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?