LOTS of CHANGES

Oh goodness! What a day it's been! I can decide where to begin! Wow. I've had a lot of things I've been wanting to get done for a long time and I got so much of it done today! Maybe I should just list it...

Cleaning:
1. Kitchen
2. Bedroom
3. Some of the living room

Design:
1. THE BLOG - I'm going for red and green right now in honor of the upcoming holiday - can you tell? LOL
2. I also created and updated both banners and avatars (and on Artfire the color theme) in both my shops.
3. I made the little section headers I wanted to make! You'll see in a minute ;)

Cooking:
1. Breakfast: pancakes and sausage :D Don't worry I really was behaving! I used sugar-free syrup and they were turkey sausages :P
2. Dinner: (breakfast was at lunch time) BBQ Pork loins, mashed potatoes, and broccoli.

Wow - it was a full day! Now on to the things in my shop and and the crafty stuff I got done yesterday!

Wood and Tubes Spirals

These babies are on CLEARANCE!!!!

Pink Delight Bracelet

Wouldn't this be the perfect Christmas present?

Mexican Peso Necklace

This would be perfect to add a bit of travel flair to your

wardrobe - and perfect to wear at Christmas! 

This necklace is a commission for my friend Gypsy :D

If anyone's interested in something similar just let me know! 

I made something else yesterday too - but I didn't like how it turned out :P 

So it's being scrapped and no picture! 

Until tomorrow ~ Ruthie

Latest order and commission

A lovely lady from America contacted me on Etsy asking if I could make one of my silver spiral necklaces for her and a pair of earrings that she wanted to go with it.

She knew exactly what the earrings should look like and this is them. I hope she likes them.

They are being sent out tomorrow for her.

Crafty ADD #33

Wow - I've really missed doing my crafty ADD updates! Of course, I've really missed crafting too. My migraines have kept me from doing very much of it lately. *sigh* I actually have something to share with you though, so here it is!

Crochet

This actually is NOT the project I was planning on working on. Last market I made it too I sold 2 out of my 5 book marks. So I really need to make some right? Well I designed a vampire one that I'm really excited about, but forgot to factor how big it would be based on what sized thread count I used. Um yah. WAY to big with the thread count I have. So I'm working on this one (It'll eventually say "Beach Read") until I can get a smaller thread count. After all I need more than one book mark! LOL

Jewelry

I'm making a second hair piece! Very excited about that :) This one is going much easier because I can do the whole thing in larger sized beads. So it'll actually be worth what I'm charging for it instead of a lot more :P

And I know that's a bad picture, but I made myself a toe ring! I just had a really hard time taking the pic. I love it though! I made it with stretchy cord, some glue to make sure the knot holds, a millifiori center bead, and size 8 seed beads. I made it both because I love toe rings and I haven't had one in a long time, and because I want to start making some rings (or toe rings!) out of stretchy cord and I wanted to test out how durable they are. I'll know more soon!

One Day at a Time

I really do hope that I'll get back into a "normal" one of these days. This last week has been one of my worst weeks ever with migraines. I've had severe migraines for a long time, but I've never had this many acute episodes all together before. I've been to ER twice now and I'm running on narcotics. Really frustrating. Talking to doctors more next week and hoping we'll come up with more that we can do to stop these. In the mean time...

I haven't been getting much done at all crafty-wise lately. I've gotten some writing done (you can hear me talk about that at my jedi blog) but that's about it. I did get a pattern designed earlier this week though! Yay! It's going to double as both a book mark and a bead woven bracelet. Really excited about that because it's a vampire themed piece and I figure that's likely to sell right now with all the vampire hype going around. Well, more likely to sell than my other pieces maybe? We'll see.

I'm also working on a new commission right now that's similar to this one. It's actually for the ladies daughter! I'd take a picture and show you where it's at in progress, but I'm at my parents house doing laundry and I don't have my camera with me.

Hey - I guess blogging is a start at getting back to normal right? Now if I can do it tomorrow...

A Fun Commission

One of the best parts of starting out the market season, was that I got a unique (for me) commission the very first day I attended! One of the other market vendors wanted a hair piece to cover her bun. So I got to work!

It was a long process getting this made. First I found the beads, then I tracked down the write needle and some stretchy cord for beading, and then I started playing! I quickly realized that the cord wouldn't go through the smaller beads, so I went back to the bead store but they didn't have any good pinks in the larger size. So I decided to do the top part in thread (double sown to reinforce), and the sides in stretchy cord.

I also tapered in the sides making them smaller and smaller so that it would grip around the bottom of the bun. She might still need to use some bobby pins, but I wanted it to be as secure as possible on it's own.

I had to take a last shot of it with my hand in it (I don't have enough hair!) to show the 3d effect. I love how it turned out - and the best part is - she did too! Woohoo! AND she ordered one in different colors for her daughter :) Time to cracking on that :)

Market Yesterday!

Yesterday I was back at the Battle Ground Saturday Market. It was good to be back! I missed the last day that I was supposed to work because of migraines, which is the same reason I've been missing so much on-line. Good news is that we're starting a new therapy for the migraines so hopefully I'll be back in the swing of things soon! I'll post about it on my other blog and leave you guys the link :)

Anyway, it was a slow day yesterday. We've been having terrible weather around here and it was the first sunny day in awhile! Lisa (another vendor) and I are guessing that people were too excited to finally be able to work outside to want to go shopping. It's also the weekend of the Rose Festival down in Portland, so we probably lost a lot of customers to the parade and the festivities down there.

Having said that, it was still a decent enough day. I was definitely hoping to do better, but I did good enough that I'm not going to complain. The thing that saved me was that I had a commission that I got paid for! It was a lot of fun to work on and I'll be posting about it in the next day or two.

This was the first time the hubby has ever spent the day at the market with me. He ended up pretty bored, but he handled it a lot better than I thought he would! (go baby!) and he even came up with several ideas to help me improve my display which was great :)

Getting Ready

I'm so excited about putting my jewelry out to be sold on commission! It's a lot of work to get ready though. I already had a bunch of stock created (whew) so this morning I pulled out my lamps, camera, and took a whole bunch of photos! I'm not sure when (if ever) I'll get a chance to edit them, but at least I have visuals for myself now if I want to look back and see what I created for the shop. I have a nice mix of earrings, woven earrings, some necklaces, charm bracelets, link bracelets, and woven pieces. I love it because I get to showcase most of my styles of work! Woohoo! Really the only one missing is hemp ...and that's because she said hemp doesn't really sell in her store. That's fine with me! I'm a rather eclectic artist anyway :P

So what's next? Well I need to finish preparing one of my display stands (probably do that tomorrow), create an inventory list for myself and to give to the store owner, and tag all the items.

Whew.

I'll get it done though!

Oh - and of course I haven't completely stopped creating while I work on this. I need breaks after all! Last night I finished the next piece in my Elements Series - Swiftly Changing Waters :) I love how it turned out!