Etsy Treasury

What a great way to start the day - an email from a fellow Etsyan who has included one of my peyote-stitched bracelets in a Treasury.

TheBeadedbead (curator of this Treasury) selected all peyote-stitched items, in aqua/teal/turquoise and lime green. It's a beautiful looking page with yummy items from great beaders on Etsy.

Really shows the versatility of peyote stitch - from flat to tubular to sculptural...

It goes from simple

...to complex and it is still the same great stitch.

Check it out and visit the various shops of these talented beadweavers.

Vote on Etsy Beadweavers Bollywood Challenge

Beadweavers united - on Etsy. The Etsy sellers who love beadweaving have their own team to co-promote sales of their work. Each month this group has a challenge - and September's challenge was Bollywood.

You can view some truly amazing beadwork and participate by voting for your favorite. To vote, visit their blog here, where you can view each of the below pieces up close.

Then vote for your favorite, on the right side of screen. Note: I'm not in this challenge, but there are some fabulous pieces here.....

Etsy - again. Seriously, check it out

Wow, twice in a week an item from my Etsy shop has been selected for a Treasury  (read, co-promotional selection of cool items on a theme, selected by another Etsy seller).

This time an artist from Turkey included my Apple Core Beads in a grouping about Autumn Colors. Thanks, Sema! Had a great time exploring the various items in this group. Love the birds...

 
The thing is, none of her items are in this grouping. So I had to go check out ZuZu's World. She lives in Turkey and does Turkish lace - with traditional scarves and shawls, but also making jewelry with individual flowers she crochets and connects into long wearable strands. Very cool. Reminds of "long ago days" when I wore daisies on my prom dress. Yep, I'm that ancient.

So while I'm exploring Etsy, I stumbled upon something completely different....a guy who makes clocks using recycled items....like old computer hard drives,

tape deck reels, record players, dead Apple iBooks (yep, it happens).Shop is called PixelThis. So if you need a gift for a geek, or a lover of electronic gear this is a good place to shop.

Customer Satisfaction

A customer called me this week - she had purchased one of my beaded bracelets from Arts on Grand gallery in Spencer, Iowa, as a gift for her mother. The bracelet broke. This is a disaster! But it is fixable.

One of my favorite bracelet color combination is Desert Sky. This one is in my Etsy shop.

Unfortunately, those shiny little aqua size 15/0 hex beads are brittle. They don't break the beadweaving thread (I like Fireline Extra Fine) but the beads themselves break with too much stress, causing the weaving to pull apart. The good news is I have another bead of the same size and color that I am substituting and I can replace her bracelet. This is the only bead I've used that seems flawed in this way.

SO, if you have purchased this combination and the beads break just by wearing, please contact me. This doesn't mean I can guarantee all other of my bracelets from ever breaking or from accidents caused by abusive wear, but they should not just fall apart. That would be bad business indeed.

Holiday Rushes

My big rush is over - getting those granddaughter gifts wrapped and mailed was a project that had to meet the shipping deadline. But wrapping packages is one of my very favorite Christmas activities. Set the iPod to my Christmas playlist, put on my warm boots (the basement floor is cold!) and spend a few hours in solitude, creating mini-works-of-art with paper, ribbons, tags and tape. Bliss.

I also had a flurry of Etsy Christmas shoppers - Hurrah! So I recently shipped off some bracelets and some bracelet kits.

I'm working to restock my faerie gate supply, so have made a couple new wire gates.One whimsical, (4.5" x 6")

And one traditional (4" x 5")

 

Find them in my Etsy shop