My Copper Charm Necklace

Earlier, I posted a pic of all the great copper charms I received from our Kansas City PMC Guild copper charm exchange. When I went to put my charms onto a chain, my inner chaos broke out, and I just felt that a basic "charms on a chain" bracelet or necklace wasn't right for me. Here's what I did instead....

Read more about it on the KCPMC Guild blog here.

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

Experimenting with Copper Clay

The Kansas City chapter of the PMC Guild (i.e. KCPMC Guild) met this week to exchange copper clay charms. These folks are used to using silver clay to create so the copper clay, with it's different properties and more complicated firing procedures was new to most of us. These are the pieces I received after swapping an equal number of charms made by me.

My charms looked like this. As you can see, I was the only one who opted for lots of black antiquing rather than the shiny polished look or the matte "from-the-kiln" rainbow patina. YBNRML?

To see more, go to the KCPMC guild blog.

It's Spring Down Under!

In the midst of our wintry weather and bare trees, its hard to imagine setting up little faerie gardens in the back yard . . . but that's what's happening in Australia. I recently sold a couple of my faerie garden gates to Etsy customers from Australia. Perhaps simple things just make me happy, but it was a thrill to ship off my handiwork to the Land of Oz!

The first gate went to a creative mom, planning a faerie birthday party for her 6 year old daughter - complete with faerie invitations, costumes and a new gate for the real faerie garden in their back yard. Check out their wonderful faerie birthday party and more at http://liscassey.blogspot.com/. (Lissy's a scrapbooker and a VERY creative mum!)

The gates are about 4" x 5" and usually made from copper, steel and/or brass tubes and wire. Sometimes I also make wooden gates, like the faerie beach-house gate below. I used recycled slats from a salvaged old rolled blind that I just couldn't throw away when we moved cross-country. Dale thought I was dingy, but those thin wood slats work just great and are better off in a faerie garden than in a landfill in Calfornia!