Unfortunate news

I just drove in from a business trip to find out that my grandmother passed away tonight. Fortunately, I will be home for six days and that will allow me to help my family out with the arrangements before I leave again.

And another Day of the Dead necklace...

...this one featuring a lovely pendant by Gaea (website).

Which brings me to a small story. I originally ordered the pendant in March, and read her emailed instructions, which stated that the order would be custom-made and the next firing would be in April. For some reason, I don't think I really understood that I'd receive it April; I thought I would receive it in May. I didn't need the pendant until late August, so I wasn't concerned.

Well, May (and June) are crazy months for me because of Bead & Button, and I didn't even think about the pendant. It wasn't until July that I remembered it.

I contacted Gaea, who was extraordinarily nice, and she researched it and said that the pendant had been shipped in April.

I was flummoxed, until I realized that my home Paypal address was incorrect--it was still listed as the apartment address. The business address was correct, and I'd assumed it would be shipped there.

Since Gaea never received it back, and we never received it, I believe that it was either lost in the mail, or stolen by the apartment's new tenant, which makes me very unhappy indeed, considering that an entire set of checks was sent there by mistake and they still haven't resurfaced.

But I digress. I purchased a new pendant from Gaea, who very kindly looked through her inventory to find something similar, because there wasn't enough time to have a new one made.

My picture doesn't do the pendant justice, but here it is:



Frosted black onyx, faceted pearls, antiqued sterling silver chain.

Making jewelry

I haven't made much jewelry recently, but I did make a piece for a dear friend of mine:



It's very simple, meant to be a casual piece.

The skull pendant is from Andrew Thornton of Green Girl Studios and is made of bronze clay, and the beads are fossilized wood.

I've always loved skulls and memento mori, and it's wonderful to be able to design with such a fun piece!

New rhinestone lots going up on eBay!

I've spent this week getting a new set of rhinestone lots ready for my eBay store. It's been tricky, as always, looking up the specific lingo for these items, and also making certain that I get each listing correct. I always have to triple-check new listings because there are so many little pieces of information in each one.





I'm just going through my second check right now, and hopefully I'll be able to list all of these within the next few hours!

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!