The next phase

I've been very intrigued by electroetching brass, and I've made the first, tentative steps toward doing so. Today I visited a hardware store and picked up polyurethane varnish, and a brush. I'll pick up a car charger at a Murray's, and they might have copper sulfate as well. I'm going to compare prices for blanks and order some this week.

For years I've thought it would be intriguing to have the ability to pick and choose artwork somehow, and attach it to some kind of merchandise. I always though that T-shirts would be fun to design, for example. I find myself intrigued by the etching process, and I'm already wondering which kinds of designs would work best. I'll definitely be photographing the process and sharing it with you all.

And finally, they are here!

I've just listed 42 lots of glass gems in my eBay store. I'm so excited! They are just awaiting being labeled with their item numbers, and then in the drawer they'll go.

I feel like I've been doing this forever...

...this cropping of pictures, this prepping and adjusting. I'm nearly done, though, and I have a good feeling about it. The glass gems will be going up so very soon. Tomorrow, or perhaps Monday. Here's a sneak peek:






I'm crossing my fingers that I'm able to list them all very soon. And then I'll start on the rhinestones...

The scanning continues unabated...

I have just finished scanning in all of the new glass gems lots. All sixty or seventy of them. This should be an exciting project! I still have the rhinestones left and the odd cabs left.

Next step? Cropping and cleaning up the pics. That will be the work of a day or two. And then working in TurboLister to set up the listings and post them. I'm very intrigued to see the reaction to these. Some of them are very small, some of them are unusually-shaped, and they're all in very nice colors, so hopefully they'll be popular.

The weekend beckons

My parents are staying with us this weekend, which means I'll be putting off listing the huge batch of glass gems I'm working on right now.

I have some really cool sets, and I think they'll be popular.

Of course, this brings me to a dilemma. I have always listed them as "glass gems," but I now see that a major company is calling them "stones."

This is the type of merchandise I'm talking about:



I'll have to research them on eBay and see what the most common term is. I always have balked at calling them "stones," because they're glass, but if this is the usual term then I'll have to start revising my listings.

Home again

And for more than five days this time! A whole month.

I have an enormous backlog of items to list in Etsy, and I have finally managed to finish cropping and editing the pics so that I can begin listing them in my Etsy store. Thank goodness!

I'm so excited about being able to work on a few things this month. Plus, in September I'll be taking a few metalsmithing classes. I've taken metalsmithing before, but I thought it might be nice to do it again.

Hope you all are having a great summer so far. For me, it feels like it's just beginning, hee!