Old new things and new old things

I've added some new items to our shop in the past week or so. This is a really old design I made back when I had time to sit and carve by hand in reverse our steel dies. We call this one:
Fertility Goddess Woman and Pearl Sterling Silver Pendant

and the matching earrings:

Fertility Goddess Woman Sterling Silver Stamped Earrings


This is another old design that has been made smaller and in sterling silver and just added to our Etsy shop:
Celtic Knot Infinity Swirl Sterling Silver Cross Pendant


And this is another old design that I reworked:
Celtic Loops Sterling Silver Earrings
I make this large and bold in aluminum and tiny and sweet with a little iolite bead in sterling silver. A customer asked for it to be larger but in sterling silver. Duh! why didn't I think of that?

On the home front our old friends,the neighbors goats and Mama Llama are back visiting with us for the summer to eat all our nasties.Welcome back girls! (or are they boys? I can't remember.)

We ordered caterpillars again for our butterfly tent this spring. They quickly made their cocoons and emerged as butterflys. Henry hates to say goodbye to them.

Here's another quick and silly barely crafty easy toy Max came up with for me to make. He says it's the terminator guy.Cardbaord, pipe cleaners and scissors and you too can have a quick crappy toy for your 4 year old little dude.

Henry and I are going on a short trip to Long Island NY next week to visit my brother and his family and celebrate my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. I haven't been back east in about 10 years. I can't wait to eat some good NY pizza, bagels and chinese food and see family I haven't seen in a very very long time.I'm hoping Max and Nick are not scarred for life.

New things!

We've had some great ideas from our customers lately. Yay customers!

I had a potential customer ask if I could make a shawl pin using my Celtic Knot Infinite Swirl Cross Ornament design. It was a great idea and this is what I came up with.

Celtic Knot Infinite Swirl Cross Aluminum Shawl Pin/ Hair Pin

She liked it and bought it and it is now a regular item in our Etsy shop. We already sold one to someone else too!

Our buddy Liz asked us to make this Chinese Character for "True" Pendant.


And the Chinese Character for "Beautiful" Pendant.

Mimi and Moe's Mom aka Karen asked us to make "Infinity Symbol " Earrings. Another great idea and we already sold a pair to someone else too!Thanks Karen!

This another sort of new design. I reworked my Fancy Loop Hoop Earrings to give it a teardrop shape. This is called:

Teardrop Fancy Loops Sterling Silver Earrings

I really liked my Fancy Loop Hoop Earrings ...

but realized that I prefer a longer teardrop type shape for my own particular face shape.

That's all the new stuff this week.
Busy ,busy ,busy...

Doubt and stuff

This weekend has been a reminder not to get too cocky and expect success. The weather was perfect, the football game had a perfect late kickoff time of 4pm and it seemed like it would be a good weekend at the market. Wrong wrong wrong.
I've done better in the rain. Then to top it off and push the self doubt to completion we sold absolutely nothing online for two days all weekend. nada, zilch,big fat zero. Big losers. The self employment and self esteem roller coaster took the downhill plunge. That's like a "self" sandwich between employment and esteem all rolled into one tasteless bitter disappointing snack. Perhaps I'm being a bit dramatic.
So I am holding off on the giant glass supplies order I was about to make until I feel confident again that I will indeed be selling lots of stuff soon.
This upcoming weekend is the Corvallis Fall Festival. We will once again be selling in our regular pretty good spot across from the "real" Fall Festival at the First Christian Church Craft Fair that cleverly takes place on the same weekend and much to the ire of the "real" Fall Festival is almost impossible to discern from the "real" Fall Festival where the participants pay significantly more in fees for the privilege of being juried "artists". (The word "artist" said in snooty, self righteous tone.) My expectations are now properly lowered for the weekend sales.

We added the Aluminum Widget Pendant and these Black Stone and Fresh Water Pearl Swirl Earrings to our Etsy shop .

And now on to the real purpose in living and the reason we try to sell all this stuff so we can have money to buy our little imps more crap.

Torturing your brother!

Yikes!

Loving your brother!


The girls are back!The brown one is Grover who is actually a boy.

Mama Llama ,their serious protector.

The amazing path that our neighbor Chris made through our jungle. The goats are doing an impressive job destroying all the blackberries,poison oak,and general overgrowth of our poorly maintained property.They are like little tractors tearing it all down and we love them for it.

Henry the grape picker. The only fruit he will eat and only if it is from our vines.

This is what happens when you let a pumpkin grow throw the chicken wire fencing that we put around the bed to stop the deer from eating it.

The end of blackberry season. I was wrong. Actually henry will eat blackberries too if he picks them or demands I pick them for him.

"Tight" Jewelry

This past weekend was the Eugene Celebration. Sales vary greatly from year to year on this wekend. Many regular market vendors take the weekend off because they feel there is just too much competition with all the other stuff going on in town. Not to mention you have to set up an hour earlier than normal to get out of the way for the big annual parade that goes right past the market. But this year they wisely planned it on a weekend that there were no football games. (The 12:30 kickoff Ducks football games are usually the death of fall sales at the market. ) I did suprisingly well and sold more than the usual amount of these lovely Swirly Girly Princess Mirrors.
I was also reminded again of what an old fart I am. Apparently our jewelry is "tight". This phrase has been repeated quite a few times by the young hip kids who have come by the booth lately. I assume that they mean it is "cool", "sweet", "da kind","chronic" or very nice. When did "tight" become the new cool word? And is it like a tight joint? A tight music jam?A well formed buttocks? Or something from a scene in "High School Musical"?
I was also reminded of my old age when looking through a music magazine a few months ago. It had a photo of a rock show and all the people in the audience were holding up their glowing cell phones in the dark facing the band at the end of the show. In my day we held up our bic lighters to declare our delight and desire for an encore. (And we damn well liked it sonny.)

I digress...
Etsy continues to please us with constant regular sales and what appears to be the beginning of Christmas shopping. We sold a lot of these Cobalt Iridescent Blue Glass earrings.

and the matching Cobalt Blue Big Iridescent Pendant

and more of these Sterling Silver Celtic Budding Spiral Earrings which have become my favorite everyday earring lately.

This pendant has been selling really well too. The Celtic Budding Spiral Large Light Weight Aluminum Pendant. Do you see the matching earrings and pendant theme here?

In the meantime I have been trying to order supplies and keep up with all the maddness while stepping over the filthy debris scattered throughout my home and of course being a perfect mother to my little angels. My favorite new jewelry box supplier is http://www.fetpak.com/. Their prices are comprable to all the others but they have free shipping which really makes them a great deal. With the holidays coming up I felt like I need to have boxes for the more expensive items we well since so many of our things are gifts. My favorite bubble mailer supplier is http://www.royalmailers.com/ which also has totally free shipping with reasonable prices which makes their prices even better. Now to find a place to store all this stuff.

Speaking of being a perfect parent , I have been reading a book for the first time in a long time-

I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood

It's written in a large print easy to read ,short sections with large funny quotes perfect for 2 minutes in the bathroom at a time reading sessions. It's always nice to know that I am not the only insecure mentally ill woman out there who judges herself and others harshly. Of course I knew that already but still it's great to get that reinforcement. One of my favorite quotes came as I was having a little glass of wine and read -

"My girlfriends and I decided that 4pm is the "new 5" when it comes to pouring that first glass of wine everyday."

Nothing new and mindblowing. The typical Oprah/Dr. Phil/Rachel Ray type stuff, (in fact I remember seeing the women who wrote the book on Oprah)-take time for yourself, don't overschedule, learn to say no, communicate your needs, lighten up, be realistic blah blah blah.

I already knew all that. I'm perfect after all. And so are you.

widgets and grandparents

We've had a busy few weeks. I keep thinking I can't possibly come up with new jewelry designs and then as I am trying to fall asleep at night I start thinking about spirals and swirls and designs we already have and new versions start forming in my sleepy mind. This is a take on our celtic spirals and swirls with some iolite dangling. It kind of looks like an angel if you are in the mood.

We call these Aluminum Widget Earrings. I was climbing through our carport full of Nick's crap- I mean really important things he's found and bought throughout the years that we are storing until they find their proper home - and I noticed a bin of aluminum scrap that yelled to me- Hey idiot, look here! Earring parts!

So I dug through and cleaned them up ,stuck an earwire on them and wa la.

The dreary overcast weather was perfect for photographing jewelry and I got this ideal shot. I listed the earrings and they sold in a few hours on Etsy. But don't worry. We have lots more.

Here is Henry our almost 5 year old drilling the lego pieces with Nick. Hey pay attention to the drill!

Now he's focusing on the handle that he pulls down to drill the holes. Those earrings have been astoundingly successful at the Saturday Market.

My parents came to visit this week from Albuquerque. It was a relaxing visit filled with lots of reading and sitting and mayhem.

Max and Grandpa Joe in a quiet moment.

Grandma Fran in a not so peaceful moment

Henry goofing around with Grandpa.

More reading. Notice Grandma Fran's Lego earrings and the book is Lego book too. Such synchronicity!

Brothers

Attempting to get a good group picture. This was the best one out of about 20. (And frankly, not so flattering. )

Tomorrow I go to the Saturday Market. Hopefully I shall return home with a pile of money and interesting stories to share with the boys.

new stuff and brothers

This is a new design that just sold for the first time on Etsy today! It is our Sterling Silver Vining Spiral in a Teardrop Earrings.

Here is another fairly new design which is actually a rework of an old old design I used to do.It sold this week too! Moss Green Fresh Water Pearl with Dangly Garnet Earrings.

You can see I am very clever with the titles of these pieces.

This is collaborative effort. I bought the glass beads and then Nick said something about how he should have a ball of silver yarn to play with. We have been seeing the Ball of Silver Earrings selling a lot on Etsy which kind of surprised me that it was so popular. So I ran with the idea and as our description in the listing says, we are taunting this dignified kitty with the yarn ball. It was featured in an Etsy treasury today which was somewhat exciting.

And now onto the cute kids pictures. The theme for this week is "Brothers"...

Henry designed this robot costume. He told me exactly where to cut the holes and how he wanted it to be. He originally had me make it for himself but then decided that it would be better on his brother. Max was a more than willing and very cute participant.

Co-drivers of the car. Two can fit in there, really...



This is Henry's newest entree in his repetoire of Mac n Cheese delights. It is called the Easy Mac n Cheese Burrito. The ranch dressing really kicks it up a notch. And of course there is not a trace of a healthy vegetable anywhere in this cheesy masterpiece except perhaps some bleached out corn in the tortilla. It's all in the presentation. He insisted that I wrap it aluminum foil like the real burritos that we get at La Roca in Philomath. (A delightful taqueria that we highly recommend.)

mmmmm