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.

Designer,inventor,human mop and more

We have been having a full yet simple summer. Lot's of playdates, a birthday party, the annual adoptive families picnic held by the nicest people, the annual Brooks Steam Up that Nick blogged about and more swimming classes involving me getting both kids and myself dressed ,then undressed ,then dressed with swimdiaper, then briefly showered ,then swim for half hour, then showered ,then undressed,then dressed then repeat the next day for two week intervals.
Henry has been very busy creating and showing off his designing skills in all areas. His Lego earrings sold last saturday at the market and one of the pendants I made based on his design sold as well. I made about 4 pendants that I hung on our pendant display next to each other. Throughout the day I would have to detach them from each other. I guess it is just irresistable for random customers to not stick lego's together.
A couple of nights ago when I was really hoping we would be getting ready for bed he insisted that he wanted me to help him make a "sweet little jacket". Not being one to stifle my son's creativity and because I am the most lenient and lame parent when it comes to enforcing bed time I became his "factory" worker (his words, not mine). He told me to cut off the cuffs and neckline of his camoflage longsleeve T-shirt. He then instructed me to cut down the front of it to make a jacket. Then he picked out specific buttons and placed them where I was to sew them on. I did a quick simple job of it and then cut little button holes on the other side to match up.

Here is the serious model and designer:

A jubilant designer in his sweet little jacket.


And this is the tag that he insisted that I cut off the collar and sew a button to and then sew to the back bottom of the jacket. He has always been fascinated by the spare button that often comes with new sweaters , coats and shirts that is sewed on the inside and out of view. This is his hommage to the spare button.

Here he is unbuttoning his coat. I think the moose T shirt underneath works really pulls the whole outfit together with the camo jacket.

As long as I'm going on about the creative impulses of my child ...

He insisted that I tie sponges to his feet to make sponge shoes so that he could clean the floor for me.

And these are the towel shoes I came up with so that he could dry the floor. Frankly, that was the cleanest my kitchen floor has been in years.

And so this isn't just one of those annoying "Look How Smart and Cute My Kid Is " blogs-

Here is one of my latest listings on Etsy. It is the Light Weight Big Aluminum Celtic Budding Spiral Pendant . It is a simple easy inexpensive item that has been selling really well at the market and I sold two of this week.

We discovered an amusing Cheeto this week. We think it looks like Squidward from Spongebob. Right after I took the picture Henry devoured it.

Sticky ,sandy, filthy fun

What strawberries? I didn't smush strawberries all over my head and shirt.

Well yeah, maybe I did...

My brother thought the strawberries would be a good undercoat for the sand that he said I needed in my hair.

Sand is fun!

All this happened within the first hour of waking up in the morning. Two year olds are very filthy cute little beings.

I was going to add some pictures of some new jewelry but apparently blogger won't let me do it. So this is one of those all cute, filthy Max posts.

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

Jigs and trains

This is the jig Nick made for me to make the sterling silver earwires I use on the big aluminum earrings. I needed to make earwires that are larger than the ones we use for all our other earrings because of the large diameter of the aluminum. I was making them by just bending the 20 gauge half hard wire around my fingers. This jig is somewhat quicker but more importantly allows me to make a consistent size earwire.

This is my stubby finger holding down the end of the wire that is still attached to the big coil of silver wire. This way we have no waste.

Snip...


Here they are on a finished product. These Big Chunky Chain Aluminum Earrings look really heavy but are amazingly light. I sold a couple of pair this week for the first time.Yippee

This is our Big Aluminum Treble Clef Pendant.

Brothers...

Henry wears this shirt almost everyday. He loves Thomas the Tank Engine and all things Thomas. It was traumatic week last week when they announced the recall of certain Thomas wooden trains and accessories that were painted in lead tainted red paint in China. We studied the pictures on the website and gathered up our two trains, a box car ,railroad crossing sign and stop sign and put it in the big bubble mailer (which luckily we have a lot of) and sent them back to the factory. It will take 6 to 8 weeks before they will send back replacements and a "free gift". Henry has all sorts of wonderful fantasies about what the free gift or "prize" as he calls it will be. I keep trying to remind him that it will probably be something he doesn't like or want so that he isn't disappointed. Every once in a while he still falls into despair when he realizes that another day has gone by and he still doesn't have his trains (as if he doesn't have 30 other ones to play with right here in his happy home.) I think the Thomas company needs to compensate parents across the world who have had to deal with this psychological trauma with more than a free gift.

I'm thinking an all expenses paid vacation in Hawaii would be fair compensation.

Fame,legos and wirework

Life has finally gotten back to normal busy instead of crazy busy. You can read all about our 15 minutes of internet fame on Nick's blog. Briefly, Nick's silly yet clever HTML Head earrings got picked up in a bunch of blogs and websites and were on the front page of Digg.com for about 24 hours. This resulted in a tremendous amount of sales in a very short amount of time. It has been very exciting and overwhelming but the fad has died down and we are now only selling a few a day. Which is great too.

Henry on his own designed these Lego earrings. He picked them out and told Nick precisely where he wanted them to be drilled so that they could be lego beads. He then took them to me and told me how he wanted them to be made into earrings. Then he told me to take pictures of them to sell on Etsy and to sell for $5 at Saturday Market.


He also designed this earring card for them to be displayed on.

Here is the desperate craftsman pleading for a sale. I did take them to the market and put them on our $6 earring board. They got lots of looks and laughs and comments. They didn't sell this week but I'm sure they will eventually. But then I realized that they would sell best as a pendant on our $5 pendant rack.So next week we'll make a bunch of lego pendants.

Another occupation of Henry's is farmer. He decided he wants this to be his Halloween costume and is practicing wearing it.

Max!

I got two recent requests for my Dragonfly wirework earrings to be made with blue beads. So these are them. I now sell them on Etsy and at the market.

This is another new design. Sterling Silver Spirals in a Circle earrings.

I also make these big in aluminum. They seem to do well in both sizes.
Sometimes.

to market, to market...

Well it's time to squeeze in some blogging into the already overfilled seconds of my life. Henyr is eating mac -n- cheese (the "white" kind ie. safeway organic brand) for breakfast and Max is having his billionth sippy cup of watered down juice. Bob the builder is temporarily keeping their attention. So that's how I do all this in case you were wondering- How does she do it all?This is what my booth looks like on the corner of 8th and Park on saturdays after I've gotten everything out of the car. It is usually about 9:20am at this point.

This is how it looks when everything is finally set up a mere 40 to 50 minutes later.

This is the big breadwinner
board of aluminum earrings. Please note the signs to the left which say "Light Weight Aluminum Earrings-with Sterling Silver Earwires"

Apparently they are invisible to most humans.

All day long I hear the potential customer say, "Those look really heavy " with a disappointed and disapproving tone. I cheerfully say in my I -think- you -are -all -so- smart- and -clever-really tone

"But they're not! They're aluminum!" (What a miracle !)

And then the PC (potential customer) picks it up and says "oh you're right! It is so light! But I can't wear that in my ears. They are too sensitive.

And again I say cheerfully because I love everybody, especially when they give me their money in exchange for my goods)

" The earwires are sterling silver!"

The PC then says something like " Really? They are? ohhhh!"

And this conversation repeats itself all day long with the intermittent PC becoming an actual paying customer. Occasionally after this conversation they say

"oh look, it says it right here."

Yes indeed it does. But then I wouldn't have the pleasure of having this conversation with you.... and you and you and you.

This is Elizabeth ,my market comrad who has been selling at the market as long as we have and is set up across from us. I stare at her booth all day long. I am delighted that she has temporarily moved on from the incense business especially as the allergy season commences and her extra layer of incense filled air really exasperates the twitchy allergy nose. She is now making faux dessert candles.

And now for the mandatory cute pictures of the boys:

How did my big brother get up there?

I did it! He actually was saying that when I took this picture.

Well Bob the Builder has lost their attention and I can no longer ignore my children. Nick is at an auction today so I guess I better figure out what the heck Max is freaking out about. dodo's?