Pretty Packages

When I'm packing items up to ship them, sometimes I just feel creative and want to add a little extra sparkle to the package. Sometimes I'm late in shipping things and I feel bad, so I make the packaging extra-special so my customer won't think I don't care about them! In this case it was both:

The pendant is held tight to the card with some thread strung between the stones and tied in the back. All recycled materials, of course. I used paint swatches for the mountains and sky and mini cairn, textured cardstock for the hills and path. Translucent vellum for the snow. These are the times I'm so glad I have a scrap bin. 

This little pendant is going out tomorrow. Hopefully Kathy in Atlanta, GA will enjoy it. :)

Fun Stuff.

I recently visited my old elementary school, and found a ceramic tile that was part of a school project. It's still there, mounted in the mural on the wall! How neat. It's funny how my young self portrayed my family members. My dad look sort of strong but stern, with those big yellow eyes, and my mom is almost ridiculously cheery and whimsical - big curls, big round eyes, flouncy dress. I don't know what the devil I'm wearing -flowers, stripes, blue, purple? I was kind of a fashion-confused child, so I guess it fits, hahaha.

I just put up a BUNCH of new items in both Eventual Invention and Pied Crow - and I already sold one of them! This little journal went home already:

And I finally put up those cairn pendants I mentioned a while back, like this one:




Clickables - they take you to the listing, where you can see more photos! Or you can check out all my new faux stone jewelry or the other new journal... :)

Recent Things

Well, it's been another busy week. But a good one. The fall is finally (finally!) here, in classic California style. The season changes between one evening and the next morning, and suddenly you're thinking about rain boots and scarves and pumpkin pie. I know I sure have been thinking about pumpkin pie. Mmmmm.

Anyway, some shop happenings. I listed this journal, which I made a few weeks ago but never got around to putting up. It's one of my favorites so far. Different lizard skins beneath vertical windows in the cover. Very textural. It was a real killer to make - those thin windows are so hard to cover properly! I had to slice the leather vertically over the windows, then super tiny little angled slices toward the corners. The lizard skins are glued to the back of the bookboard around the windows, then covered by the endpages, further securing them. I'm quite happy with the way it came out - though I did end up with a few small glue spots on the cover. Darn! 

But oh well. Each book is a learning experience! You can check out more photos in the Etsy listing. 

I also made a custom peapod pendant for Pat (TattooDreams), and that shipped out today. 

I had been jonesing to make some more pod jewelry lately, so I was happy to oblige Pat when she contacted me late last month. She wanted a simple little pod of spiced clay with two green beads. I didn't have any on hand, but after a little shopping I located this lovely pair of green speckled stone. Add a little brass jump ring a ta-da! Peapod. I think it's very cute. On a nice brass chain, it will be so adorable. I hope she enjoys it. I might just make myself a similar one. 

So making my first custom order was very fun indeed. And here are some other things I made while I was noodling around with clay. 

There are some pods there, a couple little mushrooms, flowers and other doodads that I'm not sure what to do with yet, and some faux stone cairn pendants-to-be. 
I have been meaning to post up some photos of my business cards and the custom stamp I ordered from terbearco. Here we are: 

See, it's very well made, with a handy place to put a label for your stamp, and as you can see below, it prints quite well, too! 

And here are my business cards, from greenerprinter.com. They came out so nicely. Very simple. That's how I wanted them - too much junk or fancy images and the business information is lost. Name, phone, shop address, email - why do I need more than that?

They even have this nice recycled content label on the back. It's optional - you can get cards without it, but I'm all for recycling and especially post-consumer content, so I left it on. 

All in all, a good week! 

Autumn Seed Pods

<-- Sweet little split seed pod!  

It's one of a bunch of seed pod jewelry that I recently sold over at Eventual Invention. I even received a custom order for another pendant! It's very exciting. This line of jewelry is my very first and I had so much fun making it. It's exactly what I had in my head - organic, with a subtle palette and using natural materials with brass accents.

The creation process was really quite accidental - I explain it in the item listings in Eventual Invention, too - I was looking for some speckled clay, and I couldn't find anything in stores that matched what was in my head. So on a whim I pulled some freshly ground spices from my spice cabinet and rolled them into plain white clay, since that was what I had on hand. I figured if it works for pies it will work for jewelry! And I'm so glad. The clay smells like autumn and pumpkin pie and cinnamon and chai tea. Ohhhh it's just spectacular. The pods I already made used tigers eye stone and brown and tan wood beads for the seeds. Very autumnal in color. I made them during the summer, but I was already longing for fall. Can you tell?

So I will be making a new little pod pendant soon! I'm rather excited. :D