500th Sale Giveaway!

Today marks a very special day in my Etsy selling History….I have made my 500th sale!  Whoo Hoo!  Sound the trumpets, imagine confetti and balloons exploding all around you!
In honor of this special milestone I decided to do a giveaway.  Sale #500 was a copper ring.  In honor of that I will be randomly giving away 5 copper rings to 5 lucky people!  (plus I thought that sorta went with the fact that I am gearing up for holiday sales, and 5 is the number of rings needed in the 12 days of Christmas…okay so them may be 5 golden rings…mine are copper.  Who knows maybe when I hit 5000 sales I can splurge and do 5 golden rings )
Okay so it is simple to enter…All you need to do is leave a comment on this blog with 2 things….1  what size ring do you wear, and 2. what texture do you like?  Easy Peasy!  I will have a random Drawing on my birthday, Nov 2, 2011 at noon my time (Central), to determine who the lucky winners are.  The textures available are:

Coral Reef:

Fluted: 

Hash Mark:

Slate: 

Tree Bark:

Smooth: 

What’s in your closet?

So with my jewelry assembly and photography studio  (aka the guest room) out of commission due to guests in the house, I have been working on other business related tasks.  You know those pesky ones that keep getting pushed off like bookkeeping and work space clean up...ugh!

Well I had a very rare stretch of time when BOTH kiddos were actually taking a nap so I put it to good use.  A batch of my shipping and packaging supplies arrived and needed to find a home.  So I cleared out the closet by my desk and started to re-arrange.  Whoo Hoo!  It all found a nice home.  And before I put away all of those jewelry boxes, I actually took the time to put my logo sticker on each one!

I feel soo much better now that this task is done!

Sneak Peak

I know I promised I would show you photos of my last sneak peak but my house has been invaded by some of my husbands co-workers from the VA office.  Which means I have been cooking and cleaning up after all these extra boys.  And worse yet I had to give up my “play” room so it could be a guest room again.  So I have not had a spot to sit and assemble jewelry or worse yet to photograph what I have completed.
However, I did get some time out in the shop on Sunday, and boy did I make use of it!  I made a million zillion little component bits.  Here is a nice shot of them fresh out of the tumbler….boy was it fun to pick out all of those little bits from the shot!

PS…really I will show you some finished items soon…..I just need my space back!

4 weeks to go, but still working away….

SO my husband laughs at me all the time and tells me i am a crazy pregnant lady. My nesting desire is not to get the house ready for the baby, but to prepare my business so it can keep running even when I am not. I have been doing so well selling in my Etsy shop “Luster” that I am afraid to go on hiatus and loose momentum!

I was a little offended by his statement at first until I stopped to look at what I was doing…and it is pretty true. I spent all day (6+ hours) on Saturday out in the shop making circles to turn into necklaces and earrings for inventory. This Saturday I plan on making ring! I have to say I am quite a lucky girl, I had no swelling in my legs at the end of the day, but boy was I slow moving on Sunday. I snapped this less than glamorous shot of myself leaving the barn after my day of working!

Here is a quick shot of over 200 circles in silver and copper as I pulled them out of the pickle pot.

Now all I have to do is hammer then heck out of them to give them a great texture and oxidize some, and I will have a nice inventory for necklaces and earrings for a few weeks! When I get everything all finished I will have to take an “after” shot!

I just want to remind you all that next week is the last week to order custom items or rings in specific sizes from my Etsy shop or from my online website. Once I am done bulking up my inventory, I will change listings to reflect what I have available to ship.

Some days you got it...others you don't!

I was given this wonderful opportunity to make a set of custom bangles for a lovely lady thru my Etsy shop "Luster". I was very excited to do this as it was going to be a fun mix of metals and textures, and I love mixing textures and metals! It seemed that this project was doomed from the start! First my son got a cold, then of course I got it, then once we were better....my husband had to travel for work and during that time my babysitter got sick...and then the fridged cold moved in. We're talking -14 degrees cold.

Well my "studio" is a sliver of space in the far corner of our machine shed that houses my husbands toys. The building is quite large, and quite full of stuff...and unfortunately not temperature controlled. Those of you who work with metals know that in order for solder to flow, not only do you have to have a clean joint, but you have to have heat. Well, when it is that cold, it is very hard to keep the entire piece of metal warm enough so that the solder will flow.

I tried everything, sitting in the pickle for hours (the bracelets not me), I rinsed, and sanded, and wiped with alcohol (denatured not vodka), and tried to solder....all to no avail. I still could not get that darn solder to flow! It would just form little evil solder balls at the joint.

Frustrated, I put the project aside for a few days, and tried again...this time I was desperate! I pickled, sanded, wiped down not just the bangle, but the solder too. The turned on the flame...still no flow. So I sat with my solder and tried to goop more on....still no flow! Then I took the solder pick and poked an the molten solder ball...yup adn still no flow!

Okay, so now I feel defeated and deflated. I have spent way too much time on this project...not to mention as I fumble along here I am paying a babysitter to play with my son. So I decided it was time to put bracelets on hold in my shop. I have lost my touch at soldering them....or at least I have lost the warm weather that makes it seem effortless.

At the Bench

Last night I got to have some quality time ALONE at my bench. What a welcome relief after dealing with a cranky toddler all day! Well that lasted all of 20 mins before the shop was invaded by my son, hubby, and his friend. They came in to work on their old cars. There went my meditation time...

I do have an 12' wall section of our 60 x 40 barn as my shop...the rest is my husbands domain. I am happy to at least have this much, but I dream that someday I have my own space to do with as I please. I also dream about having time to actually spend at my bench! But that won't happen until the little one is a bit older!

Currently my "shop" furniture consists of a work bench that my husband made for me and a really cool old set of storage drawers that came from the University of Illinois Geology Museum. They relocated and renovated so there were several old storage units like this for sale at the local architectural salvage store, PACA . It is the perfect size to store all of my copper, silver, brass, files, hammers, saws and blades, sandpaper, etc...you name it. The bulkier items fit on top or on my bench. Other goodies I have are a dapping set, bracelet mandrel, ring mandrel (always set up in my large vice), a lazy Susan (no pun intended) filled with fire brick to do my soldering, of course the tank and goodies to solder with, 2 pickle pots, a little drill press, a fire extinguisher, and a few tools of my husbands that have made their way to my area!