Green Ochre

I recently pulled a few new handmixed colors and found a few good recipes. 

This color was equal parts light ivory and light violet comes out to a green ochre.

Handblown Shells

I was recently inspired by the spring marine & aquatic issue of The Flow Magazine. There was an amazing photo of some shells made by Vittorio Costantini and I decided to make a few shells of my own. I was only planning to make a few but then I got hooked on making them :)

Jason

Decorating

We found a sweet computer desk by the dumpster recently and decorated it with some of my paperweights.

Thanks for looking!

Jason

Lizard Paperweights

I've been recently trying to keep the paperweights a bit bigger as the normal size which has allowed me to fit two lizards on a paperweight :) Maybe an extra lizard will try to sneak on a future paperweight! These little guys are on Etsy.

Jason

Electroformed Goodies

I've been playing around with electroforming lately. Here is a bead, vessel and pendant :)

Thanks for stopping by :)

Jason

More Paperweights

I can't keep away from making more paperweights! More coming soon :)

 

 

Jason

New Wood Stand

I stopped by Home Depot recently and I found alder and poplar strips that I thought would look great glued together. The wood is finished with some natural danish oil and it really makes the alder pop! The paperweight is 1.25in diameter :)

Thanks for looking!

Jason

Paperweights on Wooden Stands

I've been having a lot of fun making paperweights and wooden stands lately. The darker stands were made by my dad, however I will be picking up some darker stain later today :) I have a bunch of paperweights that are just waiting for the stands, so once those are done I will make another entry with those :) 

 

 

 

 

Lizards!

I recently ran bought a few silver glass rods and ran out of lizard beads and here is the result of that combo :)

Blue Lizard

Metallic Lizard

Red Lizard

Metallic Display

Thanks for looking!

Jason

Farmer's Markets

I was reading another bead artists post about how summer sales were going and thought of talking about how the farmer's markets do good for us.

We are currently doing four farmer's markets in closeby towns (same four as last year) and we are a guest in a further town twice for the season. The sign up price was really affordable, between $50-100 for either may-oct or june-oct depending on the market location and they are all weekly rain or shine. The sales were a little slow at the beginning of this year but they have picked up quite a bit. We mostly sell beads and pendants on handdyed silk cords and solid copper chains. We have earrings and rings available but they are slower selling items, we don't have an earring display which would probably help. Soon we will be adding sterling silver chains as an option for necklaces. The sales for each market can range from $0-$275. Somedays it will seem like the sales won't be great because of weather but one or two sales can boost the numbers significantly.

A few people also want beads/pendants that we don't have so sometimes that gives us ideas for new styles or just fun projects. When we sold on eBay there were a lot of requests for different beads but since we no longer sell on eBay we haven't gotten much requests for something different, usually now it's something similar to what we already have which isn't a bad thing but nice to get new ideas :)

There are often owner's of stores that come to a market and invite us to a consignment shop/gallery. Sometimes it isn't what we are making at the time, last year someone wanted ornaments in their shop towards the end of the market season. Often it is a store that we don't know about or been to but many others have heard about it or been there.

This year with us moving the studio we are creating a mailing list that we have at our booth for people interested in classes. There is a lot of interest and this way we are advertising to four local towns for free. Even if they aren't interested in the classes they can be informed when the gallery/retail section is open so when the markets close they can still see our work offline.

Our online sales are still going as well, last year we stopped listing on Etsy while we did the markets.

I think I covered most of the info about the markets :) If you got any questions let us know!

Jason

New Pendant Style

I've been working on a new style of pendant yesterday, I like the idea of these pendants but they don't seem to be coming out 100% like I want. I've kept them plain for the most part and maybe that's what I'm not liking about them but I do like this one. This weekend I'll probably work on the design a bit more.



Here's another bracelet from Phyllis Martin (Goldbracelets.etsy.com) using Andrea's flower beads :)



Jason

Goldbracelets

We added a few ways to get a discount on our Etsy shop and one was to post pictures of finished jewelry using our beads. Phyllis Martin from Goldbracelets.etsy.com posted a few gorgeous gold bracelets using some of our beads :) Her descriptions can be read here. I love the look of them all, the second one is my favorite and love how the opal yellow goes nice with the gold.





Jason

Our Pendants Reviewed

Check out this review on our pendants and also a chance to win a FREE pendant!!!!


http://singlemama-reviewcorner.blogspot.com/2010/04/powers-art-glass-review-and-giveaway.html

More marbles

AHHH I'm in love with soft glass marbles! So much easier to work silver glass with limited oxygen. Also can get decent sizes with only one concentrator. With boro I'd have two concentrators but seemed to take forever to get a decent size marble made. I just fixed this marble yesterday, I was surprised that this size marble could be fixed since it was soft glass but I had no problem reheating it in the flame. Anywho here is the marble.

Marble Pendant

We are having a 40% off sale in our Etsy shop for Monsters only :)

Here's one of the marble pendants. Probably going to try some small marbles to do the same thing but for earrings.

Soft Glass Marbles

Wednesday I ended up making one soft glass marble that turned out great but had a flat spot where the final punty was. Yesterday I didn't have much time on the torch but I was determined to make a perfect soft glass marble. I made four total, one had a mark that almost looked like a chip came off the marble so I wirewrapped it for myself :) It was a nice organic one with silver leaf on it. I was surprised I did so well with soft glass marbles since I like to use a lot of heat and thought boro would be easier because of that. It turns out the soft glass ones took quite a bit less time to shape.

I am starting to wirewrap some of my old boro marbles that have been sitting waiting to be listed online. Those will start to be listed on the upcycled copper Etsy now.

Here's my soft glass marbles from yesterday (only two out of the four)

Rings!

I am really having so much fun making all sorts of copper jewelry! Made some rings Monday and yesterday, so here's a few of them that are listed on Etsy. It seems like everytime I am driving lately I come up with new pendant ideas so going to work on those in the next few days. Just a little over a month to our first show!

Wire Jig

Our packages came in Tuesday and I am loving using the wire jig! Here are a few of the beads/buttons pendants I've made (middle one just sold and is our first sale!!). More on our new etsy upcycledcopper.etsy.com :)

New Etsy

I don't have a picture of the copper bracelet that I said I would post because our wire straighteners are coming in today so I figured I would show the one I make next that is a better quality. We opened up a new etsy shop, www.upcycledcopper.etsy.com It has only copper wire pendants with lampwork beads so far but will have much more variety soon. We ordered a tumbler so going to put our stained glass/fusing glass scrap in the tumbler and then make some home decor items. Probably also get some earrings and rings up but that won't be right away.

We placed a few different orders lately so waiting on a bunch of new exciting things :) From Arrow Springs we got some puffy mandrels, adventurine and a JC sifter with coil actuator. From Rings and Things we got some greek beads, wire wrapping jig, wire straightener, ring sizer and ring mandrel. From Monsterslayer we got sterling silver wire, sterling beads and the tumbler. The Arrow Springs order got delayed and should be in today along with the Rings and Things order :) It's so fun getting new stuff to play with :)

Here's a few of the copper pendants in our new shop

Beadroller

We ordered the classic four beadroller (has round, tube, disc and long barrel bead shapes) from CGBeads and it works great! I've been working on some sets with it and getting more used to it. We will definately be getting some more. I also worked with bullseye glass for the first time and seemed a lot stiffer to work with but was happy with a set I made below. The round beads were made with the new beadroller and focal was with Val Cox marver.

The lentil press also came in but it requires more glass than we thought to make a lentil so that will probably be put to the side for a few.

I'm loving the warmer weather, today was amazing out! On weather channel it says 44 for Monday's high!!!! Yaaay for warm weather :)