Jewelry

I've been so busy trying new crafties that my jewelry-making has fallen by the wayside!  I got inspired to finally make something with the pretty pentacle pendant I bought at the King Richard's Faire last fall!  

Lavender and clear Swarovski crystal, with silver flower and tube beads.

This one was inspired by a friend's photos of her recent trip to the Caribbean.
Multicoloured cathedral glass & Swarovski crystal

This necklace is about 22" or 23" long.  I don't usually make them this long, but will be trying some different lengths.  

The pendant is a Venetian glass bead with gold flakes in it.

It's hard to tell but these glass beads are the most incredible shade of deep purple.  (Which also had me singing "Deep Purple" by Donny & Marie Osmond all day).

Sorry for the bad pics but my camera battery quit on me!

Phoenix Rising

Even though I unpacked and set up the house fairly quickly, the only thing I had yet to do was make crafts.  For me, it brought that final sense of normalcy in my new surroundings.  Now I'm truly home.

Here's the craft room all set up and decorated.

Pepper supervising, as always.

Note my doggie helper under the table.  All that beading tuckered her out.

I made one card, 5 necklaces, a bracelet and pair of earrings.  I'm keeping the one with the Orca whale pendant since I got it in Victoria.  And I'm tempted to keep the blue one because it was inspired by the Cape Cod Canal.

Birthday card for my friend Autumn.  

The angel wings on the left cover the dragonfly prongs.

Tahoma Beadworks is back baby!

More Trouble Than It's Worth

I'll be completely honest.  Being a small business owner sucks.  I have no fucking idea what the hell I'm doing.  I got all my yearly renewal crap from the State.  More stupid forms to fill out including the tax return.  Deb's helping me, since she does our books & firm returns.  Where I tear open the household bills and bank statements before I even have my shoes off, I have to force myself to open the TB, LLC bank statements and credit card bill.  It's a chore.  I dread it.  

I made a few sales on Etsy and I made the mistake of not transferring the money from my Paypal account to the biz bank account after every sale.  I did not realize this until recently, when I actually did go to make the transfer.  There was way, way less money than should have been from my sales.  Then it hit me:  Whenever I use my Paypal account to purchase something online, they deduct the money from my payments-received balance!!!  It never occurred to me that the money would be comingled.  Now I have to pay back the biz account a couple hundred $$.  It's not a big deal and I still have plenty of Xmas bonus money to use, but it was a discovery I wish I'd made a few months ago.  It was just frustrating b/c then I had to print out my entire Paypal history from the summer to the present and figure out sales receipts vs. purchases made by me.  Have I mentioned that numbers, math and accounting are reeeeally not my thing?  I'm the artist goddamn it!! NOT the beancounter!!!  Just leave me out of it and let me make the jewelry and shoot pictures of it!  I don't have the time for, or the interest in, bookkeeping.  

And that's another thing.  I am still running into the problem of not being able to resize my photos to 1000 pixels x 1000 pixels.  Joe did a ton of resizing and zooming in for me last fall so that I could get things up and running, but I can't ask him to do that for me every single time I want to upload new products.  So I don't know what to do or what to buy software-wise, and I'm getting wicked frustrated by this.  There are so many photo sharing sites and so much software.  How the hell do I know what's the right one for my needs?  I don't need bells and whistles.  All I wanna do is resize the friggin things, you know?  So if anyone out there has any ideas, please let me know.  Everything's come to a grinding halt b/c if I can't resize the pics, then I'm not going to make new items to shoot pics OF.  I've drifted off into the world of altered art and back into the world of beaded cross stitch, so my jewelry supplies are just sitting there.  

So this now snowballs from all that right into:  If I'm not making anything new and everything is just 'status quo', then there's no point in killing myself advertising my Etsy store.  If I don't advertise, no one will shop there and I won't make any money.  

Frankly, I do not need this extra stress and turmoil.  I have enough on my plate without this on top of all the other major issues and stress.  With the heart disease that runs in my family, I cannot believe that I haven't had a heart attack yet.  Either I'm really strong, or I'm in massive denial.  So just call me Cleopatra, Queen of Denial.  

Like I said, I'm completely open to suggestions or advice.  I'm all for DIY and all, but this really is becoming more trouble than it's worth.

Frustrated!!!!

So I go to start uploading my necklace photos to my Etsy store and apparently they are too big.  I am unsure how to rectify this, so I start looking through all the menus in the Pictures folder and I can't find anything that allows me to resize them.  I opened up all my programs and chose one of the Microsoft Photo programs that are allegedly loaded on my laptop.  It starts asking me to enter a 'product key'.  I don't have one, because it came with the computer, so I exit out of that screen, only to find out that those programs are only usable on a trial basis, and I have to purchase the actual program from Microsoft.  I was only able to resize 3 pictures under this 'trial basis' before it locked me out of the option.  So I got 3 whole necklaces uploaded before running into a massive brick wall.

I started to get this sinking feeling that there was no quick fix, without my either having to spend a great deal of time uploading all the necklace photos to some free online website, resizing them and resaving them to my hard drive, or I was gonna have to shell out some bucks for Photoshop or something.  I did a shout out for help on Facebook and my friends all said I was going to have to basically do it the way I was dreading, or get a cheaper camera that takes smaller size photos.  

I've already spent hours sorting all the necklace photos into folders, which folders are organized by necklace length.  So instead of being able to just 'select all' from one folder, in order to upload them to Photobucket, I'm gonna have to spend hours uploading them folder by folder, hours resizing each and every one, hours resaving them to my hard drive and hours uploading them to Etsy.  Now, I must say, listing stuff on Etsy isn't a speedy process at all as it is.  There are at least 6 screens into which you have to enter copious quantities of information about the item, materials used, shipping, etc. etc.  Instead of putting the photo upload on the first page, it's one of the last steps, so after entering ALL that information on ALL those screens, THAT'S when it tells me the fucking photo is too big.  

To say I am frustrated beyond belief is an understatement.  There HAS GOT to be an easier way!  Till then I guess I'll just have to suck it up and plod along at it bit by bit, and get them on Etsy bit by bit.  My friend Joe has offered to do the resizing for me if I want & sent me an invite to Photodrop, so I will probably try it this weekend.  When I have more items up, I'll post the link.  Thanks to those of you who responded to my inquiry on Facebook.  You all gave me some good photo site links I'm going to check out.  I appreciate it!

One Step Closer...

amber & cream cathedral glass with swarovski crystal pendant

It's Labor Day weekend here in North America. A few years back I blogged that I thought it should be New Years Day because the school year is new, the clothing lines are new, the TV season starts again. The holidays are kicking off. The NFL and college football start their seasons. So, Happy New Year.

green cathedral glass beads with 4mm faceted czech champagne crystal with key pendant

I was off on Friday for my last long weekend until Thanksgiving, unless I decide to throw caution to the wind and go up to Hope, BC in October, when my boss is at a conference in "the other Washington" (DC). I decided to finally suck it up and go to the bank and open up my business checking and savings accounts, and apply for a biz credit card. Took about an hour, but it's finally all ready to go. Later that day, I talked w/ my friend Josh, who I've known since Emerson. He and his wife sell their homemade soap on Etsy and I picked his brain on how to do it. Seems easy enough.....but the prospect of putting my stuff out there for sale is still overwhelming. And intimidating. I just hate selling my stuff. I'd much rather give it away. If one of my friends says, "I love that one", they will, more than likely, receive it in the mail. I just can't say, "well it's yours for the low, low price of $19.95! BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!!"

crackle glass cubes

crackle glass cubes with 4mm faceted czech amber crystal

Maybe it's that "Deadhead Tape Trading" mentality that I can't shake. The band gave away their music at the shows, and if you wanted to bring recording equipment to the shows, great. They even sold special "Tapers' Section" tickets. Their only caveat was after you record it, you make copies for free, for trading purposes. I've never had to rely on my jewelry for income, so I've gotten used to giving it away. I like to make people smile.

red glass with 4mm rose quartz

Now I have to spend the time organizing the jewelry I want to list and then uploading all the pics and info to Etsy. Because I am still dipping my toe in retail waters, I didn't do that this weekend and I know I should have. I just need to take baby steps right now and I will get the stuff listed. It's just, I have everything in baggies in a shoe box. There has to be a more efficient way to set this up and I'm still kicking around a few ideas on the best way to do it. My biggest stumbling block is also how to do shipping. Josh told me that's been the hardest part for them too. Normally I just put the jewelry into a white jewelry box w/ cotton inside, put that in a padded envelope, and then mail it. Costs about .95 or so. But should I use priority mail with confirmation notification for my business shipping? Then I'd have to charge my customers like $6.00 on top of the cost of the jewelry. Times are tough as it is, so should I take the less expensive route and hope that the US Post Office can get it from Point A to Point B without fucking it up? Let's face it, that's always a crap shoot. If anyone out there has any ideas and suggestions, I am completely open to them.

So I'm gonna go back to mulling over some more ideas for efficient organization, over at my craft table. Can you tell I like to work in blues? :o)

blue cathedral glass with metal dragonfly pendant

swarovski glass pearls & small pale blue cathedral beads with celestial pendant

millefiori cane glass with 4mm faceted garnet

blue cane glass with czech crystal

More New Necklaces

Instead of lolling on the couch, half asleep on Sunday, I decided to dig out my most recent order of lampwork beads by Austin Hamilton, of Vancouver, BC and made some necklaces!

Don't the beads look like candy?

I love Austin Hamilton. Very reasonable prices and beautiful artistry.

Sounders Necklace

This is what I made with that Sounders charm that came in the gigantic UPS box. It was a birthday gift for my friend Char.

I was pleased that she loved it!

New Necklaces

Here are some of the necklaces I made over Memorial Day weekend. I am adding them to the stockpile I am now building up. It's taking me awhile to do all this!! The photography alone takes hours and hours. But once it's all done, I can finally open an Etsy account. These will be up for sale, and are not part of my personal stash. I will post pics of the stuff I made for myself next. As always, click on the pics for a more detailed view. The stones are so pretty. Photos don't do them justice.

Mixed stone rhodonite, snowflake obsidian, sodalite, poppy jasper, leopard skin jasper, white howlite, amazonite & rose quartz

Mixed stone cape amethyst, peridot jasper, river sandstone, red aventurine, new jade, brown goldstone, black stone & China jade.
Agate.
Rhodonite
Blue (dyed) rainbow quartz with glass heart
Same stone with celestial pendant

Clasp of celestial necklace
Oregon blue opal. The stone reminded me of driftwood, the ocean & beach on a cloudy day, so I did one in gold with a shell pendant

And one in silver with a dolphin pendant

Faux malachite

Azurite, which is one of my fave stones. I also found this azurite pendant in my charm stash!

Glass beads with a dichroic pendant

I found this enameled pendant and paired it with ruby zoisite beads.
I also added the little danglies to the pendant.

I bought the bookmark and added the beads. It's hard to see, but there are 2 green crystals on either side of a cobalt blue bead.

Another bookmark.
I love makin' stuff!!!