Whee!

OMG, I got a listed in a Treasury! My first one!

Thanks to corkycrafts for including me! (And I seriously crave a couple of those other pieces there...)

Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday deals I've seen so far:

• Don't forget the Artbeads one mentioned in the post below - ends at 11 this morning, Eastern time (which is a bit odd)
• Lillypilly Designs: save 20% on entire site and receive $2 shipping (in US) - code 20thankyou
• Patterns from Bead & Button/BeadStyle are 50% off
• There are lots of Cyber Monday sales going on at Etsy (including mine!) but here are a bunch of them.
• Happy Mango Beads has 20% off gemstone beads today only, and 20% off their great recycled glass beads (and their shipping is always free in the US)
• Magpie Gemstones has 10% off (and free shipping in the US & Canada) - code thanks09 (and I'm guessing that one might be good longer than just today)

I'm sure there's more but that's what I found in my in-box and a quick surf around. Happy shopping!

Sugar skulls

I've got my "Black Friday" promo up on Etsy - I'm offering free shipping anywhere in North America, and reduced shipping elsewhere (either $3 or $1, depending on the item). And I reduced the price on the wirework pendant - I knew I had set it a bit high in the first place!

I gave in yesterday and went to the Michael's store in Houston that's carrying the Crafty Chica stuff. It seemed kind of silly to drive up to Houston just to go to Michael's (considering that there are Michael's stores within 5 or 10 miles of my house in about 3 different directions) but the more I thought about it the more I really wanted to check it out. If anybody local happens to be reading, the store is at Bissonet and Weslayan - it's a nice big store, considerably bigger than the suburban ones I usually frequent. Because it's big (I guess) it's arranged a little differently - it has the scrapbooking stuff on the left as you come in, and the jewelry stuff is on the right, instead of being on the left where it is in the store I go to the most often. Which meant I automatically veered to the left, and the jewelry - and the Crafty Chica display, which was nearby - was practically the last thing I came to. Never fails. But it looked good, when I finally found it, and a lot of the stuff was nearly gone so I guess it's good that I didn't wait any longer!

There were Day of the Dead charms! I had to get those!

I don't know how well you can see the little drawings, but they are all little line drawings of skeletons - Catrina and the like. So cute! (There was another set that was color, but I've forgotten what they looked like already. Aha, here are both sets, and yeah, that's what I was thinking - they weren't Day of the Dead related so I forgot what they looked like immediately!)

Then there was some non-bead stuff: papers

with sugar skulls and hearts and such, so of course I had to get them too. And then there was the great big sugar skull (an iron on):

I have no idea what I'm going to do with it but I had to have it. Actually there are two: the big skull and a smaller loteria-card skull. I could put them in my long, long delayed Day of the Dead quilt that I've been saying for years I was going to make, or I could put them on a tote bag or something. I haven't made up my mind.

Polymer issues

I guess I ought to do a post - if I wait until later today I'm liable to get busy and forget! The only beading-related activity that went on today was a trip to Hobby Lobby and Michael's. This mostly came about because I have been watching for Hobby Lobby to put polymer clay on sale and they finally did. I went ahead and bought Kato, because that is what I already had. I looked at Fimo and it has a lower recommended baking temperature so you can't really mix the two. And I went looking around for a teflon sheet because I thought that might do for a work-surface. I know they sell them for quilters, but HL didn't have them that I could find. I finally bought a sheet meant for doing fondant from the Wilton aisle - I think it might do. I want to start playing with this a bit. The only other jewelry-related thing I bought was some (non-Swarovski) crystals to try in the donuts. Oh, and I bought some acrylic paint to "age up" my theoretical polymer clay beads with, too. We'll see how all that works out. I will definitely report on my clay efforts when I get there.

I have decided that I'm not going to try to get a lot more jewelry up onto Etsy right away. All I said originally was I wanted to get the shop up and a few things into it before Christmas, and I've done that. I'm spending too much time on jewelry when I really need to be studying. If I get a few more things in, fine, but if I don't, that's fine too. (I may put some stuff on sale right before Thanksgiving, actually - or offer free shipping. I haven't worked out which, yet.)

Things that might be for sale

I have four, count 'em, four Etsy items up now. I don't know why that makes me feel so much more like I have a legitimate store than I did a couple of days ago when there were only two items, but it does. I have a 5th item (the onyx wirework piece) ready to go as soon as I can get decent pictures of it. I think I'm going to have to have daylight - the onyx is so reflective that photographing under Ott-lights like I've been doing just doesn't work well at all. You get a piece of onyx and the reflection of the light bulb - it's very odd-looking. Here's an example:

 

(That's actually the back.) Come to think of it, I guess item #6 (the aqua beaded necklace) will be ready to go as soon as I find or make some copper jumprings and make an extender for it - right now it's not quite 16" and that's too short. And actually I was thinking about putting the bracelet I made in my last class up, too - I don't think I've posted a picture of that one yet:

So that would make 7 items. (I think I need to start putting one of those "your monitor settings may vary" disclaimers on my listings, because it's so darn hard to get colors right. I don't know that these colors are wrong, but the green beads look a lot more neon-green here than I think they are in real life.) Although I haven't quite decided about the bracelet, for sure. I'm waffling.

Monday misc.

1. I had a minor freak-out yesterday about wrapped loops - mine are just not as perfect as I want them to be. I'll get there with practice, I guess, but I also decided that if I have to put some stuff up on Etsy with simple loops, so be it. I've never had any trouble with my simple loops coming apart, so I don't know why I think there's this unwritten rule that says I can't use them. I need to get over it.

2. (I've actually had these a week or two, but I know I haven't posted the picture!) Here's part of the stuff that came in the Beads of the Month package for October:

(Blogger's photo-downloader is being wonky, so this is direct from Flickr, and if you click on the picture it should take you to the bigger version!) There were some great beads - I've already made earrings out of some of the agate leaves, and I really love those moons. There were more skulls besides the small ones pictured - there were some more of the bigger ones like I had on my necklace, in the 1" range. Which is cool because I'm thinking I definitely want to make one or two more of those necklaces next year!

3. Today I got a huge package full of decoupage beads in the mail. They're beautiful but I'm going to have to figure out what to do with them. Some of them have really gigantic holes, so I'm thinking cord may be the best solution. (The person who made them, however, has voiced the opinion that they should be on sterling. I'm inclined to think that that would be a waste of sterling wire, since you wouldn't be able to see it under those huge beads, anyway!)

(There's a saying around the internets that "5 random things make an entry" - I've always wondered who made that rule. What, 3 random things isn't an entry?)

2nd Etsy item up!

I'm having, like, performance anxiety issues with my Etsy jewelry. I think everything I put up has to be PERFECT. But I finally did get a pair of earrings that I decided passed muster. They are moss agate leaves:

(The listing is here.)

I was disappointed because I had a pair of big faceted quartz rondelles that I thought would make great earrings, and the second one turned out to have no usable hole at all. (Lesson: double-check the holes in gemstones before you start thinking you have an earring pair.)

A family affair

My sister is experimenting with treating wooden beads with a sort of modified decoupage technique - these are early samples but I think they have promise!

She is going to give me some to play around with; if this goes well, you may be seeing jewelry using her beads in my Etsy store before long!

(Incidentally, the Etsy store is live, although there's only one item in it right now - the pink wire-wrapped piece I showed off yesterday. I am working on getting pictures of more items so I can add more listings.)

Etsy!

Last night I made an Etsy store. I am not planning on going into business in a big way, but I thought I could at least start to feel my way between now and the holidays. I'm going to have to figure out how to do that and school too, though, which is going to be a trick. I'm just going to have to make darn sure it cuts into my free time and not into school. This partly started because I was looking around Etsy for a blog header, and I thought, well, while I'm at it I should probably get an Etsy header too, which meant I had to figure out the name issue, and one thing led to another. I'm not entirely satisfied with my resolution of the name issue, but I'm just going to live with it for the time being and if I come up with something I like better later then I'll think about changing it next year, maybe.

So this will be my Etsy store - although there's nothing there to look at but a placeholder right now:

DeliciousBeadsByMel.etsy.com

It's sort of a clunky name, but DeliciousBeads and DeliciousJewelry were both taken (although neither one is an active store), and I sort of wanted to stick with the "delicious" name. I think I had actually checked on that last year when I started this blog, too, but I didn't try to reserve the name back then - maybe I should have! I even checked registered trademarks last night, and I'm in the clear on that, too.

(I thought about posting the picture of the Etsy header I bought, but since it's eventually going to be the blog header too, in a modified form, I'll let it be a surprise.)

Big apatite

My intent was to post all the pretty things I found here, but I haven't done too well so far. I love this one, though.

Apatite gemstone bracelet from expressionsbyerica, on Etsy.