New chokers from Saturday's market...

It was busy at the market yesterday. I do need to get outside and take some pictures of how pretty it looks first thing in the morning with the mountains of fruit and vegetables, flowers and bedding plants, honey and baked goods -- and eggs. Lots and lots of eggs.

These are the items I made while at my table. Three of the large howlite skull pendants I posted yesterday sold! One guy picked one up and said to his friend, "It looks like bubble-gum!" I guess he meant jawbreakers. They do, too.


Bat-winged skull pendant with gunmetal noodle spacers, zinc beads, on 1.5mm black Greek leather, sold. This is the first time I've used the gunmetal noodles -- I think they are very effective. I'll be doing variations on those next Saturday for my customer. They'll look stunning with the copper bicones below.

 

Black bone claw with African Fair Trade pure copper bicones, black matte glass bugle beads, black Greek leather choker, out on approval.



Black Greek leather chokers with side-drilled howlite skulls and zinc spacers; some have sold, anything with pink still available. I used up every single one of these side-drilled skulls that I bought at the bead show last Sunday. Now I wish I'd bought more!



Side-drilled dyed howlite skull rainbow chakra, black Greek leather choker.
Now that I look at it, I think the purple bead has to go at the other end. I'll fix it next Saturday.

 Lovely breezy day here in the treetops, although clouds have moved in. Sure hope the high heat and even higher humidity has gone away for a while. Have a beautiful and leisurely Sunday. Me? I'll be sitting inside here typing all afternoon. Thanks for looking!

New stuff...

Every time in the past three weeks I've sat down here to write and post pictures, something happens -- you know, like a pesky rush typing job comes in or I have to leave or something stoopid sings its siren song and off I go... like the doc in Stratford on Wednesday where I scored a pair of bat-winged skull earrings and a string of large genuine amber chips. Anyway, I was at the Toronto Bead Society Bead Show last Sunday, the 26th, and I brought home a few goodies...

I'd finally finished off some new designs (started by my pal Nancy) and put them into Thyme on 59 the day before, after the market...

And then today, Nancy and Joy showed up at 8:30 a.m. bearing pizza for lunch and dragged me kicking and screaming off of Pinterest to make jewellery and we got lots done for the table tomorrow. Here are just a few things.

I will come back later to write captions. 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!

SOCKSSSSSSSS & SKULLZZZZZZZZZ & Emilie Corbiere

Even though I am in the throes of proofing a huge job due tomorrow morning at 9 a.m., I have to post these pictures. I have an obsession with slouch socks dating back 30 years when The Bay used to sell 100% cotton slouch socks in all colours of the rainbow made by the late lamented (by me, anyway) Paquette's Mill in Woodstock of all places, and which are almost impossible to find nowadays. What is WITH those super tight, super skinny socks that cut off circulation and leave great honking marks around one's ankles??? For me, socks must at a minimum be loose, especially at the top.

They have to be warm at the business end, non-sweat-inducing which just makes your feet cold anyway, definitely not itchy, not floppy large feet -- I have narrow feet -- as well as machine washable. I have lately become a fan of the hand-cranked washable wool socks which I occasionally get for Christmas from my brother out on Malcolm Island. Those ones are just about perfect on all counts -- I am a fiend for stripes -- but there's no slouch. For the past year Crazy for Socks have been vendors at the Woodstock Farmers Market. We've been working on the slouch factor and I think they've nailed it.

This colour combo is Fiesta and that's all slouch, not my fat legs, and skinny in the feet. Whoo hoo! Order yours (well, maybe not Fiesta, I think my socks used it all up, but they have all kinds of wonderful colour combos and plain, hand-dyed, and merino, etc.) from Crazy For Socks and tell them I sent you. Btw, for all you knitters and weavers out there, they are the driving force behind the annual Woodstock Fleece Festival coming up on Saturday, October 13. They have real sheepses there! and a zillion vendors!

And, since everyone knows how fashion forward and into colour coordination I am, I finally found a source for a beautiful purply-purple 10/0 seed bead (a good purple being virtually non-existent in opaque seed beads, as anyone into seed beads knows; green, too) and today I finally got the light orange or medium orange seed beads, also next to impossible to find, I've been searching everywhere for and which I use a lot of with turquoise seed beads. They match my socks! It makes my colour-coordinated heart all warm and fuzzy. Emilie Corbiere of Red Road Publishing makes beautiful jewellery. After running into her on LinkedIn the other day -- which is turning into an amazing place to "meet" people -- we met in person today at the Turtle Island Festival which was held at the Crawford Lake Conservation Area near Milton. Gorgeous, gorgeous blue sky fall day, with barely a whisp of cloud to be seen. I will be writing more about her children's books later.

Finally, the skullzzzzzzzzzzzz... I had ordered lots and lots of strings of skulls from Nelson Jewelry and Gemstones, you can see them there, lurking on the right, and here is what I did with them yesterday. The joy of having lots of strings of a single bead and colour is that I don't have to agonise over what will be the best use of a few precious beads. Make this, try that, ooooh, that's cool -- make more... Oh, and these beads have 1.5mm holes in them, perfect for stringing on 1.5mm Greek leather.

That skull chakra necklace was just screaming to be made... so I did.

I made a pile of these adjustable bracelets, all different colours and single colours, but the batteries ran out of juice before I could photograph them all -- sold 'em anyway. I can make more.

Howlite skull bracelets, $8; chokers, $15 and up.
Socks, you're on your own, email Crazy for Socks. Prices will vary with the yarn type and size.

Thanks for looking!

More snake necklaces and some guy-type chokers

I stayed up late on Friday night making two more snake seed bead necklaces and finishing off commissions, and on Saturday at the market I made a pile more chokers for a client. I ended up taking apart by request the triple small howlite skull pendant and making separate pendants using the whole colour range of small howlite skulls in the tray. Needless to say I am now almost out of both sizes of howlite skulls.

Great news -- I stopped in at Let's Eat Cake after the market and Rene told me we have our first order for cake jewellery! For an October wedding -- it will look exactly like the sample cake on Rene's home page. Yippeeeeeeeeeee -- Road trip! Off to Toronto soon to buy champagne-coloured Swarovkis.

Coral Snake Choker

http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/batesian-mimicry-snakes/ This website talks about Batesian mimicry -- amazing the things you can learn when you go exploring, innit?

Eastern Milk Snake Choker

http://mnfi.anr.msu.edu/emr/id.cfm

Variations on White Stone Chokers:

...using copper spacers, with a glass Venetian-style turquoise blue and red bead, and pewter spacers with a silver-plated pewter feather pendant, respectively. These three have been sold, but I can remake any of them if someone wants to order one. I also have deep reddish brown beads of the same type of stone (possibly howlite??), and I will be posting more variations on these themes this week.

Dyed Howlite Skull Choker & Tibetan Agate & Copper Jump Ring Choker

I lovelovelove these small Tibetan agate beads, some of which have translucent bits, here separated by tiny "vintage" copper jump rings.

Off now to see Jess at The Bead Boutique in Kitchener, looking for more pendants and maybe some feathers. My pal Lynn is driving in exchange for lunch, I hope at a great pizza/bagel place that has a wood oven. Wonderful food, and maybe it will have dried off enough by then that we can sit outside.

Any questions? Email me.
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!