Sewing machine

In between Twi-Geek '09 I managed to make a new piece for the shop, the Nancy necklace. I'm introducing one of the pendants that I found a couple of weekends ago, which was really fun to work on. This one is a vintage sewing machine! How charming is that image?

Lucky finds

Errands, work, movies, chores, books, travel, family, friends, and Twilight have temporarily pushed aside jewelrymaking and attempts to stock the shop, but yesterday I scored a bunch of these amazingly adorable metal and epoxy charms with various vintage-y looking images on them. I snatched up a bunch. They're very whimsical charms such as a pair of French shears, Gibson girls in hats, an old-fashioned sewing machine, and a black-and-white bulldog. So fun, and I can't wait to work on them this week. I debated taking photos because I had a mind to debut them as finished pieces, and also, it's been a very busy weekend!

Hand-stamped silver disc pendant

I finished this new stamped sterling silver pendant but I haven't listed it on my Etsy shop yet because I am unsure about the quality of the photos. I didn't realize how difficult it would be to photograph something this shiny: one, it reflects the sunlight back something fierce, creating a bright light that obscures the details of the pendant, and two, if you look closely enough, you can see me and my camera reflected on the super shiny surface.

But actuallly, now that I look at it again, this photo actually ain't too bad.

So while I go experiment some more with the lighting, I'm also going to mention that I need to really gear up for the coming holiday shopping season. This coming one will be the first for my shop so it's hard to predict how much I will sell, but in any case, I need to start preparing my inventory.

Ribbons and things

I popped over to the craft store in the afternoon, where I was only going to "quickly" pick up a "couple" of things. Yeah, right. Many, many hours and $40 later, I came away with some really awesome goodies. My favorites are these vintage-looking keys and buttons pictured at the top. I was thinking of incorporating them as pendants with maybe some Swarovski crystals.

I am also going to start experimenting with using ribbons in my designs, so I picked up a few spools in different colors. I'm a little anxious to see how this turns out. I couldn't resist getting the pink and green polka dot ribbons, though at this point I'm not sure how or what I'm going to use them for.

Additionally, I decided that I'm finally ready to use a jig to make more complicated wire designs, so I got me one of those, too, but I need to practice first before I turn out results that are good enough to be put in necklaces.

As a side note, I was so thirsty after all that craft shopping that I decided to go to the grocery store in search of a cold drink. Nothing really appealed to me except that Vitamin Water stuff that comes in different flavors (everything else in the cold cases were carbonated drinks, which I wasn't in the mood for). So I reluctantly bought a Vitamin Water. I say reluctantly because ever since Jennifer Aniston became their spokeswhore, I vowed to boycott this product. She is #2 on my list of people whom I completely loathe and anything she endorses is fair game for a boycott. (Mr. HD calls this my "irrational hatred" of her, but I swear I've never been more coldly rational about anything in my life.)

However, I'm sorry to say that the Vitamin Water actually wasn't half bad, and so if I ever get stuck in the desert by myself with no signs of civilization or even an oasis for miles around, maybe I'll consider getting this product again. But only then.