The Oxford County Animal Rescue Fundraiser & New Kids' Jewellery for Christmas...

It's been a crazy week and a half -- time has flown. Someone told me on Saturday there was only one more market 'til Christmas and I went into panic mode. Then I was told, no, you have TWO more markets, meaning another five days to procrastinate 'til the Thursday market on the 24th. Whew! Good news for me and good news for all those people who still haven't started shopping, and have left the worst -- I mean the best -- but still most difficult people to buy for last: KIDS!!

I gallop to your rescue: trust me, boys love skulls and fossils and girls (a lot of 'em) also love skulls and fossils... and birds and flowers and purty beads... and I have all of them and more. Lots of items under $20 and many starting at $3-$5 for little girls and guys.

Just got some brachiopods in (550 MILLION years old!!!) and adjustable chokers are $10 each:

This past Saturday I made the world's ugliest chakra bracelet. Yeah, it just kinda flops there, doesn't it?

It just did not work, but the birds I liked and I do like the individual beads, even if some of them look suspiciously edible. I took it apart and made these with small Picasso glass pony beads, $8 to $10 each:

In the summer, I'd made this chakra bracelet...

...which I ended up swapping for this!!!!

I've subsequently discovered that this bottle is available from the LCBO filled with booze. Whoo hoo! Or maybe that should be boo hoo 'cause I can't drink anymore. Stooopid meds. Spoil all my fun.

Sunday, December 6th was the Oxford County Animal Rescue fundraiser, where Nancy (Junk of Ages: Vintage Home & Garden and my booth partner at the One of a Kind Antique Mall) and I shared a table. If you're into vintage Christmas jewellery and ornaments, we're the place to shop at the market (and at the Antique Mall, booth 800/847). This show was a hoot to do, not the least because I fine-tuned a new table layout -- and this time I remembered to take detailed pictures before teardown.

Jim and Jan Post's Caravan Candles display at the OCAR fundraiser. Yah! That really is a wax skull there on the front corner of the table. They'll be at the market (with the skull candle) this Saturday, December 19th, and Thursday, December 24th. There's Nancy in front of the table.

Nancy and I both still have lots of great, well-priced Christmas gifts available for every age and interest. See you at the market...

Saturday, December 19th

Thursday, December 24th

7:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon

(but I'm there by 5:00 a.m. if you want to 

get a head start on your shopping day)

I think I need to get my Christmas cards done... soon!

Thanks for looking!

Saturday Market Chokers & Bracelet...

Saturday was a good market for some reason. The place was packed right from 7:00 a.m. until noon. Valentine's Day? Phhht. Around here, come holidays, people buy their flowers, chocolates and good eats to throw on the grill and then vamoose to the malls and big box stores. I did overhear people talking about the price of roses, everything from $100+ for a dozen roses from a "real" flower store to $20+ from Wally-World and its ilk for roses of dubious quality. I think somehow the word got out about the crazy good price for roses at the Woodstock Farmer's Market, which could explain why so many new people were at the market. The Floral Express sells roses as well as all kinds of mixed flowers, your choice, 3 bunches for $10 with baby's breath. Not to mention, as I mentioned a post or two ago, with care the roses in particular will last up to ten days. Even I, with my notorious black thumb, can keep 'em going for ten days.

Remember the budding paperwhites: look at us NOW!!!

Note: It's about -40C today with the windchill, but sure looks like spring in here. I don't know how my poor truck started in that obscene cold this morning, but it did. AND the heater worked!

Meanwhile, back at the market, there was one lady very pleased to have finally tracked me down. A while ago, she'd bought some very distinctive earrings from a store which suddenly went out of business (wow, was I surprised!) and for a year and a half she's been looking for me. Told me she was talking about the earrings to a friend just the other day and now she's found me again. Bought another pair of the same style of earrings, took my card this time and promised to be back.

In between lots of customers and pals stopping by to chat, I made these four chokers and an adjustable bracelet, all which are currently out on approval:

This particular customer has very specific likes and dislikes, and the easiest way to make things he will like is to as much as possible narrow down a selection of beads he does like out of all the new ones I get in and then riff on various combinations thereof. He didn't like any of the multiple skull designs I made last week, so this week I used only one skull.

Something else is coming up: another big move for me at the One of a Kind Antique Mall. You know the tired old mantra, "location, location, location"? Of course you do -- and like all cliches it sucks that it's so true. When I first started selling at the Antique Mall, my showcase was right up by the front door and sales were pleasantly steady. In a long overdue expansion from one to three computerised cash stations, I was turfed out to make way for a wrapping station, and ended up just a few feet around the corner lost amongst at least a dozen other showcases -- and where my sales have tanked bigtime.

May 1st, though, I will be in this shiny white showcase right next to the cash desk. Yes, when the place is particularly busy on weekends people will be lining up right in front of and blocking the showcase to anyone walking by, but every single customer in that store will be standing in line there for a few seconds to one, two, five, ten, maybe even fifteen minutes with nothing better to do than to look at Nancy's and my jewellery, collectible beads, antiques and junque.

Every. Single. Customer. Talk about location. Same vendor number: 800. Nancy's is 847.

I'm standing to take this picture just inside the front door of the mall right where my old showcase used to be.

To the right of and just past that guy walking down the aisle
is Booth 800/847, which is mine and Nancy's.

John and Jack, the two owners of the Antique Mall. 

Dapper Jack behind my new showcase, 800. 

(No, the rifle is a reproduction)

Don't forget, The Gem Expo is coming up in Toronto at the Hyatt Regency in the middle of March, the weekend of the 13th, 14th and 15th. PLUS... for the first time, I will be selling Nancy's and my antiques and junque and Roman glass and collectible beads at the Woodstock Nostalgia Show and Sale on Sunday, March 8 at the Fairgrounds on Nellis Street.

Thanks for looking!

Skull Bracelets & Necklaces

I made these yesterday while watching Downton Abbey.

I had made the skull & noose bracelet, sent a picture to the customer I had in mind, he ordered it in a necklace version. I had in the meantime dug out those patinaed brass tubes that I've had for years and never used, made a skull necklace version for his approval, as well as two long necklaces, one with an asymmetrical wire-wrapped section of 6 mm quartz crystals and one with 6 mm Indian agate (which I got from Nelson Gemstones).

This morning I sent out the necklace picture and got another order for the plain skull bracelet.

Downton Abbey done for now, I've got The Unit cued up and ready to go as soon as I track down some lunch... or maybe it's an early dinner now. Yes -- yikes, it's almost 2:30. Then it's back to making skully things.

Multitasking central:

Hope you're all having a productive week. Thanks for looking!

Nathalie's necklace... cleaning up... & rings...

Since it has now arrived at its destination, I can show you the necklace that Nancy made back in December for her dear friend Nathalie in Mississippi. Nancy spent hours and hours contemplating beads in the current incarnation of my "studio"... aka hopelessly chaotic front room.

Tourmaline is an extremely important stone to Nathalie and Nancy picked some nice colours and shapes and echoed and complemented them beautifully with several spiral silver-plated, pewter and horn Dzi bead elements. After Nancy put the beads into pleasing order, I did the wire-stringing and crimping. At the moment, I'm teaching Nancy to wire-wrap beads.

It's been a long, unspeakably lonely and sad six weeks since Max died. He was with me one quarter of my life. Yes, time and life tick on... but. The hardest part to get through are all the firsts -- first time to make something to eat and no one to trip over, then no one to clean the plate off later; first time to wake up to no fuzzy face beside you on his pillow; first time to do the market and no one to come home to. He died at the crap end of winter when we're all sick and tired of the snow, the dark and the cold... and the cold... and the cold.

Spring appears to finally have arrived this week: it's above freezing for at least a few hours every day even if it doesn't feel like it, but the front room is filled with light longer and longer into the evenings. Nancy and Lynn (of Fashion Your Space) are helping me turn this room into a workable and working design studio instead of a hodge-podge of tables piled high with who-knows-what-'cause-I-sure-can't-find-what-I'm-looking-for. Most Monday mornings will find the three of us working away: 2 hours x 3 people = 6 hours per week worth of endless boxes and bags of stuff hauled around for years finally opened, examined and purged. That lawn sale I was always planning to have? Phht. Ain't gonna happen. Week after week those things are off to the consignment store, the Goodwill, to a new and appreciative home or out into the garbage. Each week I feel lighter and lighter walking into the back room and seeing empty space and feeling no desire whatsoever to fill it up again. It's very true: once you start getting rid of no longer useful stuff, the catharsis -- and high -- is unbelievable.

Great inspiration for cleaning up and creating a functional working space can be found here: http://jewelrymakingjournal.com/category/jewelry-making/jewelry-studio/ and of course there's always Pinterest. The studios that some people create!

Last week at the market I made this choker and a handful of rings for a client:

Pewter side-drilled skulls, copper wire spiral tubes, 2mm black Greek leather



"Mystery stones", possibly dyed quartz(?), wrapped rings using 16 gauge tinned copper


Thanks for looking!

Hallowe'en Display, Skull Sales To Date & The 2nd Annual Bridal Bonanza Coming Up...

This is my Hallowe'en market table display -- picture taken at home. I had hung my good bud Skully (Dollarama bargoon two years ago) from a small black earring stand with my red and black feather and pewter skull earrings. It certainly attracted a lot of attention. Almost sold the blue skull earrings, but in the end the customer went for a skull bracelet and a chakra skull choker.

Here is another plug for Nelson Jewelry & Gemstones: speaking from a business point of view, in skull jewellery sales alone I have more than made back my investment in two bead orders. Joanne went out of her way to bring in more howlite skulls in different sizes and colours just for me. All the other semi-precious stones I ordered at the same time are gravy now thanks to the skull sales. Thanks, Joanne!

People laugh out loud at all my skull stuff -- I do also realise they're laughing at ME. Whatev. Seriously, a chakra skull choker? However, in the past month or two I've sold at least 40 of just the howlite skull bracelets, chokers and earrings alone to both guys and girls (and their mothers and grandmothers -- pssst... I know what you're getting for Christmaaaasssss) and I've completely lost track of the number of bone, semi-precious, turquoise, pewter and sterling skull items I've sold in the past year or so. It really is unreal.

While at the market (such a slooooow day today, no exaggeration), and on a more serious front, I put together a dozen or so pairs of Swarovski earrings for the 2nd Annual Bridal Bonanza at the Quality Hotel & Suites in Woodstock, Ontario, 6-9 pm, Wednesday, October 25, 2012. I'll be at the Let's Eat Cake table with Rene Hoelscher and crew 'cause I make all of Rene's cake jewellery. In fact, TODAY my cake jewellery is on two happy brides' wedding cakes. Rene had everything under control when I was in the bakery earlier this afternoon around 2 p.m. -- one cake finished and delivered and she was putting the finishing touches on the second cake.

Now to get working on those long-promised TURQUOISE PICTURES. Yummmmm.

Thanks for stopping by.

New Kingman Turquoise... almost

Here, to whet your appetite, are just some of the stunning Kingman turquoise strings I've been pricing and splitting up into more palatably-priced half, third or quarter strings. Those rounds you see are 8mm bronzed turquoise. Just gorgeous. In some lights the bronze looks gold, in other lights copper. I'll post detailed pix of all the strings tomorrow with pricing.

Part of my shipment of colourful skulls from Joanne at Nelson Gemstones -- turned into a haul of dyed howlite skull bracelets and chokers for tomorrow's market...

And dyed howlite earrings...


In one short week from now I will be at the venue setting up for the Grand River Bead Society show in Guelph (October 27th & 28th, 10:00-5:00). See you there! But now to bed -- 3:30 a.m. will come far too early as always, then off to the Woodstock Farmer's Market -- yes! we have a Facebook page! I sure hope it's stopped raining by then.

Thanks for looking!

Rainforest Gold necklace & some skull chokers for the kids...

...although I suspect some of those kids will be old enough to shave, if not semi-retired. Sigh......... I try.

On a more serious note, I remembered to buy some brass cones in Toronto on Tuesday and was able to finish this necklace. The seed bead mix is called Rainforest Crunch and I bought the beads from Spirt Bear Beads. I didn't get too creative with the beads themselves -- I wanted to see what they would look like as is. Pretty fine, I think.

The brass clasps I made three or so years ago when I first started hammering. I got sidetracked into using silver and copper -- kind of gave up on brass mainly because it's so frickin' hard to hammer! -- but I'm definitely going to be doing more with mixed metals. I still like these. The bought gold donut slides off easily. I like how it has an uneven surface -- it's quite heavy, not tinny -- and it also picks up whatever colours are around it, too.

The necklace is 24 inches long, with the donut, 25.5 inches. It could be temporarily extended very easily with two leather ties.

Howlite skull chokers (while they last), $5 each, plus $5 for shipping and handling.
Rainforest Gold necklace (OOAK), $55 plus $5 for shipping and handling.

Well, now to go make a ring and maybe get to bed before 9:00 p.m. Up at 3:45 a.m. and another market day will begin...

Thanks for looking!

PS: As of right now, 6:45 p.m. on 25 May 2012 I'm at 4,947 page views! Almost FIVE THOUSAND. Whoo hoo! Thanks, everyone!