Packing Up and Moving

It's been a fun run here, I suppose, but I've been experimenting with other blogging platforms, and I'll be moving the blog over to tumblr this weekend. The reason for this is because I'm already obsessively checking my dashboard all the time anyway, so I'll be able to update the blog more conveniently without having to log out of my personal gmail account or anything like that. The other reason is that it's much easier to link to a piece of jewelry through the picture, followers are easier to obtain, and people can easily "reblog" your photos or posts.

I will post the link to the new site when I've got it up and running, which won't be before tomorrow afternoon, at least. I hope you'll all follow me over, but if not, then best of luck to you. :)

Colossal Con OMG

I went to Colossal Con last weekend to sell my stuff in the Artist Alley they have there. For you non-Otaku, that's an area where artists sell their work without having to have a vendor's license. Most of the weekend was pretty okay, but I have a couple of small, short stories to share with you.

We had several really great customers (like the guy who offered to strip for a cookie), but these two almost were than some I've seen during my 11 years of working in customer service. For those of you familiar with the series My Little Pony, you know that each pony has a cutie mark on their ass. I received several polite requests to carry these in the future, but one older man-child took the cake. Our booth carries customized MLP dolls, and he first demanded (not asked - outright demanded) to know why we didn't carry any of those. Obviously, we're not a vendor, anything we sell like that has to be altered. Then he demanded to know why we had no cutie mark charms or keychains. Then he yelled at us about it for about five minutes. I snapped. Fuck this shit, amirite? We told him we'd think about it and to kindly fuck off because we had better things to do than argue with him about it and he was upsetting our paying customers. I'm not going to tolerate being screamed at by a 30+ year old man. Old guy should know better. I had 5 year olds better behaved than him!

I threw a Jolly Rancher at him, but it didn't hit. :(

----

The second one was on the last day of the con, and my wife had left me alone for a bit. We sell earrings for $5 each and we stick those in a Chocolate Frog box so people will dig through them. This child, age 11 so she said (so old enough to know how to behave on her own) came up to my booth. No parent was in sight. She was a little annoying, but I shrugged it off and smiled and talked to her kindly. She looked through everything, generally making a mess of things. When she got to the $5 box she decided to try on a pair of earrings; however, there was a problem.

See, her ears had closed. This was the exchange that followed:

 

Disgusting Small Girl-Child (DSGC): Oh, dangit, my ears closed.

Me: That's too bad. Maybe you should look at our charms and bracelets instead.

DSGC: No, that's okay. *digs through the box, pulls out another pair of earrings* I can just re-open them if I pierce them again.

Me: Okay, well, come back after you do that then.

DSGC: No, I can do it now if I just use these.

Me: *CLEARLY HORRIFIED*

DSGC: No, it's okay, I won't bleed on them. I can do it without blood, but my friend can't... *insert long disgusting story about pre-teens poking holes in each other's earlobes that I honestly didn't need to hear, omfg*

Me: No, please don't, that's not what those are for. *honestly tried to snatch them away*

DSGC: *backs up and gets it in* Okay, see, no problem! *tries on the other pair, doesn't buy anything, doesn't put the earrings back, doesn't clean up her mess. D8*

I confiscated the earrings and put them somewhere else. I was honest-to-freaking-whatever too shocked to do a damn thing. I just kind of sat there in horror while she did that. There is a bit of blood on one of the pairs. I have to sterilize it. I just. I don't even. WHERE WERE HER PARENTS?!?!?!?!?

I'll post pics from the con later. I'm still pretty bushed and I have two finals this week to study for still.

1001 Ways To Make Your Hands Hurt: #475

I only have another of these and two in another color to go. I've been going at this for an hour and a half so far. Making things for Colossal Con is painful.

It's been awhile

I'd like to preface this by saying that having to take accounting classes is by far the worst thing to ever happen to my ability to blog. It eats up all my time, it's hard, it makes me cry. Thus, this review is long-over due and I am going to post it even though I am stuck on the design!

The theme this time was all about winter, and so I decided I would try a multi-strand necklace for it. For the outer strand, I envisioned little snowflakes wired on to circles and the inner portions would contain chain and wire strung with seed beads.

Well, I finished the other strand and I'm pretty sure I've used some of everything I ordered. Here's what I started with:

• My own blue seed beads
• Blue crystals
• A toggle clasp
• Bicone crystals in blue and clear
• Clear, faceted glass
• Copper rings
• Snowflake links

I have a bit of an obsession with glass beads, especially the selection offered at Artbeads. Yet, somehow, I always end up drifting back to the familiar. With the exception of the graphic crystals I have used every other glass bead before. I love the shapes, the sizes, and the affordability as well as the flexible. They word well with a variety of other products and look well with many textures and colors and shapes. I mean this for all of the glass beads pictured here. They're absolutely fabulous. Go buy them right now.

The newer things to me were the copper parts. I've never used rings before, though I wanted to, and the snowflakes seemed perfect for winter: that's my favorite part (unless I have to leave the house). The rings are beautiful. You'll see a good picture in a moment. They're light without being too light and have a gorgeous texture and a dark tint. I abhor shiny copper. It's bright and obnoxious like gold. This dark color adds some depth and good contrast to the lighter blues and whites.











The snowflake, pewter, copper-plated links were the only things that really gave me trouble. I love them overall - they're durable and pretty - but I had a harm time putting eyepins in so I could use them how I wanted to. That's how they started. Then I thought to myself, "Gee, that looks really hideous. How can I fix this?"

It took a bit of thought and a lot of experimenting, during which time I started to get really mad at the remaining links, but this is what I ended up with. I'm rather proud of how they came out and, to be perfectly honest, I think it was worth the struggle I had with the small holes on the links.

That's much better, right? The circles were easy to wrap once I had the eyepin hooked onto the snowflake.

In the end, this is how things ended up:

Now I'll just add a few more shots so you can see the details better.

And that's the first part of what will likely take many hours to finish after all the summer booths are over with.

I have more new items to add tomorrow after I go see my accounting tutor. Only five weeks left of this class!

(Let's go ahead and put the legal stuff here, shall we? I am not being paid by Artbeads.com for my opinion on their items. I have received the above pictured items free of charge and am reviewing them honestly. Anything else in these photos was bought and paid for by me from other locations.)

Useless Apologies

Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging. I estimate that it does this to me about 99% more often than it does to other bloggers. I'd like be more active with posting, but I have so many reasons not to. In the last few months I have:

-Been told I might have a brain tumor
-Been sick 4 times
-Been helping my spouse with her possibly torn ligament but we don't really know because all the doctors have no openings for months in advance
-Been bogged down with work and a heavy courseload
-Gotten into a fight with financial aid about their dropping me starting this summer while I'm still about 40 credit hours out from my degree

That's not all of it, but that's a good deal of it. I do have an Artbeads review to post with an unfinished piece and I will get to it, but probably not for a couple more days.

In the meantime, I will endeavor to post more. Maybe I'll post something from my Etsy favorites every day. :) That would be interesting, right?

Moving Day! Click title to see new store

A good friend of mine discovered Artfire, and then I discovered all their awesome coupon features, so I'm leaving Etsy.

Here are some coupons you can use there (that Etsy doesn't allow you to do!):

For Free Shipping, enter "SHIPFREE".
For 20% off, this month's code is still "20OFFJANUARY".
The best: For $5 off of your purchase of $35 or more, enter "5FOR35".

New homepage?

Yup. I decided to give flavors.me a try. I really like it so far; it's a great way to keep all (or almost all) your links in one place. Mine is flavors.me/eclipsical.

I will have photos to post soon. It takes ages for me to wake up lately, it seems, so I'll post them this evening with any luck.

Clearance!

I have a new Clearance section! This jewelry is marked down and ready to go to a good home! There are lots of great bargains for the jewelry lovers on your gift list! Plus, you can use any discount coupons you have up to 50% off. :) Don't have a coupon? No problem. Send me a message and I will give you one!

 C L E A R A N C E 

H O L I D A Y   C L E A R A N C E

 Please check them out, and spread the word! 

Hard work and no play keeps one busy!

Today I've uploaded lots of new jewelry. I'll post a few pictures below. I'm also trying a new thing with the store. At the bottom of each item's listing, I'm adding a "Why we love it" section, I guess to try to get across what I see in each piece. Maybe it'll work, maybe not, but I need to come up with some way to get my products selling. :/ By the way, you can use coupon code "BLOGDEC15" to have 15% taken off your total at checkout until the end of the month. Use the code as many times as you like! Store link is at the bottom of this entry if you need it.

Advice is welcome.

Now the new pieces!

All together now: Oooooh!

I'm super proud of this one. It took me ages to get all the links uniform in loop size, but it was great practice for me. I think it looks a lot more grown up. The downside is that it's kind of busy (I think) and I don't really like pieces that aren't outrageously simple, but I think it's still pretty to look at.

Snowman!

I was just kind of experimenting with shapes here, and I hit on something that I liked enough to try to sell. :) I think the way the beads sparkle just kind of makes it.

 Jingle bells, jingle bells~

This bell makes the cutest little sound. :3 I love it, and the crystal, and the lights of the tree behind my wife, who is modeling for me.

Look, it comes in green too!

I kind of like the green better, not just because I like it more than red, but for the differences between the shades of green of the flower and the crystal.

  What a shine!

This necklace is all pearl, all the time, except for that super-cute gift pendant. That's pewter with antiquated gold plating. This necklace was also an excuse to practice with simple loops.

  Ice cream, anyone?

Its name is "Neapolitan" because that's what it makes me think of. Sweet strawberry, golden vanilla, and sexy, sexy chocolate are represented by the colors of the pearls. I think I'm getting kind of hungry just looking at it. The toggle clasp is  an odd to "twist" flavored ice cream.

I'm nuts for this set.

Speaking of pearls, let's have a look at my favorite creation! I call it "Lady Like" because 1. it's lady-like and 2. I'm a lady, and I like it. It's so soft and feminine without being annoyingly girly and overly pink and frilly. It's simple, but it keeps your eyes busy, plus I've never seen another set of earrings like those. The clasp, for me, is what makes it. It's nice without it, sure, but I think it wouldn't look quite so awesome without it.

  So green~!

Glass butterflies and light blue cats eye go really well together. For me, the best thing is that you can wear it year-round and it won't look out of place. It's light enough for winter, green enough for Yule or Christmas, perfect for spring and summer, and works well with the traditional autumn color palate. Awesome!

You feel happy looking at this, don't you?

I don't think I've ever had a bracelet that made me happier to look at than this one. It's just glass hearts and dark blue cats eye beads, but the contrast and colors are so cheerful that I can't help but feel happy when I look at this. :-)

That's all for today. I injured my back rather badly at Kohl's last week, so I've been working hard on jewelry at home instead. 

Don't forget to to check out the shop! You can use coupon code "BLOGDEC15" to have 15% taken off your total at checkout until the end of the month. Use the code as many times as you like!

Product Review time!

Well, I've been trying to find a chance to get this up for about a month now, but when school wasn't getting in the way, Thanksgiving was. Excuses, excuses! Yeah, I know!

I haven't been able to fully finish playing around with all the beads - partly because the two separate projects I had planned didn't work and I ended up combining them. Let's start with what I didn't use, shall we? I'm a big, BIG fan of Artbeads' glass bead collection, especially their Swarovski crystals. So when I tried the 6mm jet bicones, I knew I was going to get nothing less than the best. I was right, of course, but it's hard to find a lot that I have that these go with. :/ I'm planning on putting them into a future steampunk project, since they ended up not working this time. Ah well. It happens!

The other beads I tried and didn't use were both pressed Czech glass coins. The green tiger's eye beads are great to look at, but I'm not liking the shape too much. I think 12mm was a bit big for me. I also got them in jet/red stripes. I think these aren't quite as pretty as the green, but that's just a color preference issue. Maybe I'll use them for a holiday bracelet.

Now for the finished project! At first I was going to make two different necklaces. Both would have a pendant as the focus. The first necklace would be gunmetal and silver and have a handmade drawing as a pendant with crystals dangling from it. The other would have a leaf-shaped pendant and the coin-shaped beads.

Well, that didn't work at all. Here's what I came up with after a long, long time:

All together now: Oooooooh!

I combined the two pendants. One is a frame, the other is a leaf that I absolutely fell head over heals in love with. I'm very proud of the frame pendant. I did all the designing and coloring myself, and I went through about 7 designs before I found one I liked. I'm not much of an artist either, so this is a huge accomplishment for me. To put the picture onto the frame, I used a tiiiiny bit of glue, and then Glossy Accents to embellish it. It protects the picture really well, and it was easy to put on. However, I think I'm a little bit fail because it's a tad uneven in places, so I need to go back and fix that.

Some of the other bits of art I almost went with.

Twisting chain together to create color and accent worked really well for me at Matsuri Con with my key necklaces, so I thought I'd try it again here. I like it, and think it works well. :) The base metal chain is super sturdy, and it doesn't bother my neck at all.

As an aside, I think this blog is going to become a bit more active. I'm trying to decide what kind of content to add. We'll see. :)  

(Let's go ahead and put the legal stuff here, shall we? I am not being paid by Artbeads.com for my opinion on their items. I have received the above pictured items free of charge and am reviewing them honestly. Anything else in these photos was bought and paid for by me from other locations.)

Indecision

I am terribly indecisive tonight. Do I post in my blog? Do I work on jewelry commissions? Do I sit and read or work on homework? Of course, as soon as I go to do something, I immediately change my mind about it. :/ Irritating.

Speaking of jewelry, I re-listed some old items that I have the ability to remake. :) You can check them out by clicking on the title of this entry. I'm also definitely taking commissions, because I need the money.

I also think I've finally chosen what to do for the Blogging for Beads post. I just... need to actually finish it. ^^; I'm super slow, I guess. Thanks, school.

Creative slump?

Well, yes and no. Admittedly, school does make it pretty hard to get anything accomplished and a girl has to have her priorities. I feel like none of my designs for Blogging for Beads are working out correctly this time around, but that's okay. :3 I have a couple of pearl necklaces I'm working on instead. Why force creativity, right? It'll come to me in time.

Instead I've been focusing on organizing my office/guest bedroom into something orderly and kind of homely. It's kind of working.

My darling fiancee and I are living in her mother's old house at the moment because 1. it's nice to not be homeless and 2. her mom can't just leave it empty and abandoned, and it's enough of a dump that nobody will buy it. Not in this market. So we've been trying to fix the place up a bit. When we moved in (nearly four years ago) there were bible pages stuck to the floor and mold everywhere. Those are gone, but the floors still have some damage we can't fix.

The office was one of the worst places. It goes through cycles as a storage space, but it's mostly cleaned up for company next week. Necessity begets creativity, I think.

I'm probably rambling a bit because I just woke up, I think, but what I wanted to say was that display pieces for art booths make the best decorations and furniture. :D If only we could afford paint for the walls, my office would be kickin'.

Two things!

1. SALE! I haven't had one in ages, so I guess there's no time like the present! Take 20% off Winter Holiday items and 15% off regular items! Sale lasts until October 31! Limit four discounts per order.

2. After a long week (I had five tests this week. FIVE. What the hell, college?!) I finally got a paycheck worth celebrating (in that it was more than $7, for the first time since June) and so I had to go to the bank to deposit it. Which is in Walmart.

Is it just me, or did America take a stupid pill this morning? I nearly got hit four times: once in the garage at school, once turning onto Ludlow, once in Walmart's parking lot, and once turning into my neighborhood. I can't count the number of kids who were screaming and running out of control while their parents looked on with bored faces or just ignored them. I heard a million stupid questions asked ("Hey there, guy in Walmart uniform wearing a Walmart nametag, putting away a cart full of merchandise. Do you work here?" /facepalm).

I witnessed one child hiding in a display of boxed (very large) TVs on the floor, fiddling with the security devices and trying to push the 72" TVs over. I told an employee, but the brat got away with it.

The screaming and yelling gave me a headache.

My request? It's this: Parents, control your damn kids and take responsibility for them or do us all a favor and keep your legs closed and don't reproduce. If you don't have the brain power to discipline your kids and force them to behave in public, then FFS, DO NOT HAVE THEM WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU AMERICA?!?!?!

/deep breath

Wooo. Just needed to get that out.

A Beginner's Guide to Throwing Pottery

Step one: Wedge up a small ball of clay, but do it badly.
Step two: Don't realize this until it's on the wheel already. Get up, re-wedge it.
Step three: Put it back on the wheel and take ages to get it centered.
Step four: Spend about half an hour trying to get some height out of it once the floor is made.
Step five: Give up at just shy of the six inches you need to get for class, because it's a cute shape and it'll collapse if you go any higher.

That's my Tuesday and Thursday nights. o_o

Oh geez...

So I haven't even looked at this thing in forever, and I'm thinking of using it to post about more than just jewelry, otherwise it won't get used. Just a quick life update will do for now, I suppose, as I'm waiting for Chloe to get out of her Horror Lit. class. My German class (and therefore test) was canceled for today. \o/

Well, here's what's been going on:

1. school: got a B (somehow) on my first algebra test, and a 98 on my first German test. Love all my classes, but it's a toss up between Zumba, German, and Ceramics as to my favorite.
   
2. work: i want to kill half of my students. ~_~
   
3. home: still living in the same place, unfortunately.
   
4. car: needs an oil change and the power steering and transmission checked out.
   
5. cats: are still fluffy and adorable.
   
6. love: it will be five years for Chloe and I on November 1st. That's awesome. We're talking about getting married anyway and then suing the state of Ohio to recognize the marriage... but that sounds hard and time-consuming and we'd like our primary focus to be on our grades.
   
7. health: i've only had one terrible 'attack' with my stomach lately. :D that was yesterday, and i had to call off work AND miss math, so I'm basically fucked.
   
8. art: the only time I've had to do any kind of art is in Ceramics. I've had no time for jewelry. :( But in class I'm making a steampunk box that can be a candle-holder or something. Hopefully it comes out super-cool!
   

Hope you guys have been good. :)