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Thursday, January 31, 2008

Almost, kinda, sorta famous

We're featured on a cool website:
www.sofachip.com

The URL of the article is this: http://www.sofachip.com/2008/01/31/so-you-want-to-have-jewelry-like-carrie-charlotte-miranda-and-samantha/#more-319

As a TV addict and fan of "Sex in the City" it was a pleasant surprise to get the message this mroning form the writer of the site telling us we are one of the jewelers menioned. My Big Bold Cobalt Blue Simple Glass Pendant is mentioned as something Samantha would wear.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

More flowers even though it's snowing

Well it's definitely not spring around here but I've been making more spring flower earrings using my new czech glass beads. Lots of people use these beads ,especially all over Etsy but I'm hoping to add my own "twist" to them. Get it? "twist"?
These earrings are a smaller simpler version of the pair I posted about in my last blog entry.
Single Stem Purple and Periodot Flowers and Swirls Earrings.



These are Pretty in Pink Little Loops and Flowers Earrings. They have a nice pastel, soft pretty feel about them. Heck , even I would wear them.
This is our sleepy little engineer who passed out with his hands on the geo trax train controls in the tweety bird engineers seat.

Monday, January 21, 2008

yesterday people liked us....

Top Seller! Yeah Baby!
Yesterday was crazy.It was like one of those days before Christmas with sales coming in all day. It began with one huge 12 item order and it just kept coming. We ended up as the fourth top seller for the day of non supplies. Here is the screen shot to prove it:

We actually sold more than the chart shows.We have no idea why we sold so much. We weren't in any treasuries or on the front page or in the gift guide and there didn't seem to be any significant recent blogs mentioning us. I think it has something to do with not selling anything the day before just so that we can confirm that life is perverse or at least business is unpredictable.


This is my newest design using some of my new czech glass beads. I call it Purple Vining Flowers and Tendrils Sterling Silver Earrings. How's that for a mouthful of earring?
I bought a whole bunch of various flowers and leaves and feel a really tacky gem tree creation in my future. I'll try to just stick to tasteful jewelry.


This is Max admiring Henry's smores snowman creation that he made at preschool.We love his school.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

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...


Sunday, January 06, 2008

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.