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".