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Friday, March 27, 2009

New Stuff and Big Remote Love


I started making jewelry with my new stone beads. This is the Little Lapis and Fresh Water Pearl Swirl Pendant


and the matching earrings.
The price was so good on these beads that I can sell the earrings for only $14 and the pendant for $10.


This is actually an older bead purchase that I finally got around to. The Unikite Sphere with Hematite Pendant that matches perfectly with our Tiny Unikite Sphere Earrings.


Long Nephrite Jade and Garnet Sterling Silver Swirl Earrings

This week we bought a new universal remote control for our TV entertainment conglomerate of VCR,satellite,DVD etc. Henry fell in love with the giant remote and it seemed like a reasonable idea since we are always losing it in the couch or somewhere else.




When I say "fell in love" I mean it.


He really loves the thing. Here he is giving it a big kiss.


He even made a special "holiday hat" for it out of pipe cleaners.

Good times with the boys!







Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Sales Milestone

We woke up to our 5,000th sale on Etsy this morning! It's pretty amazing and we are astounded at how well we have done on Etsy. We really don't know why we continue (knock on every good pice of wood there is) but so far so good.

We put together with our good friend and fellow wire wondress extrodinaire,Molly of muyinmolly a long interview style blog post on the Etsy Full Time Crafters Blog.
This was the 5,000th item we sold-Our Celtic Budding Spiral Light Weight Aluminum Shawl Pin.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Henry and Max's first circus


Yesterday I took the boys to the rinky dink non PETA approved circus that came to the Benton County Fairgrounds. I took them to Burger King before the circus thinking that it would fill their bellies and delay some possible meltdowns. Apparently Burger King was equally as exciting as the Circus. Henry really loves their burgers and the Nickolodean Burping Toy was the coolest thing ever.
Now onto the circus!


Their first cotton candy.


The essential lady on the ropes.

Henry really wanted to ride the elephant at intermission. He is third from the front.Max said he didn't want to and then regretted it when it was time to get on the elephant but it ws too late to get him a ticket.He survived.
I really hope the elephant doesn't have black eyes from being beaten. They looked really sad to
me.
Elephant butt! The juvenille in me couldn't resist this shot.

The "rare" siberian white tigers. I was worried I would be witnessing one of those terrible tiger- mauls- trainer episodes.

This was the funniest and most pathetic parts of the whole thing.They brought out this big sad bear with the humiliating tutu around his neck. They had him sit in the chair and continuously fed him cookies so that he wouldn't eat the children that were sitting on the other side of the plexi glass wall so they could take their picture with the bear.
He looked like he was having existential angst.
But the cookies must have been good.
Back to the jewelry world.
I decided on the name "Unfurling Tulip Lyre Light Weight Aluminum Shawl Pin".The two people who bought it so far told me they bought it because it looked like a Lyre. I really like the word "Unfurling" though so I stuck that in and it definitely was supposed to be a tulip so I stuck that in there too. So...
Liz and Trista please send me your address and I'd love to send you either this pin or anything else you'd like from our shop if you're not a pin person.
Pamellama and Mimi and Moe's Mom- I totally see the scepter too and like that but decided the Lyre was the way to go. Thanks for your input!
Now back to work. We are one sale away from our 5,000th online sale at Etsy!



Friday, March 06, 2009

Name this pin please! and other new stuff

I was inspired by the general shape of a flower for this pin design while I laid in bed the other night thinking.The next morning I made this and realized it looked like a lily.






Then I turned it upside down and saw that it looked kind of like a heart.So the rather ridiculous name I gave it is Spiraling Lily Heart Flower Light Weight Aluminum Shawl Pin.
So- I am asking once again for help in naming this pin. If I chose your name then I will let you know and send you one of your very own. I'll be posting this on our FaceBook fanpage too.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Philomath-OR/Nicholas-and-Felice/89993020021
This is another new Aluminum Shawl Pin that is taken from our sterling Silver Swirly Flower Earrings and Pendant design.This one is called
Another sort of new item in our Etsy shop is the Infinity Symbol Sterling Silver Pendant.We already had the earrings in our shop (thanks Mimi n Moe's Mom for that great idea!)
I also added the Colbalt Blue Glass Marble and Sterling Silver Wirewrapped Pendant to our shop to go with the matching earrings.
And now for some cute kid pictures-
Henry and Max tested for their orange belts in Taekwando about a week ago. They did great and it was incredibly cute.

Sunday, March 01, 2009

My Own Personal Gem Show

On Saturday we were lucky to be visited by our favorite old pal traveling bead salesmen-Peter. He is perhaps the most unique and free person I know. He is unbeholden to any society or culture and truly follows his own path. We met over 25 years ago in Hawaii when I was a young carefree traveler. (Well maybe not so carefree. )He continued to make traveling his lifestyle and calls whatever piece of earth his feet are standing on his home. He has been spending a lot of time traveling around rural China and Thailand lately and has developed close relationships with bead wholesalers in Hong Kong. He comes by every couple of years with his treasures and I get to go through and pick out new goodies while he entertains us with his traveling tales and philosophizes. He brought some fun gifts for the boys too.
These are some lovely African turqoise diamond shaped beads. It was so hard to not go completely crazy and over budget and I had to say goodbye to many of these lovelies.

Big gorgeous amazonite.


Chinese azurite "gogos"- their name for off centerd beads. I loved the shape and color but had to pass on these too:(


Astounding fossilized bamboo big chunky beads.I said goodbye to them also.
Peter and Henry entertained each other while I took hours to look at everything as he set up my personal gem fair in our driveway.
These are stunning British Columbia nephrite jade large rondells.

Alas I had to say goodbye to these too.
They will probably haunt me.
Some beautiful rainbow labradorite polished giant nugget beads. They got put back in his van too.

"For you number one quality special price"

This is some of what I did buy as I became more practical and had to put back about a third of what I wanted. These were a great deal on lapis and beautiful BC nephrite jade that will make stunning earrings.

Pink Lustery moonstone.


More of my picks-rain forest jasper aka rhyolite, azurite diamonds,african turquoise long thin ovals,sodalite,crazy lace agate and tons more.

These are astoundingly tacky and the fact that they are made from dyed howlite makes them even more so but I know they will sell really well as groovy pendants at the Eugene Saturday Market.

These were really tempting tiger eye buddha beads.
It was a really fun day. Now to find the time to make lots of new things with my new beads!