I got new pliers, I got new pliers!

After our big successful holiday season we decided we needed to spend some of that hard earned money on some new tools. Of course Nick is always ready to buy some new tools but it took me a while to get with the plan. I've been really attached to my crappy old pliers that I've had for probably 15 years and I was raised by the cheapest parents on earth ( I mean frugal and clever Mom and Dad- really!)
So we broke out the Rio Grande catalogue and made some purchases (that can be put towards our softening our tax burden.)

These are the heavy duty big Swanstrom made in the USA round nose pliers.($56!-I could crap in my pants from spending that much money on a pair of pliers). I'll be using these on the big aluminum wire (when I remember I have them) for those large curves.

These are my old cutters. The ones on the left are the special heavy duty pair that Nick customized for me for the big aluminum wire. They work great and I will still use those exclusively for the aluminum.

These are the new cutters. On the left are the Swanstrom micro super flush cutters for a mere $37. (Sarcasm there from the cheapest woman on earth- me.) On the right are the Xuron micro shear flush cutters also made in the USA. They cost less ($18) than the Swanstrom and work fine but the tip doesn't come to as fine a point. My tiny fat man hands prefer the micro shears because they fit completely into the palm of my hand the way I like my pliers to be.

These are my pathetic old flat nose pliers. I don't even know what brand they are. The black handled ones on the left are my faves. The sad pair on the right with the really messed up handle were for when I misplaced my fave ones, which happens often on my crazy messy desk.

But these are the new glorious professional pliers. On far left are the Swanstrom micro chain nose, ($26)the Xuron in the middle and the extra fine needle chain nose Swanstrom($32) on the right.

They all do a fine job but my preference is for the swanstrom micro chain nose. Again, they fit perfectly into the palm of my hand and are light weight. They come to a nice point. You would think that the finer pointed tipped ones on the right would come in the micro shear handle size but instead the larger sized handle pair has the finer tip. The smaller micro pair have a nice small point to but it's not aa small as the larger handled ones. The Xuron are nice and thin nosed but don't come to a clean point. they have a slightly square tip.They also feel a little flimsier than the others. I guess that's why they cost less.

Here is a close up of the tips. In this picture the Swanstrom micro chain nose are on the far left and the swanstrom needle chain nose are in the middle.the Xuron chain nose are on the left. I realize now that we bought the Xurons from Thunderbird Jewelry Suppy, not Rio Grande.


I just got some new beads too that I will blog about in the future.

Now for some kid related stuff.

Max decided it was time to eat his nasty old gingerbread house that already didn't have any candy on it since he ate the candy before it even got onto the house. Henry, the nostalgiac horder will probably keep his in the gallery of old gingerbread houses and other miscellania from his childhood (next to the toilet seat he won't let us throw out because he "loves it"and the stickers he put on it two years ago) until he is an old man .

This is the view out our living room window.I was standing in front of it holding Max and he said "The tree looks like a dinosaur Mommy."

He's right.

Here's the close up-



See it now? He has his mouth open and has a hand with a finger pointing.The branches of the tree even look like the scales sticking up.

See it?

The kid's a genius I tell you...

Hanging out

Well the holidays are officially over but we are still doing a lot of hanging out. Especially since pre school doesn't start again for Henry until next week. We have been having a hard time getting out of the house. We all have an annoying cough that we pass back and forth and the kids continue to take turns waking us up every night. These days just getting to Home Depot in Corvallis is on par with scaling Mount Everest. Maybe it'a just us but having 2 3/4year old and 5 year old boys is exhausting.

It has been raining a lot(gee in Oregon? Who would have thunk it?) but this morning we woke up to snow. It is now slushy and mostly gone but it was lovely for a little while.

I spent a lot of time working on a new earring design that I am pretty happy with. All the rain forced me to try some new photographing locations and I discovered that the window in our bedroom works well.

This is the Falling Pearls and Swirls Earring. I kept debating between this photo and then one below for which should be the first Etsy listing picture.

I love the look of this on the vintage Lorna Doone book but it's a little busy for the first photo. I will probably switch it though just to see if it gets more views. What do you think?

These came out nicely too on the same book in the same window. This is my updated Swirly Flowers with Aventurine and Amethyst Earrings. I ordered new 4mm aventurine and the ones that arrived are this deeper darker color than the ones I had before so I needed to take new pictures.

Well back to work although I still can't get myself to really clean up this house.

Some Christmas morning photos....

Well after working our tired butts off with our busiest holiday jewelry selling season ever, Nick and I managed to pull off a successful Christmas for the kids in an attempt to make up for all the days we convinced them that it was good parenting for them to watch all the Spongebob they wanted while we worked .Max is admiring the little omelette maker that Santa (aka Grandma June) gave daddy while Henry debates whether to go to the bathroom or look at the presents.

The awesome "squishy " fish Aunt Betsy gave Max. He is obsessed with fish.

Again the Omelette maker is admired. Henry was amazed that it had a "model egg" on it.

Again the squishy fish. Max held that chocolate Santa all day long.

A good view of the mayhem. They loved Kent's politically incorrect nerf ball guns that he wisely bought both of them.

Weeee! Henry levitates with joy at the giant Hot Wheels racing track set that Santa got the whole family.

Henry's 5th Birthday!

This is the long overdue birthday blog entry. Henry turned 5 on November 30th, 2007. We started off the day with presents from family in the morning.

Ewww! Daddy's gag gift of broccoli.

Hahaha my dad is sooo funny. Good thing i got all this Thomas stuff.

Then later in the afternoon we had the traditional birthday party with friends.

Henry had been planning the musical chairs event for quite some time. We played pin the tail on the donkey too.

He also insisted on having a pinata. Luckily Safeway provides the muy authentico rainbow guitar pinata in the ethnic food aisle. This pinata comes with many colored strings hanging from it that the kids take turns pulling until the lucky one pulls out the cardboard opening releasing all the yummy candy we filled it with. No smashing with sticks on this modern day safe pinata. No Funniest Home Video episodes here with some adult getting their genitals mistakenly smashed by the blindfolded innocent child.

One of our happy and cute party goers- Lauren

The blowing out of the candles on the Thomas birthday cake. Again, Thank You Safeway for giving me another easy way out of this parenting responsibility. Henry had been saving the bowling ball candles and pins all year for this event.

mmmm cake with Max.

We are slowly coming out of the holiday sales blitz and brutal winter colds/sinus infection. More blogging to come.

Top Sellers for a day!

This past weekend was better than usual for the opening Holiday Market weekend. It's usually pretty slow and it wasn't amazing but it was better than previous years so that's good. We had some orders on our Etsy shop too. Then on Monday we had our best day so far on Etsy. We ended up in a treasury that made it to the Etsy homepage. We sold more than we have sold on any other day and made the coveted Top Sellers list of the past 24 hours on Etsytools.com.Here is a screen shot of our name in bright lights or rather dim font on the bottom right column.

For those unaware of all this Etsy nonsense, http://etsytools.com is a site devoted to keeping up to date statistics of Etsy sales.

I spent a large part of the day packaging those 29 items and then more that came later. But now the rush is over and I can try to get back to making stuff for the Holiday Market. Our house is a filthy pigsty but I'm too tired and validated in other ways to care.

Happy almost Thanksgiving to all the Americans celebrating the feast of bloating relaxation. I can't wait to just sit down and eat for a little while with some friends and family and not hold a pair of pliers in my chubby little man hands for a few hours.

Not a good bedtime parenting technique-

This is what happens when you tell your two kids who refuse to go to bed that they have to stay in their room and can't come out. They were sort of quiet but I could hear them talking and moving around. An hour later Max opened the door and came out and said "I'm a tiger mommy!"

Feet too! I have faces on my feet!

As I started to clean up Max Henry told me to make sure I get behind his ears too. Henry had taken the marker and gone all the way around the crease of Max's ears like glasses.Luckily it cleaned off really easily.

Brother tigers-

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?