BABE! was fabulous and I sold most of my inventory- yiiippeee! Everyone was wonderful and I got to meet so many creative and friendly people- customers and other vendors. My table mate, Mary Tarara, had a gorgeous set up which I didn’t get pics of, to my shame. Hayley and Helen, Sadie, Toni L., and so many others were there w/ their beautiful work. A group of us ate out after Saturday’s show at Tamarindo a few blocks away and it was mind-blowingly delish! I hearted the Mulitas..yum-0!

I’m exhausted today since I had to drive 2 hours last night after the show to get home. I hope to get some work listed on Etsy in the next day or two once I get back into the swing of things.

Thanks so much to all the wonderful customers who bought my work, I’m thinking of doing this show again next year thanks to you ;)….of course, I’ll have to bring a lot more beads, lol!

It’s now less than 48 hrs until the start of BABE! 2009 and I’m trying to get a little done at a time so I don’t feel so rushed before leaving tomorrow afternoon. I did another banner type thing in Photoshop yesterday- although this isn’t going to be printed out, it’s going to be on my digital picture frame along w/ others I really like. Now to try and get on more torching session in before tomorrow..

Here is my promised pics of CiM’s new color, Mermaid. It’s so beautiful and saturated. You can see how bright it is compared to my usual palette- I discovered it doesn’t really react to silver in any way. I fumed it and laid wire and nothin’..but it does react to ivory w/ a dark line btwn the two colors. Just like Copper Green and Ivory.
Other CiM colors Mink and Tamarind Odd are below. The hollow w/ circles and dots is Tamarind Odd and Mink is the one w/ viney stringer work. Lots of possibilities w/ both, Dk. Ivory loves to spread out on Tamarind Odd as you can see on my hollow. The hollows were fumed also to see how they’d react and the Tamarind got noticeably darker. I’ll have to order more Mermaid for sure.

Periodically, Moo will send me emails w/ updates on their products, etc. and this morning I noticed one about a free website thru Moonfruit. I heart Moo and order my business cards and mini moo cards from them. I set up a free website, so now I can actually put up a url for a website rather than using my blog, lol. There is also an option to add a shopping cart so you can sell directly thru them w/ PayPal.

I’m not sure how this site compares to others, but I’ve always been intimidated w/ code since I’m not that computer literate and you can drag and drop which saves lots of time. Feel free to drop a comment and share your experience w/ Moonfruit or other similar sites.
Here is my new website– let me know what you think 🙂

One thing I’m not crazy with right off the bat is the whole having to add moonfruit in the url instead of just my name. They do have an option to buy a domain name and I *think* you can change it to that w/o using moonfruit in the url.

P.S. Have you tried CiM’s new color, Mermaid? Holy guac, it’s soooo beautiful! I’ll try and get pics for tomorrow.

I’m still busy getting ready for the show *in less than two weeks, eeek!* and it’s crazy how much stuff you have to take care of besides just making product to sell. I got an imprinter and short receipts so I can take credit cards and have been playing around this morning w/ signage for my Etsy shop since it was uber outdated. I’ll probably tweak it or just toss it and do something totally different for my show, but it was good for me to brush up on my skazillz – or lack thereof, lol- with Photoshop. (I’d be happy to take any constructive criticism 🙂 )Some of us Beady Gals got together on Saturday and gabbed, ate delicious food and got down to business on pricing, etc. for the show. I still need to decide how I want to do pricing on my work- tags, stickers, or…
I also got to see Lori and she showed some of her fabu! murrini that she sells in her shop. I can’t wait to try mine.
More posts to come once more progress is made. 🙂

Lynda Moseley is a recent customer who used some of my beads in her jewelry. She sells her gorgeous polymer clay pendants and jewelry on Etsy. I’ve long admired her polymer clay transfer pendants since they predominately have a botanical or nature theme, which I love! Here are just a few pics of her work using some of my beads:
Here is the link to one post on her blog where you can see more pics 🙂

Check out Susan Lomuto’s Daily Art Muse and you’ll lose yourself for hours clicking on all the gorgeous things she mines from different places – let me tell you, I never thought my work worthy of DA Muse! I’m actually one of the small pics on the front page right now- squeeee! Thanks, Susan 🙂

It’s been a coon’s age (lol) since I’ve played w/ Bronzclay and this time I had a hankerin’ for beadcaps.
There are so many things that I have to redo since I jumped in feet first w/o thinking ahead – for instance, I didn’t dry them on a rounded surface so I had to dap them *eeek* and Bronzclay is know to be very strong and hard to bend..if sintered properly.

My biggest dapping punch wasn’t big enough to encompass the biggest bead cap and so they crinkled a little and I tried to fix that. Even the smaller ones did that – if I would’ve dried them on a convex surface, I also would have been able to sand a bevel on the edge so it would be flush w/ the surface of the bead.

And the bead holes shrunk! I now have holes that need to be enlarged in order to fit my tubing since these were supposed to go on a bunch of hollow cored beads. Just waiting on my bead press. Waiting, waiting…
I’m worried that my drill bits will be stripped and dulled after enlarging the holes..we’ll see. The second attempt will have a more organized and well-thought-out approach- hopefully it makes a difference.

These beads will be listed tomorrow throughout the day.
The green hollows w/ copper green circles were so hard to photograph- the green is Slytherin from Messy Color and it’s such a rich green! It’s hard to get a hold of right now since supplies are limited until they send more, so I’m enjoying what I have.

I hope to have these all listed by tomorrow evening- this past weekend was a great one for torching, it was nice to play. Still experimenting w/ fuming and discovering something new everytime I torch. It seemed like a production assembly last night while I was etching beads and cleaning them.
Hubby has to make a comment everytime he walks past my hollow sets- “Those are huge beads!” or “Betty Rubble could’ve worn those.” I try to explain that although they’re different than most of the beads listed, why stop making them if they’re selling well? Let’s hope the trend continues 😉
Hope everyone had a wonderful and creative weekend!