Earring Giveaway!

Thanksgiving Giveaway Earrings!

There's still a day and a half left to leave your comment about what you're thankful for. I'll choose a random comment to win these ocean blue ceramic charm earrings on sterling silver earwires. (the color on the bottom picture is more accurate, I was experiencing lighting "issues" today!)

I opened the kiln this morning to lots of new pendants and I am thankful that they all turned out!

Fantastic Friday

Why is today fantastic you may ask?  For many reasons! For one - it's Black Friday and I no longer work in the customer service industry! *dances* Also, my fantastic Etsy Bloggers Team is doing a sale!!!

☆:*¨¨*:★:*¨¨*:☆:*¨¨*:★:*¨¨*:☆:*¨¨*:★:*¨¨*:☆:*¨¨*:★:*¨¨*:☆☆ ; ;:* ¨¨*:★:

H a p p y H o l i d a y s ! !
The EtsyBloggers HOLIDAY S*A*L*E* is going on from Black Friday thru Cyber Monday!!
That's Friday 11/28 thru Monday 12/1!!
See a list of the 50+ shops having a SALE below...
H a p p y S h o p p i n g ! !

☆:*¨¨*:★:*¨¨*:☆:*¨¨*:★:*¨¨*:☆:*¨¨*:★:*¨¨*:☆:*¨¨*:★:*¨¨*:☆☆ ; ;:* ¨¨*:★:

I've got 10% off my entire shop PLUS FREE shipping on orders of $20 or more.  If you mention this post I'll make it 15% off. Nice eh?


I also received this award a couple of days ago and have been so busy I haven't had a chance to blog about it. Yikes! So thanks to the fantastic Spirit Mama for considering me worthy :) Now the rules say I'm supposed to nominate 7 other blogs - but I'm not going to pass it on today - because I'm really tired! Sorry guys - i know - I'm a spoil sport :P

Why am I so tired if I'm not working in customer service you might ask? Good question, because I certainly didn't go shopping! I'm not that brave/crazy/whatever *wink* No, today was the last day of moving stuff out of the place we've been house-sitting for the last two months! We thought it would all be done by yesterday except for some cleaning, but that was not to be.  I ended up having a nasty allergic reaction to a new medicine the doc's tried putting me on and that kinda made everything take longer.

So now everything is in the new apartment and my hubby and I spent the first night in our new place last night! Even though everything is disorganized and in boxes, and we'd forgotten our pillows at the place we were house-sitting, it was still a nice feeling to be in a place that was "ours" again.  Since moving back to our home town we've been in limbo, and I'm really happy about how everything has worked out with a living place, job for hubby, and getting hubby into a new school!  Now if we can just get me healthy - I'd be on top of the world :) That's ok - I can wait!

As soon as we've got some more of the boxes cleared I'll post some pics of the new place - give me until next week sometime - I'm exhausted!

Thankful for Etsy :)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Now, I know, that only counts for those of us in the USA  - but it's still an excellent reminder to be thankful for all the good things in our lives.  I, for one, am extremely for having found www.etsy.com! To give a little back story:

I love jewelry, despite the fact that I grew up a tom-boy! I first learned how to do wire-wrapped jewelry around 10 years ago, and I remember spending hours and hours working making chains of links, and dreaming of someday selling in a craft fair or open market.  I never really thought it would happen though.  At the time I still wasn't very coordinated and it took me a LONG time to make a bracelet or necklace!

Fast forward - time goes on - and I learned some new jewelry techniques and began to seriously dream of selling jewelry.  This was about two years ago.  I wasn't really sure what to do though.  I had some friends and family really encouraging me, but I didn't have any idea how to start!  Plus life was really busy.

Then, about a year ago, I started getting really sick. That's a long story, but the result was that I had a lot of time on my hands where I ended up making jewelry, because it was something I could do sitting still.  After a few months of that, one of my friends introduced me to etsy, and the rest was history!

Ok, not quite, it's been a lot of hard work and I've learned a LOT since I opened up shop in May. It's hard to start making a dent in the jewelry world, because there are a lot of other artists out there, but I have had sales on etsy!

I'm really thankful for having this opportunity, especially since my health problems have continued! I'm also extremely excited, because I know I've learned a lot in the last year about my craft - here's a few of the pieces I'm the most proud of!

I know I have a lot more to learn - but see - that's something else to be thankful for! Because I have another year ahead of me with lots of opportunities to learn new things, expand my business, and make new friends!

Want to know what else I'm thankful for? Check out what I said on my other blogs!

Thankful for friends.
Thankful for family.

New Jewelry Designs

Happy almost Thanksgiving! A bunch of new jewelry items up on my site today, the two pictured here are just a sample. I had an extra incentive to get them photographed and posted since I just sent out my holiday special offer email to everyone on my email list! I always mean to send my email offers out more frequently but tend to just do one in the fall or winter. I've heard that more frequent (without being annoying) is more successful but I never seem to get around to it.

Even if you weren't signed up for my email newsletter this time around, you can still benefit. I'm offering free shipping on all orders to the U.S. and Canada until December 7th! I also have a bunch of jewelry items on sale in an effort to clear out a bunch of inventory to make way for next year's designs so this is a great time to shop.

For those of you in the U.S., enjoy turkey day! I know I will be taking a moment tomorrow to be thankful for so many people and things in my life. The holiday spirit has already hit me enough that I think it's time for me to do a little giveaway this week... Post a comment on my blog about what you're thankful for and I'll enter you in a random drawing to win a sweet little pair of sterling silver earrings featuring my ceramic charms for you to keep for yourself or to knock one more gift off your list! Comments must be posted by this Sunday the 30th (Pacific time) to qualify. I'll get a photo of the earrings up once I've come out of my turkey induced food coma...

I'm so Excited!!!

There are many things I'm excited about today :) For one - I'm thankful to be alive - you can read about that story here. I'm also very excited to announce that the Etsy Bloggers are having a sale! My shop is participating with 10% of the entire shop PLUS FREE shipping on orders of $20 or more! Here's our team announcement :)

H a p p y H o l i d a y s ! !
The EtsyBloggers HOLIDAY S*A*L*E* is going on from Black Friday thru Cyber Monday!!
That's Friday 11/28 thru Monday 12/1!!
See a list of the 50+ shops having a SALE at http://etsybloggers.etsy.com
H a p p y S h o p p i n g ! !

I'm also very excited to share with you an exciting opportunity I have! Have you listened to Blockhead Radio? If not - check the widget on the side of my blog! And clicking on the logo below will take you to the blog!


Anyway, Rod, the founder of this radio program and a man we call the "King Plugger Lugger" (because he loves to plug other people's businesses!), is doing a lot to expand the program. The Monday night show is now being called Artisan for Artisan and will be covering a wide range of topics related to the artisan world! Come join is Monday's at 9pm EST for an awesome time of laughter and fun :)

Rod's also added on a Wednesday night show, also at 9pm EST, called the Indie Music Artist Spotlight. He'll be doing live interview's with a wide range of artists, the first week's show is already in the archives, so go listen!

Now for what I'm REALLY excited about! Starting Thursday, December 4th, and 12pm EST, will be the new show - Spotlight on Artisan! Rod will be there to introduce the show and run the chat room, but it will be co-hosted by none other than the fabulous Lily of Tulips Treasure Box and myself! That's right - each week we'll lining up fantastic indipendant artists to interview - and you'll get to hear my voice! Here's a hint - I sound 16, but I'm really not :P

The opening show will feature a live interview with a wonderful artist - Lauren of TheChainMailleLady :) I have a thread going in the forums to help promote this - so if your as excited about getting to know other artisans as I am - go chat in the thread with us!

Sad to Say....

Well, my jewelry party yesterday ended up being a bust.  Other than those participating, my friend Ruth was the only one who showed up!  And yes, for those of you who know my real name is Ruth (or Ruthie), yes, we have the same name :P It gets quite confusing when we hang out together too! Here's a picture of my Mom, me, and Ruth all sitting and talking (and crafting!).

My brother is a real sweetheart and he did a lot to help me with both the set up and the tear down.  He also took most of the pictures...  Here's a pic of me making him work :)

The sad part about the party being a bust was that it wasn't just me there showing my work, my dear friend who runs the shop The Kilted Hedgepig was also there with her jewelry.  Here's a pic of her and her sister setting up her jewelry!

So what went wrong? Well, our theory is that we simply didn't have enough time and energy to put into promoting the jewelry party.  My Mom got back a week ago from a trip to Nicaragua, La (the other artist) is doing NaNoWriMo this month and is very distracted by that, and between getting ready to move and my health problems...  Well, let's just say this could have been planned better.

We're not giving up! The way we figure it we had a ton of fun hanging out and chatting, and next time we'll do a better job promoting. :P We are thinking we'll try and do one late January as a Valentines day party.  Hopefully that one will go better!

Welcome to the Twitterverse!

A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon www.twitter.com - I was hearing this buzz about it on www.etsy.com and I decided that I had to check it out! Now, I have a loooong list of sites that I need/want to check out, but for some reason I was so intriqued that I jumped right on it and checked it out.  I'm so glad I did! I love Twitter!

So what is Twitter all about? Twitter allows you to post updates, have conversations, and promote yourself, all in little "sound bites" of 140 characters or less.  It's like blogging and instant messaging got together and had a baby - that's twitter!

The main benefits that I see from Twitter are:

1. Builds exposure for your business.
2. Easy venue to create and build relationships.
3. Instant feedback when you have a question about an item or which direction you should go in.

Let me take those one by one. Building exposure for your business - You can browse through twitter for friends.  I started with a few people I knew, looked through their friends, and it snowballed from there! You can also search based on interests such as etsy, art, jewelry, pets, Moms, etc.  This means you can connect to the people that fit in with your world, and your marketing goals. It builds fast too! I have 202 followers, and other than my initial blitz of people I recognized, I haven't been searching for connections! I probably will at some point, but I love that I have the ear of 200 poeple and I don't put much effort into it!

Easy venue to create and build relationships - Do you ever find yourself on a social networking site and not having any clue what to say? Even I, someone who loves to talk, run across that problem from time to time! The great thing about twitter is that people will be posting up what their doing, their newest listings, newest blog posts, questions, and more; which gives you ample opportunity to find things to respond to! I've had fun growing closer to people I already knew, and I've definitely made some new friends and learned a lot in the short time I've been on Twitter!

Instant feedback when you have a question about an item or which direction you should go in - I haven't really done this yet, but I've responded to things a lot of other people have put up! It's fun to have a chance to give instant feedback to others, and I'm looking forward to having that outlet when I need it :)

I have a lot more to say about Twitter - but you'll have to wait for another post! I think it's a great promotions tool and I hope that my ideas, and the ideas of others I'm going to pull in, will be helpful! Have a great day :)

Website Sale...shop shop shop!

HUGE jewelry sale on my website from now until December 7th!!!

I'm clearing out items to make room for new designs. Act quickly, the items are all one of a kind and there are some great bargains!! Just in time for holiday shopping and perfect for stocking stuffers...