webgrits

When I got sick again, I took a break from making rosaries and from actively running my Etsy shop. I relisted things every now and then, but I didn't make any new rosaries or chaplets for months.

Earlier this month, I saw these great Andalusite beads at Lima Beads. As their website explains:

Andalusite is named for Andalusia, the province in Spain where it was first discovered. Andalusite is a somewhat rare stone, so many jewelry designers have never heard of it. It's a hard stone and great for jewelry making! The variety of Andalusite called Chiastolite is sometimes referred to as "cross jasper" because nearly every stone contains inclusions of graphite which form a cross in section. For this reason, some ancient texts refer to this gemstone as “Lapis Crucifer”, which means “cross stone”.

When I saw the beads, the first thought I had was, "Oh, those would make an awesome rosary bracelet!" Nevermind that the beads are huge (14mm) and I've never made a rosary bracelet. I immediately ordered a strand.

In the meantime, I decided to sign up for my first craft show. I quickly realized I didn' t have near enough stock, and I started making rosaries and chaplets as fast as I could. My bracelet was put on the backburner.

Last night, I decided to break out the cross jasper and make my bracelet. The 11 beads alone weren't long enough to go around my wrist, so I added some Swarovski crystals I had left from making my wedding rosary. After a failed stringing and losing some beads on the floor, I finally ended up with my first bracelet. It's strung a little too loosely, and I can't seem to put it on by myself.  But I still like it.

Tonight, I'll get back to making items for the craft show. I spent Sunday making Blessed Kateri chaplets, and another day I spent making pocket rosaries and chaplets. I've got tons of stuff still on my list to make, including Our Lady, St. Therese, and St. Joan of Arc chaplets. I'm also planning to make magnets, some with my shop logo and some with my husband's business' logo, to give away. It's going to be a busy three weeks until the show :)

For all of 2 minutes (well, not really, but close), I had a Blogger blog that I was going to use for my craft postings. That was before I resurrected webgrits from the dead. Tonight, I've moved over that handful of Blogger posts, and I wanted to repost this one.

Original Post Date: 3/28/08 11:23PM

There's been a lot of talk lately about handmade weddings, so I wanted to share items I made for my wedding last month.

Rosary

I made wedding rosaries for both me and my husband. I gave my husband his during our rehearsal dinner, and the restaurant manager wants to know how much I'll charge him to make one for his mother :) I used Swarovski bicones in the new Golden Shadow color, and the crucifix, centerpiece, and findings are sterling silver.

Bridal Jewelry

I made two sets: one for me and one for my matron of honor. I was still making the matron of honor's jewelry the day before the wedding! Everything turned out well, though. I used vanilla semi-round freshwater pearls and fern cubic zirconia. My matron of honor's jewelry matched except for the color of the CZ, which was a lighter yellowish green (lemon ice).

You can find out more and see more pictures in my Flickr wedding set.

I took the plunge and bought my first pair of Lindstrom pliers. My Hobby Lobby cheapo roundnose pliers were getting a bit out of alignment, so it was the perfect opportunity to upgrade.

On the Etsy forums, someone recommended replacing pliers one at a time due to the cost. I did a little web-browsing and found that Urban Maille had the best prices. They shipped pretty quickly, too.

I unpacked them and immediately noticed how much shorter the tips were than my old pair.  However, now that I've used them, I think that gives me more control without having to move my hand so much when I loop wire.  Also, it took a few turns to figure out the best spot to loop the wire around.

The handles on these pliers are wonderful!  They're much longer than the pliers I had before, and they're extremely comfortable.  When I switched between them and my cheapo chainnose pliers, I could really tell the difference.

The tips are so tiny!  You could make a tiny loop with these, and, although I haven't tried it, I bet it would make a much tighter start to a wire spiral.

Now that I have these, I can't wait to replace all my other pliers!  Ooooh, and the flush cutters, too  :)

When I'm not working or making rosaries/jewelry, I'm taking MBA classes. Yes, I am slightly insane ;) The past week or so has been consumed with my Economics class. Luckily, my final was Monday night (not good AT ALL), and, after sleeping it off last night, I'm ready to take full advantage of the 2 month break before my next class (another blasted economics class!).

April has been a good month for me, sales wise. I also had several firsts:

• first repeat customer
• first private Alchemy request
• first customer who said they found me on Flickr
• first customer who said they were refered by a past customer

I'm hoping May will be a good month as well. I will have time to make and list new items more regularly, and one of my chaplets will be in the Etsy cooperative ad in the May issue of CRAFT magazine. I've also stocked up on rosary and chaplet components; I'm going to try to use up a lot of the beads I have on hand before I buy more.

Hmm, looks like May could be just as busy as April after all :)

This has been a great week, shop-wise.  I sold the Saint Peregrine chaplet (in the picture above) and a custom order.  I've also got about a week's worth of new items to list.  I've tried to either list or relist once a day, although I may stop listing on Friday or Saturday, because the traffic is not very high.

IRL, I'm a web developer, and, in a former life, I did desktop publishing.  Today, I've been working on new business cards for my husband's company (he's a one man computer consulting dynamo).  My next task:  designing a promotional postcard.

In addition to my day job and my Etsy shop, I'm pursuing my MBA (or perusing, as our newspaper wedding announcement said).  I'm taking Economics this semester, and it's not my favorite class ever.  I'm supposed to be doing online quizzes this weekend.  I'd rather design postcards.

Sometimes I take pictures and they turn out like this.  Sometimes...well, not so good.  I can't seem to figure out the secret to taking consistently good pictures.

My main problem is that most of my items contain metal (base metal mostly, but sometimes sterling silver) crucifixes, centerpieces, and medals.  If I have the lighting so that the color of the beads are more true-to-life, I get a mad glare on the medal components.  If I have the lighting so that there isn't a glare and the detail of the metal components is clear, the picture is too darn dark.  ARGH!

I read an article that suggested setting the camera's f stop to 8 and the ISO to 80-100.  I've figured out how to set the ISO, but not so much the f stop (although the camera loves to tell me what it's currently set to).

The worst glare, however, is on my pinback buttons.  The buttons look so much better IRL than they do in the pictures.

Photography...the bane of an Etsy seller's existence ;)

It took a while, but I finally got my new 1" button machine.  (BTW, thank you Keith @ American Button Machines for being SO helpful!)  I am absolutely amazed at how easy making the button is!  What is not easy: creating the graphic.

I found a public domain photograph of St. Therese and a Photoshop button template.  I knew that Paint Shop Pro would open the Photoshop file, but what I apparently forgot was how to use Paint Shop Pro.  It took me FOREVER to get the words on a curve the way I wanted.  But I finally did...at 2AM this morning *yawn*

The rose was a little easier.  My brother and I cut some photos out of magazines and catalogs, and I found the rose in a magazine ad.  My brother made buttons using a picture from a telescope catalog and a page from an old map.

I could make buttons all night...I'm such a geek :)

I bought these lovely beads, and, once I had them in my hands, they made me think of Van Gogh's "Starry Night." They are so clear I had trouble getting my camera to focus on them. One question: does anyone know what a merkaban is?

This past Christmas, my brother and my husband gave me a great lightbox set. The box itself is collaspable and folds up into a carrying case, which has pockets for a great set of lights and a tripod that came with it. I recently started taking my product pictures using the lightbox, and I think they've turned out great.

While my coffee cup seems to work well for hanging earrings, I've not found a good solution for my rosaries and chaplets. I've ordered a curved display from Fire Mountain Gems that I think will work well, and I'm looking forward to trying it out.