Well, I've completed 2 Advent Calendars, 2 sets of 3D snowflakes, 4 paper dolls with a wardrobe and lots of Christmas Cards. All of this can be seen on my Facebook page, Kellys Crafts. Here are just a few:
Well, the holidays are sneaking up on me way too fast this year. I've got a lot going on with my crafts. I have a craft show this weekend, need to make a princess charm bracelet, still have 6 advent calendars to assemble, but on the other side, I've completed 48 Christmas cards, 8 Thanksgiving cards (still have to make the envelopes), made one Christmas charm bracelet and 4 necklaces. Finished Becky's Turquoise cross necklace, completed 2 advent calendars and redid a number of my photos. Busy beaver...that's what I am.
I'm also sponsoring 11 children through Letters to Santa. Actually, I'm the clean up crew, I take the children that didn't get sponsored or only got something very small and try to add to it to give them at least a small Christmas. For those of you who think that running your own crafting business is fun and easy, you're kind of right. It is fun, but it is also a tremendous amount of work. I'm on my computer 6-8 hours a day and trying to run 2 stores and my Facebook page. That's why my blog gets behind. I'm posting a few of my new items below.
If you go down the right hand side of my blog, you will find her blog, The Stitching Coop. Click on it and it will take you to her blog and there will be instructions. Just click on Don't forget the Giveaway and it is explained. Sorry about not posting that earlier.
The giveaway is for celebrating Invisible Illness Week. I have a lot of invisible illnesses, so I know what it is like and they are difficult to live with. Help support the cause by entering the giveaway.
I decided I needed to package my cards differently, so...I've taken all new pictures and grouped them into 10 packs of 5. Each pack has a variety of cards. Some are made by Vicky, Laura, Becky and La Tawnya, they are in the card swapping group I belong too. We have a lot of fun, meeting once a month at a restaurant and swapping cards, everyone ends up with 8 cards of the same theme. Girls day out, get to eat great food and have a lot of fun just chatting. September 17th is our get together at my house for Christmas cards and a salad potluck. I have everything imagineable to make cards and other Christmas projects. I can make a nativity scene, villages, layered cards, you name it. The Cricut is incredible with what it can do. Here are a few samples of the new line of cards:
If there were an erase button on the calendar, I would erase yesterday, except for the birthday party we went to, that was fun. In the morning, I managed to delete all of my photos from my computer. Luckily I had some off in Cyberspace that I had to reload and the rest I loaded from Facebook. Took 3 hours to clean up that mess. I just noticed, I still have empty folders, so I guess I'm not through.
Then, last night, I managed to sign on to facebook with a different email account then I normally use, so it created a new profile and before I knew what was happening, I had sent friend requests to everybody on my email contact list. Now, I deal with China a lot in my business, so I have a ton of Chinese email contacts, not to mention my bank, my insurance agent, numerous other businesses I deal with...I can hardly wait until they get my friend request from FB. What a pain. I had to deactivate that account, explain to everyone why they got another friend request and now...well we'll just wait to see what's next.
I've enterered my products in a number of giveaways and they seem to be popular. I'm going to be switching over to making advent calendars though. I spent 6 hours designing them on the cricut design studio only to save the file and have it be too large to save. I lost everything. Still haven't had the motivation to redo everything. It was a lot of work, all down the drain.
The Bellflower craft fair was kind of a bust, there were hardly any customers there. I sold 4 bookmarks. That's it. But what I did while I was waiting was a bit...well, you decide. I was making a necklace, and remember, I'm still learning, out of stone and made the wrong choice in stringing material. Instead of using wire, I used waxed cotton. Did I stop to think that the stone would cut through it? No...of course not. I got to the last piece, putting on the clasp and the string broke. Well, I thought I would be smart and instead of restringing it, I decided to try to glue it back together. So I got me some Bead Fix, very, very strong glue, like super, super, super glue. It wasn't coming out, so I gave it a big squeeze, yeah, it happened. I had glue everywhere, all over my hand, the necklace, the paper it was on, the tablecloth, the table and everything I picked up to move out of the way got glued to my hand. Get the picture? I looked pretty funny. Every time I tried to unglue something, it got glued somewhere else. Glued 3 of my fingers together also. We had no paper towels, soap or water. What a mess. Then I had to restring the necklace all over again, only this time, I used wire. Never make the same mistake twice. Live and learn.
What was your worst crafting nightmare?
Well, I redid a few necklaces. The Mosaic Turquoise Donut necklace I finally got the chain for, so it looks a lot better now and I added a few touches to the Ruby Zoisite pendant. Here's some pictures:
Yes, I must admit, I have seriously been neglecting my blog. I've been so busy with giveaways, a craft fair, learning wire wrapping and life in general that something had to give and this blog was what went. But have a few extra moments this morning before the work begins so I thought I would check in.
My son is getting a job offer that he's really excited about, problem is, he has to stay in Houston. Why is that a problem, other then the obvious answer, he is VERY allergic to Houston. He gets sick all the time. But, he is very excited about the job. They are preparing an offer now and I'm sure he will accept. He's ready for a change.
Now on the other end of the spectrum, my daughter just broke up with her boyfriend from a 2 year relationship. She really cared for him, makes me feel sad. She wants to move back to Texas, I wouldn't, Texas is not a good state for women, but how do you make a 21, almost 22 year old understand that when it is subtle. Her dad told her she couldn't move in with him, nice guy, so I'm not sure what she'll be doing.
Meanwhile my business has taken off. My fans on pagebook have gone from 38 to 268 in 2 weeks. I donated to a few giveaways and wow, what a difference. I've also gained a few customers from it. This form of advertising works much better for my type of business then a facebook ad. They were never any use to me and espensive. Plus, the giveaways are kind of fun.
You should check out my facebook page, the link is on the right hand side bar, down a ways. I just uploaded all of my pendant inventory into photo albums. Looks good. Have some new necklaces and bracelets, new designs, new colors. Started doing wire wrapping and my first project didn't turn out too bad.
Hope your day turns out good and here's to a great weekend to all!
My new wire wrapped Necklace:
Yeah, business is picking up. I sold one of my necklaces on Ebay:
I couldn't sleep last night, so from 1 am until 6 am I worked on some popup cards with my Cricut and I made a new Ladybug necklace. Now if you know me at all, you know I absolutely love ladybugs. I got my first ladybug stuffed animal when I was 1 1/2 years old. She has been through many surgeries, our dogs got a hold of her more than once. She's lost all of her fur and one eye. But I still have her. She is probably my most prized possession. In fact, here's her picture:
Well, I just jumped in with both feet and signed up to vendor in 2 craft fairs. The first one is at the First Christian Church in Bellflower, 17003 Clark Avenue on July 16, from 12-6 pm. I have a lot of work ahead of me to get some more inventory. They told me the jewelry market is flooded but my paper crafts should do well. Let's hope so. I guess I'll switch gears over to my wall art and cards for awhile. The 2nd fair isn't until October 8, so I still have some time to get ready for that. But boy, they are popping up all over the place. I joined a group called the Boutiquers and they have all the information on all of the crafts fairs happening. I guess I better get busy!
You know, it's hard to believe that there are men and women out there willing to give up their lives to protect our country. A lot has changed since the Viet Nam war, thank goodness. At least our country is more supportive of the soldiers. I know many charities that do things for them. I belong to a card swap, and I really don't send cards to anyone, so there is this charity that takes handmade cards and sends them to soldiers, or people with cancer or some other life threatening illness. I send all the cards I get from the card swap to this charity. I made a circus theme card for the first swap (it was birthday for kids theme) and a tie shaped card for men's birthdays at the second swap. Now I have 20 cards to send to this charity. Looking forward to it. Here's a picture of the Kid's Birthday card I made:
I sold my very first piece of jewelry on Ebay. My Swarovski Crystal Heart Saphire Blue Pendant necklace. I really needed this. My spirits were starting to dampen. Now, I feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel and hope. The world is nothing without hope. Thanks everyone for the encouragement. I love reading and responding to your comments. Our blogging group is now up to 92 members. That's a lot of blogs to read, so I may not get to all of them as soon as I would like, but I'll try.
My jewelry hasn't been selling on Ebay, so I decided to take a look at the kind of jewelry that was selling. "Nada", "Nothing", "Zero", boy was I dismayed, but that day in the mail the Deluxe Thing-a-Ma-JIG showed up. I've had fun playing with it and finally got a necklace turned out. I'm not sure if it's my style that people don't like or if I'm pricing things too high or the real problem, is probably not much is selling. I may have to try the craft fair route. But I don't think I have a high enough inventory for that. What would be the right amount. I have 18 necklaces and 5 sets of earrings and many, many bookmarks, some cards and a couple of wall art hangings. I'm not sure which way to go at this moment. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I got this new thingy that helps you design and make your own connectors and designs for chains. This is how it turned out, not too bad for a first time. This is a Jasper pendant on a silver plated chain necklace with Curly Q's linked into the chain.
I still have to make the matching earrings to go with this, but thought I would post a pic of it anyway. My new cross creation.
Does anyone else out there have grown children? You know, you never get to stop being a mom. My son called me with some disturbing news regarding his father and my daughter and yet he gets upset when I react to it. 1. If you don't want a reaction, then don't tell me someone has hurt one of my children. 2. Mom's react. Sometimes, we may even overreact. 3. I love my children so much that I would do anything and everything for them. I feel like I have to be mother and father to them because their dad turned into a ******** after our divorce. He has caused great emotional trauma to my daughter and still does so today and it's really hard for me to just sit back and watch it happen. We live 1,700 miles away with our daughter inbetween us. Even though she's 21, I still just want to rock her and hold her and tell her everything is okay. Of course, she won't let me. Very frustrating being a parent of grown children that are going through painful times and you can't do anything about it except just be available. Do you know what I mean?
For some reason, this necklace looked like someone interested in rodeo's would wear. I love the color combinations and the cross is absolutely stunning in real life. I think it turned out pretty good and have received a lot of comments on it. What do you think? It took me about 3 hours to make and of course, as usual, I did it in the middle of the night. I usually make my jewelry sometime between 2 am and 6 am. I have chronic insomnia, so don't get much sleep. Here's the necklace:
My sister lives in Long Beach, WA and loves to walk along the beach picking up beach glass, shells, driftwood and everything else. She is quite talented in the craft area. She's starting to make windchimes with some of the seashells she's picked up over the years. She's also found a lot of agates on the beach. So, to cheer her up, I made her the beach comber's bracelet with a little bit of everything. Hope she likes it. It is pretty full and dangly.
You can now comment on my posts. I fixed the problem. Thanks for reading.
I don't think I've ever seen anything more crowded. So many things to look at and so many people in the way of getting to look at them. But oh, the feeling of running your fingers through a bowl of polished stones, awesome. Looking at all the glittering crystals, seeing stones you've never even heard of before, wonderful. Had a great time! Traffic from Irvine, CA to Santa Monica was sure terrible. Took forever to get there and forever to get back, but it was worth it. Note to self, next time - take cash. You weren't allowed to take any pictures or write anything down, but I don't blame them. You work hard on your designs and you don't want anyone else to steal them. I am quite fond of ladybugs, so the only thing I bought was a $2.00 Sapphire Blue Ladybug stretchy bracelet with some fire polished blue beads and beautiful Hawaiian flowers with yellow centers. I'll definitely be going to the one in October for beads. You should try going, it was fun.
I'm really looking forward to going to the International Gem Fair in Santa Monica, CA today. My husband, my new partner in crime and I are all going. Then tomorrow afternoon it's off to a craft fair in the Orange County Great Park. Busy weekend. Wish I had more time to sleep. I'm finding that the only time I have to work on my jewelry is the middle of the night. I have had chronic insomnia for so many years now, I've learned to just accept it and work with it, kind of embrace it instead of fighting it. So I make good use of the middle of the night. That's when I make my jewelry. That's when it's quiet and my imagination can creep into the canyons in my brain. I used to hate the middle of the night, full of dark thoughts and fears. Now it is full of color and imagination.
It's kind of funny, I don't wear any jewelry at all, not even my wedding ring, but nothing gives me more pleasure then designing and creating it. I love the colors. I am a graphic designer and color is my passion. I love the vibrant colors the most. My work is progressing, I'm learning new things all the time. Now I want to start in on Chinese knotting and incorporate that into my pieces. Sold my first piece on Etsy! Yeah, never thought it would happen. Made my day. I've really been working at promoting my business. Takes a lot of time. Well...off to the fair. Have a great day all!
I make a wide variety of jewelry. If you would like something custom made, let me know. My prices are very reasonable. I shop wisely and get good prices. I love designing and creating jewelry. I'm going to start volunteering to work with disabled people to help them make beautiful pieces of art. My store will be donating the supplies so everything you purchase, you can know that part of that will go towards helping the disabled.
I made this one for one of my customer's who really liked the one I made for her earlier. She's giving 2 more away as gifts. These are the other ones I made for her.
