Checkitout! Look who made this month's online issue of Jewelry Making Journal!!!

http://jewelrymakingjournal.com/landing/issue-224/

Wow, I'm really stoked! Whether you're a beginner, intermediate or experienced jewellery-maker, Rena Klingenberg's Jewelry Making Journal is by far one of the best, most useful and user-friendly jewellery sites. I also added some more booth tweaks to my page, if any of you are planning to do shows this summer, whether indoors or outdoors for the first time or you've been doing it for a while. Or you can scroll back in my blog here and take a look at the pictures of the different table layouts I played with at the shows in July and November 2013 and March 2014. My absolute favourite is the March 2014 layout.

While you're on Rena's site, definitely read Dawn Kruchoski's article, http://jewelrymakingjournal.com/pegboard-tin-display-with-my-company-logo/ that inspired my ideas. I am still boggled by how compactly Dawn's displays are packed. But take heart, it's for absotively sure not something that can be accomplished overnight or even in a single season's worth of shows.

Here's my current sorting of short and affordable strings of beads. I can't believe it's taken me this long to do this: put all my beads up in one place. I can see at a glance what I have and, more importantly, what colours, shapes and sizes I'm missing... OR, that I already have. I'm forever buying the same string(s) over and over and over, not remembering that I already have plenty. On the grid along the back wall for now are my turquoise and lapis beads. I've also got all my wire hanging up, as well. Yes, the copper will eventually oxidise, but that's what Heinz ketchup is for.

I look at these and think to myself, gee, you know, I don't reeeeeally have that many beads. Nah. However, as my friends here will attest, I have bins and bins of beads that have never been strung... or used. Yet. But I'd better get motorvating at stringing more: we're at just over two months until the July Gem Expo in Toronto.

This morning I watched through the French doors a pair of cardinals flitting around in the lilac bush. Just yesterday, my bead-supplier pal Joanne down south of the lake in Erie captured this gorgeous blast of colour in her garden.

Thanks for looking!

Chains, Bones & phones...

I have been having problems with my idiotPhone. All of a sudden -- well, as of last week after having the charging interrupted twice by the power going off with no notice -- it wouldn't hold a charge. The place I bought my idiotPhone from said that the battery has a memory, to not stop/interrupt charging before the battery is fully charged, other people have said, no, phone batteries now do NOT have a memory, some people/sites say wait 'til it's low to recharge, other's say wait 'til it's at 50%, don't fully charge/do fully charge -- but no one says what percentage it should be at before disconnecting the charger: 95%, 97%, 99%??? -- and I have read copious and contradictory nonsense online about what else the problem(s) might be, AND I've had the advice to leave it plugged into the charger for 24-plus hours. Last night, after leaving it charging for 30 hours I was texting someone and watched the charge drop 3% in ten minutes. From texting. So the 24-plus-hours charge obviously wasn't working. Then I decided to see what would happen if I turned the phone off completely overnight and how much battery loss would occur.

Isn't this interesting: this morning I found that not only did I not incur any battery loss past the 97% point it was at when I turned it off last night, it somehow magically reset/recharged!?!?!?! itself to 100%. Is this possible? This morning, I sent three or four texts, I've taken five or six photos of the bead chains I've been making obsessively while obsessively watching Bones for the past three or four days -- I'm thinking the characters must have whole jewellery rooms in their screen lives -- and just now talked on the phone for a total of 30 minutes whereupon the phone is down to 84% -- all after 2 hours of on/off usage, no downloading of email at all. Is this normal?

I'm now second-guessing myself about the wisdom of having an idiotPhone, which I chose solely for its ability to use Square so I can accept credit cards at beads shows and markets (and it works great for that -- IF the phone will continue to hold a charge longer than 8 hours!) and to be reachable in an emergency.

Seed bead & mystery stone copper chains:

Another beautiful fall morning:

Now to figure out what to do with them all...

Thanks for looking!