New big and small shawl pins and flowers

Here’s the new anchor design as a brass shawl pin in the shop.

I’ve been getting requests for larger sized pins that would work well for long hair.

So I made a few of these Big Treble Clef pins and brought them to the Saturday market 2 weeks

ago and they sold quickly. I’ve now added the copper version into our shop. It would work well

on a bulky shawl or scarf or in big heavy long hair or dreadlocks.

Here it is in my hand for a size perspective . I’ve been spending some time reading

the Long Hair Community Forums and unTamedTresses to see what customers an

d long hair afficionados have to say about our hair forks and sticks. Most of it is good stuff.

Aluminum while light isn’t great for heavy hair but works well in some types- like mine.

But until you try it in your own hair it’s just too hard to know for sure.

I also made a new Little Copper Treble Clef pin meant for light fingering weight lacey shawls or scarfs.

I’ve been reaching the end of my supplies of these lovely Czech glass flower beads. Some of the colors I use are no longer available. But I got nice amount of

these sweet translucent pink flowers and  my favorite peridot colored glass leaves.

Spring happenings in the garden

Long before I had kids I was an ambitious gardener.I am so glad I planted to these

yellow iris bulbs so long ago that continue to come up year after year with no help from me.

This busy bee is enjoying the foxglove that reseeds itself and randomly shows up

in different places every year.

Ahhh- so soon if all goes according to plan and I don’t count my chickens before they hatch

or my cherries before they ripen we will be gorging ourselves on Royal Anne cherries

from the tree we planted right in the middle of the front yard the year we first bought

this place about 18 years ago.

Anchors away

I have been wanting to come up with a good wire design for an anchor pendant.

Things have slowed down enough that I had time to experiment and now have the silver and brass version in our shop.

I liked the way it looks like rope adding a nautical flavor to the design.

I’ll be adding the copper version too as soon as I get some decent pictures.

Sterling Silver Anchor Pendant - Wire Rope Anchor Necklace

Brass Anchor Pendant - Wire Rope Anchor Necklace

Meet my new employee

This my new best friend and co worker , the Zebra Thermal Label printer . He doesn’t have a cute name but I really felt he needed some googly eyes. I’ll entertain any name suggestions…


He sits on my out of control messy desk/ work station connected to his friend, the Stamps.com scale, and spits out beautiful cheap labels for our packages. We finally made the leap to online postage and it has been awesome. It saves us money and time and makes me feel professional. I’m in love with shipping our orders now.

Taking it Easy

Sometimes you just have to sit down, cuddle and wait.

The universe seems to be pounding the message into me that every day is a gift and and to appreciate every moment.

Message received.

Mommy and Me Mother’s Day Jewelry

With Mother’s Day quickly approaching I thought I’d add some nice Mother Daughter (or Son) sets to our shop:

Mother Daughter Celtic Tree Silver Pendants

Mother Daughter Celtic Heart Pendants

Mother and Daughter Celtic Cross Necklaces Set

New Endless Eternal Hoop Earrings in the shop

We had a flurry of requests a couple of months ago for our designs to be made in the “eternal” or “endless” hoop style earrings.

This design lent itself perfectly to that style earring. But it actually turned out to be a little trickier than I thought it would be.

I discovered that I need to make the side that goes through the ear a little longer to compensate for the thickness of the earlobes.

When I made it all even the design on the bottom wasn’t centered and hanging in the right spot. So that’s why it looks a little longer on one side.

I searched the web looking for other similar styles to see if they had the same balancing problem and how they solved it. But I couldn’t find anything similar.

I’m still relearning how to use Photoshop on Windows 7 . I haven’t quite figured out the best way to kick up the contrast  to really make the picture “pop”.

Sterling Silver Endless Hoop Fancy Loop Earrings - Silver Wire - Eternal Hoop

The Great Egg Hunt and Mimosa Shindig 2012

The weather was perfect, almost dare I say too hot.

 

We had an abundance of candy filled eggs, cute kids, delicious treats and mimosa’s for the adults.

Max’s 7th Birthday Party

Complete with an Angry Birds chocolate Safeway Cake and fun at Wacky Bounce.

My baby boy turned 7 yesterday.

How I Lost My Blogging Mojo

and am trying to get it back.

It all began when Nick, my IT guy ,made a new lovely computer for me and then updated it to Windows 7.

Previously I had been totally in the blogging groove and had gotten comfortable with Windows Live Writer to quickly whip out a post and add pictures.

And now it is all different although somewhat similar and my non techy brain requires a steep learning curve before I can figure this whole thing out.

Next came the great flood of 2012 in which all but 1 road to our was cut off by flooding and that road was iffy with high water and down to a single lane because half of it fell apart.

Then Nick left on a 2 week journey east for his father’s funeral. You can read about his adventures on his blog –The Mechanical Philosopher

During this time I was the temporary single Mom. And then sadly a good friend’s husband passed away. So Nick and I were both attending funeral’s at opposite sides of the country during the same period of time.

I added a new Little Celtic Heart Sterling Silver Shawl Pin to our shop .

And a Little Celtic Tree Sterling Silver Shawl Pin.

And a Large Celtic Copper Hair Pin or Shawl Pin.

And a few other things that I am too lazy to add to this messed up blog.

We finally took the long overdue leap and signed up to Stamps.com so that we can do online shipping. It’s been a challenge trying to create a new shipping system and I already have sent the wrong order to the wrong person.But I think I’m getting the hang of it.

So that’s my exciting life’s update. Damn you windows 7 for taking me back to the beginning of learning how to blog again! (Maybe my next post will have my pictures all crammed together on the other side of the page.)

Snow day!

It doesn’t happen often here in the Willamette Valley.

I’m not a snow person. I’m not a skier or skater. I’ve always been terrible at making and throwing snowballs.

I become paralyzed with fear when driving in snow.

But it is pretty – for a short amount of time.

Happy New Year!

Well it’s back to work time, getting the kids and me used to waking up early and back to school. Coffee has been my good friend.

 

And here’s the New Years gratuitous cute kitty picture. She loves my chair.

Happy Holidays!

These were the best pictures we could get out of the kids.

It’s been a wonderful and amazing holiday selling season for us and we are grateful to all our wonderful customers. We will take the weekend off and get right back to work (well maybe a more relaxed schedule) after the holidays.

Henry’s 9th birthday party

 

Wednesday November 30th was Henry’s 9th birthday. We had a great good time at the Wacky Bounce in Corvallis. Once again Safeway saved our butts with their birthday cakes. His birthday comes during our busiest time of year. Our house sinks to new levels of filthiness that make it unfit for anyone “normal” to enter.The Wacky Bounce has become a tradition for us. The kids had a great time running around and sweating, eating cake and opening presents.

He’s a happy boy.

Now back to work….

Coming up for air

  We have been very lucky to be crazy busy with our Etsy sales this holiday season.  (Knock on wood and every other good luck mojo that causes a reverse hex by publicly proclaiming current success.)

I’ve been selling at the Eugene Holiday Market every weekend which hasn’t been quite as successful as we’d like but still can’t complain given the current economic conditions.

My laryngitis is mostly gone although I still have somewhat of a husky Brenda Vacarro type voice going on which I’m thinking might just end up being my permanent voice.

I took this picture on Thanksgiving morning and then forgot it was on my camera.

Our friendly neighborhood deer decided to just sit right down and make themselves at home and “occupy” our yard.I guess they know we are vegetarians.

This is our old man cat Fidel who decided to occupy my boxes of shipping supplies under my desk that I work at all day. He just pushed everything over,crushed part of the side and made himself at home. I’m just hoping he doesn’t decide to make it his litter box too. Although generally he prefers the hard floor in our dining room and bathroom to pathetically relieve himself which is why he is mostly banned to the laundry room.

OK now back to work ….

Last weekend

 

Last weekend was the first weekend of the Eugene Saturday Market’s Holiday Market.  As the sign says- “I have laryngitis.” It was a cold gone awry that settled in my throat and left me unable to speak above a whisper and now has improved to a gravelly ,froggy Brenda Vacarro impersonation.

I attempted to give our shoddy booth somewhat of a makeover this year. After 20 years of doing the market and using variations on duct tape and plastic pull ties it dawned on me that I have all this awesome malleable aluminum wire that I can make into useful and pretty spiral swirls that can hold up the electrical cords,the pretty curtains I picked up at Goodwill and the special canvas sides to our revamped booth.

I was overwhelmed by the generosity and help of my two dear long time marketeer girlfriends Nome aka Blessed Beads and Heather aka Ellie of Earnest Efforts.

Here is Nome in front of her gorgeous jewelry booth. She provided the canvas material for the sides.

Check out Nomes awesome boots. She and I share a love of shoes and the goodness of Zappos. She wears them so well.

This is Heather in her perfect woodsy booth. She sewed the sides together and hemmed them for me and put in the grommets.

Check out their amazing boxes they make from found wood.They even make their own knobs.

And so I give thanks to my home girls for getting my booth spiffed up.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yay! I found my lost favorite pliers…

 

About 3 months ago I dropped my favorite pliers and they disappeared into a hole in the universe.I’ve had these pliers for about 20 years and I can’t explain why but they just fit perfectly in my hands and don’t mar aluminum wire the way all my other pliers do. I’ve lost them before and always found them in a reasonable amount of time in a typically weird place like in a bag of jewelry supplies under something. I had searched all the typical places. I pulled all the crap out from around my desk. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a slob.I knew eventually they would show up in some other messy place I hadn’t thought of. Well that day came on Sunday. I realized I needed to reclaim the shelves next to my desk so I could put our bubble mailers and tissue paper I use for shipping.

So I reorganized and purged the shelf crammed with games the kids never play.Then I pulled out the big tote on the bottom full of massive amounts of kids crafting supplies like stickers and paint and watercolors and brushes and googley eyes and glue and low and behold the hole in the universe reopened and spat out my precious pliers. I can now cross off that one irritation from my massive irrational psychological list of unfinished business.