kiss the rain Treasury

One of the best compliments you can receive on etsy is to be featured in someone's treasury. I'm been listed in a few, but decided it would be nice to capture them here for posterity since they disappear off of etsy after just a few days.

This treasury is called "kiss the rain.....spring showers are headed your way". It was selected by starfactory.

etsyBead Theme Week, Stormy Weather - March 23-29

I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in the southeast we've been having some really wicked weather. The etsyBEAD street team's theme of the week is therefore "Stormy Weather". Here are a couple of my theme items, and of course, they are on sale for this week only.

etsyBead Theme Week, Sunny Days - March 16-22

Each week, my Etsy street team, etsyBEAD, chooses a theme. Members select items from their shops and usually offer a discount off their themed items. The theme this week is "Sunny Days". Here are a couple of my theme items. A woman from my church was cleaning out her jewelry box, and realized she had more jewelry than she would ever wear. Knowing that I make jewelry, she brought me a bag full of stuff, and these beautiful pale yellow crystals were amongst them. I've had them for several months, and now that yellow is one of the "hot" colors for spring and summer, I knew now was the time to do something with these beauties. Thanks Tommie !

To see more of jewelry collection, visit my etsy shop at
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=10301694 or my website at http://www.beadifulworld.biz.

Taking out my frustrations !

It's been a really tough week. I'm taking two computer programming courses for my job, so I had a test in my Visual Basic class, plus my Javascript class was given two days to turn in an assignment, which interfered with my time to study for my VB test.

This morning I got up feeling the need to take out some of my frustrations, and the best way to do that is to get out my hammer. I have a variety of sizes of copper washers, so I hammered two different sizes, drilled a hole in the top and bottom and attached them with sterling silver jump rings. I then put three different sizes of Swarovski bicones in the color of Indicolite to help bring out that verdigris color that copper gets. I didn't want to use pre-manufactured earwires because they wouldn't blend with the rough hand-made look, so I made the ear wires by hand.

Bracelets for Bucks

One of my dearest friends, Pam Cuny, is very active in her community. One of the organizations she is involved with is the Animal Advocates of Barnwell County. This non-profit charitable organization is made up of volunteers, dedicated to rescuing, healing, safeguarding and giving new life to animals. They have taken on a project to open an "upscale" thrift store to raise money to eventually build an animal shelter.

Pam came up with the idea to have the organization purchase from me some inexpensive bracelets which could be sold for a small profit in their "Pick of the Litter" thrift store. Each bracelet would have either a cat or a dog charm on it and be for girls anywhere from elementary to high school. I used a variety of colors of Czech fire-polished beads and have been very busy making bracelets all week long. Here's just a few as a sample.

First ETSY Sale !!!

Late December I found out about this awesome site, etsy. Don't know if my head has been in the sand for the last couple of years, because etsy has been around for a while, but I just found out about it. I opened up my store, beadifulworld.etsy.com, and have been anxiously waiting to see what happens. I finally made my first etsy sale !! Recently I went to a bead show and found some bea-u-tiful Blue Crazy Lace Agate buttons, so I whipped up an entire sterling silver ensemble using the Blue Agate, which I offset with Swarovski Caribbean Blue Opal AB Bicones, Swarovski round Smoked Topaz and Pink Opal Nuggets. The bracelet sold, which still leaves me with the necklace and earrings. I'm so excited to finally have made a sale since January is traditionally a slow months for retail sales, plus there are just tons of awesome jewelry designers on etsy so the competition is TOUGH!

First Post to my blog

Just signed up for my blogspot, and so now I'm thinking.... now what? I'll have to do some pondering and see where my mind wanders off to.