come kick my butt. Really.
Things slowly picked up in online sales through Etsy after that last weekend and then we had a record breaking weekend at the Church Fair at the Fall Festival.
One of the best things that happened was when dear friend Amy brought over her out of town visitors to say hello. Her friend (whose name I sadly can't remember) said " Do you sell on Etsy? I recognize your jewelry."
I felt so famous! Someone actually shops and browses on Etsy and recognized our jewelry! My ego has been sufficiently stroked once again.
It was fun selling in our hometown ( the biggest town we live close to) and seeing all the friends and acquaintances we've acquired. The park in the middle of the festival was overcrowded with kids including mine and it was quite the challenge keeping an eye on both my tasmanian devils spinning off in opposite directions at all times while Nick was selling in the booth (or the "tent" as Henry calls it.) At one point Max had yakisoba noodles hanging out of his mouth and was swinging them from side to side slapping his big chubby cheeks while coming towards customers and telling them he was eating "noonoos" . He later rolled around in the sand at the park using the noodle slime as an adhesive.

These are my latest creation-Tangle Dangle Vining Spirals Earrings. Another design that came to me as I was laying in bed waiting for Henry to fall asleep.(Yep, I'm one of those crazy lunatic parents that still lays with her kid in his bed until he falls asleep. I won't reveal any of our other coddling parenting techniques that will damage our children forever.)
I sold the first pair I listed this morning on Etsy.
I didn't go to the Saturday Market today. I started coming down with a cold on Thursday night which is still draining all my vital energy. I knew it would be cold and miserable and probably kill my feeble old body if I did the market today. Also there was some sort of big deal football game in Eugene today that involved the entire ESPN network setting up camp at the stadium and broadcasting all day from there. That meant the entire town would be either at the game or watching it all day long making sales likely to be poor at the hippy craft market. It was very liberating to not go and sleep in. I put a lot of energy into Etsy and we made a significant amount of sales today anyway- so there!
All is well.... until the next hormonal fluctuation.