Thursday, December 17, 2009

Advent Blog-a-long Day 17 EART Team Blog Ring

This week on the EART Team blog ring we were asked to share some of our favorite Etsy stores!

First off, I'd like to share pickleberries. She works with glass like me! Honestly, I can appreciate when another glass artist makes something beautiful, but it is hard for me to buy or trade for a glass. Lonnie is one of those artisans that I can not only appreciate her pieces, but I needed to own! She has created a niche and makes beautiful millefiori glass pieces!

Millefiori Fused Glass Pendant Floral Sea Inlet

Next, I'd like to show you Inner Earth Soaps! All her soaps are all mild and highly moisturising, made with skin-loving oils and have a creamy, bubbly lather. My son suffers from eczema especially in the winter months and she was very helpful in choosing a soap that will help keep his skin healthy. Also, her soaps just LOOK amazing!

6 Handmade Cold Process Soaps - you choose the scents

And last, but not least is lime green modern! I absolutely LOVE the simple lines of her pieces! When it comes to jewelry, particularly earrings, I tend to stick tot he more-is-less approach. I love the sleek look of these earrings with just a pop of color! You could have one in every color and be set for any outfit!
modern silver earrings- aqua-blue glass trio

Please follow our blog ring around! Next up is DivaDea ( http://divadea.blogspot.com ). Check out some of her favorite Etsy shops!

Missie Krissie has a Giveaway!

Oooo! Oooo! Oooo! I'm so excited and hope to win something! Missie Krissie has a giveaway of some beautiful silver jewelry pieces over several days! Check it out and blog to enter!

rose quarts pendant

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Blog-a-long Day 15 2009 Winter Charm Swap

This year I participated in a Winter Charm Swap hosted by Altered Beauty. The only stipulation was that it had to be hangable. So, I made 10 of little glass charms with a cute little holly on them, tied them to a few business cards, and sent them off!
Well, today I got all my charms! Yay! There are some really cute ones in here! Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to make with all of them!
Here's a list of everything that all came in that cute snowman bag with the candy canes and blue plastic snowflakes tied up with the big blue jingle bell!

-my glass holly charm from Beautiful Schlopp
-a big red ornament charm with an angel on it from Faerie Dust Dreams
-a cute square glass charm with a snowflake on it and glitter all over the side in an adorable gift box from Mahala's Place
-an adorable red heart charm AND a ice bottle charm from Altered Beauty
-a sweet little Santa resin charm from Scrappy Rat Designs
-an elegant charm of a red bow, white pearl, and green crystal from Che Che Couture
-a beautiful beaded snowflake charm from Beading by Bawissa
-a cute little Christmas tree charm with a green bead Susan Williams Designs
-an adorable pinwheel mint charm from Crafted by Design

Monday, December 14, 2009

Advent Blog-a-long Day 14

Today I wanted to share some of the fun I had with the kids last night. It was warm enough to go outside.






The snow was perfect for making a snowman. Here are the kids with Snowy the snowman!






Then we came inside to warm up and had hot cocoa and candy canes!












Oh! And here's our tree that we decorated the other night!








Sunday, December 13, 2009

Advent Blog-a-long Day 13



I think today is the day to take a clue from some of my fellow artisans and blog some blatent self promotion! Currently I have a Holiday Sale going on in my Etsy shop. I am offering 10% off any order over $10!
Get your gifts now and save!


Due to high demand, these Cherry Blossom pieces are made to order, but they are still available before Christmas!All pieces come in a cute organza bag! And ship for FREE!


Saturday, December 12, 2009

Advent Blog-a-long Day 12

Today was a fun day. I went in to work early to do the books, then headed to my hair stylist's salon. She did some color because my roots were VERY grown out. She's been doing my hair for years, but only now just realized how quickly my hair actually grows! After doing the color, I picked up the kids and Mark to bring them to the salon also. We ALL got our hair trimmed! We wanted to get us all looking nice for the holidays and I think we may try to get a family portrait taken (no pics of our hair until the reveal in our portrait!).

When I got home I was greeted by a few packages. Now, there are some things I am expecting, but this wasn't one of them. It was my first package from an Art Exchange I participated in. It was like a crafty chain letter of sorts. "Make one piece and send it to #1, then remove that name and bump the names up and add yours to the bottom of the list" type thing. I kinda forgot about it until I opened that package yesterday. I got 2 cute flower/ribbon clips for hair, clipping on purses, collars, etc! They're adorable! I like the smaller flower one for me, but I think the pink and brown ribbon one has been claimed by my daughter.


(This is her angry face. She was not pleased that I wouldn't get her some chocolate milk until I took a picture.)


After taking that picture, my 5 year old son NEEDED his picture taken too. Here he is after dragging himself into the kitchen. He claimed that this was a picture of him 'starving'.

After they both got chocolate milk, we tried to put lights on our tree. Daddy and I got them all strung only to realize that the only strand we DIDN'T check was the strand on our tree and the strand that didn't light. We ended up eating dinner (homemade lasagna! Mmmmmm!!!) and giving it another try. We got the lights up and the kids had a blast helping hang ornaments.

All in all- a good day! Hair done, packages, delicious food, and a decorated tree!

Friday, December 11, 2009

Blog-a-long Day 11- Friday's EART Team Featured Artist

Today we're ogling over the gorgeous beaded work of Enchanted Beads.

Ileana, whose work has been featured in many publications, creates the most amazing things out of beads! --from perfume bottles, to earrings, to trinket boxes! Her work is meticulous, her colors are beautiful, and her creativity shows through in everything she makes!

Here's a selection of her work for your instant enjoyment, but be sure to pop in to her Etsy shop to see more stunning pieces!







Thursday, December 10, 2009

Blog Ring Thursday- Advent BLog-a-long Day 10

Time for another EART Team blog ring! Today's question-

What are your favorite colors to work with? Is it hard to work outside of your favorites?

I tend to use black a lot. Dichroic glass comes with black and clear glass as a base, so that makes it an easy choice. I also like earth tones. I tend to chose a cream color over a pure white. I pull patterns and designs from nature, so that lends itself easy to those kinds of colors as well. I do find it kind of hard to work outside my favorites. I usually just try to create a picture or idea that may have popped into my head and I struggle to find inspiration if I have a project that has a color palette outside of my norms.

Head on over to Diva Dea to see what her favorite colors to use are:

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Let It Snow! Blog-a-long Day 9

Why does our first snow always have to be like a blizzard? Why can't it snow, like, an inch at a time and gradually build up?

We had our first real snow of the year yesterday/last night/today.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Advent Blog-a-long Day 7

I missed yesterday. We're crazy busy and I'm not actually living at my house right now. Mark got the opportunity to have a friend who is a music producer from Detroit come down here for 3 days to record his band's record. So, Mark, his 2 bandmates, and Bill Kozy are at my house recording and making loud music into the early hours of the morning while the kids and I are staying with my mom. Ugh. It's a huge inconvenience, but hopefully worth it in the long run. So, forgive me if I miss tomorrow. I'll be back at the blog-a-long soon enough!

Friday, December 4, 2009

Advent Blog-a-long Day 4- Today Sucked.

Today started off deceivingly well. My kids were up late last night and I got to sleep in an hour. The day went severely downhill from there. I guess it started the night before when I asked someone to work my shift for me because I got a notice that I had to sign my son up for kindergarten today, Friday. My manager called to let me know that the person who was going to work for me couldn't because he was already scheduled to close (and it would be too long of a day to work open to close). That started the hassle of today.

So, I slept in, but I couldn't find my son's birth certificate that I was going to need for registration. I was late then dropping my mom's car back off to her (I had to borrow it the day before to run errands since my car battery died). Then MY car started acting up even though I had just put a brand new battery in it last night. It was idling too low and dying, the battery light was on, the power steering wasn't working, and it started overheating after driving it to work (I was already late and drove there hoping it wouldn't explode on me). I was late to work to do the books in the morning. There is a new manager training and he learned how to enter some of the daily sales info the night before. Note to self- if one person starts doing the books, they should be the one to finish it. I could not make any sense of how what he did. So, I had to go back over everything to grasp what was going on. Then the credit card sales didn't match up. Someone ran a credit card under the wrong employee number. Ugh. I got it all figured out, though. After that, I found out that my floor chart hadn't been set up the night before by the closer, so everyone was lost and didn't know where their sections were. At this time, I had not eaten anything yet. I hadn't had time for breakfast at home and we were busy enough that I couldn't eat. I didn't eat anything until about 1:45pm.

So, my relief was supposed to be in at 2pm. He showed up at 1:30pm, dawdled around for a bit, then my manager asked him to go run some errands to pick up a few things we needed to finish decorating. Yeah, left at 1:50pm and didn't get back until 2:25pm. So, instead of being able to go straight to sign my son up for kindergarten, I had to get the stupid car taken care of. I brought it back to the store I got the battery from thinking they sold me the wrong battery. Nope. He told me that situation had happened to him and he had popped a belt. Opened the hood. Sure enough! There was half my serpentine belt! So, I had to call around to find a place that would put a new belt on for me at 3pm on a friday (almost close and usually not open for the weekend). I found a place and carefully drove the car over while praying that it didn't overheat on the way over there. They started working on it and I had my mother pick me up to take me to school registration.

Kindergarten registration had the looooooongest line ever when I got there at 3:45pm. And the car place closed at 5pm. I filled out my papers and waited and waited and waited in line. I ended up having my mom go BACK to the car place with a blank check from me to get it paid for and get the key before they closed. There went $120 I wasn't planning on spending today. I picked up the car after registration (which was an emotional roller coaster in itself! I can't be old enough to have a child in kindergarten! When the heck did that happen?!). I went home to talk to Mark about the rest of the night (and the errands we still had left) to find my niece was over for a sleepover (I love her to death, but after this day, I was NOT in the mood).

I realized that tomorrow night we have Friendsgiving (Thanksgiving, but with all our friends!) tomorrow night and I have to bake pies to bring. So, I went out to the grocery store to buy all the ingredients. Then I drove ALL the way across town to the video game store that my brother-in-law's girlfriend works at to buy their last pre-owned Rock Band set for the Wii (Christmas present!). I then ordered pizza because it was going to take about 20 minutes to get there to pick it up on my way home, only to find out that he'd just had to make 40 pizzas for a school rec night and it was going to be 45 minutes until my food would be ready. So, I had to sit there waiting for a while.

Looking back on it now, I feel a sense of accomplishment. Figured out the books, worked (gotta make the money!), got the car working well (for now), got son signed up for school, got a Christmas present, got stuff for pies, got pizza for dinner. But I have to say, I cried today because it SUCKED when I was going through it all. Oh! And we had to cancel on my dad for dinner. By the way, I still haven't found the birth certificates, but was able to use the one on file from preschool (I was stressing that I was going to have to fit in a drive down town to the health department to buy a new birth certificate).

So, yes. Screw today. I'm tired- physically, emotionally, everything. I STILL don't have my pictures loaded from the camera to list new things on Etsy. And tomorrow- my one day off- I have to bake pies and make sure we're all presentable for our get-together tomorrow night. I need a day off- FOR REAL.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

We Have A Winner!!!

Congratulations awilsonrn! You won a Cherry Blossom Pendant!

If you had your heart set on a pendant and didn't win, I have a special promotion for my twitter followers! If you purchase from my shop in the next 5 days and put "Twitter" in the notes to seller you will receive 25% off your entire purchase! Thanks for playing along and keep an eye out for more giveaways in the future!



Don't forget to tweet a Congratulations to @awilsonrn
Link

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Blog-a-long Day 2 Wordless Wednesday- Holiday Shopping Guide!

This week our Wednesday is a little less wordless, but whole lot more fun! The EART team would like to present their Holiday Shopping Guide!! We will start with our featured items, and move on to stocking stuffers! (Don't want to forget those now!)

_____________________________________________

.~*Featured Items*~.
______________________________




~*~*~*~*~


AWEShop
~*~*~*~*~



PunkyNMunky
~*~*~*~*~


BirkzWorkz
~*~*~*~*~


Diva Dea
~*~*~*~*~



Indigo Orchid Designs
~*~*~*~*~


Eclectic Skeptic
~*~*~*~*~

_____________________________________________

.~*Stocking Stuffers*~.
______________________________


Simply click on the picture to head over to look at the stocking stuffer more closely!









Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Advent Blog-a-long Day 1

So, today is December 1st. Really? When did that happen? This year might as well be over! Well, not really. Though we've got the 'stressful' holiday times upon us, I wouldn't give them up. I would give up this cold, though. I HATE the cold. I swear, I'm cold blooded. I can NEVER get warm in the winter. Brrrrrrrrr!


On a happier note, I had my biggest day yet in sales! Yay for Cyber Monday! In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't all that much (6 pendants total). But it sure made my night! It's the most sales I've had in any single week, let alone one DAY!

I'm headed off to work for the day here soon, but I've got to get back in the studio to make some more Cherry Blossom Pendants. I just can't keep them in stock! I'm also brainstorming other ideas for pendants in a similar style to the Cherry Blossoms, but featuring a different flower. Suggestions welcome!