Monday, July 29, 2013

Wholesale Gem & Jewelry show

On July 26th, I drove 2.5 hours (150 miles) into North Carolina to attend the wholesale jewelry show in Franklin.  It is held twice a year, Mother's Day weekend and the last weekend in July.  Both weekends there are about 5 gem shows but I only go to the wholesale show.  I got back from spending more money than I should have, but it did feel good. Got lots of beads and necklaces which will be made into Christmas ornaments. Got peridots, emeralds, sapphires, and amethysts to be made into earrings for various and sundry people. One of my co-workers asked me to pick something up for his girlfriend, found a sterling silver flip-flop with rubies across the bands and a swiss blue topaz pendant. Picked up 2 dozen plus earrings in a wide selection of styles and colors for another co-workers young daughters.  Now they can go to school stylin'.

Picked up mesh beads in both globe and oblongs, in silver and gold.  The globes are 12mm and the oblongs I was able to pick-up in 2 different sizes an 8x12mm and a 12x24mm.  Also picked up several silver and rhinestone beads, again in two sizes.  Some silver spiral cages, again in two sizes.  Stopped by one tent and picked up more of the marblized wooden beads from Indonesia in a wide assortment of colors.  I stopped by the vendor tent where I had picked-up three different sizes of what they call "disco beads", globes with rhinestones bumps.  They had 2 strands of white which I picked-up in May from them, but they said if I called their home location in Miami, they would still sell them to me at the show price and would ship free.

Once I separate the beads, I'll start making ornaments.  Lots and lots of miniature ornaments.  One woman told me to make several of the miniature trees and she would sell them for me to some of her clients.  So when I start making the ornaments, I'll need to keep track of with beads and various supplies I use to come up with a cost for the tree.  Then triple the cost of the tree to cover my time.  Just need to find more of the miniature trees with small 'needles'.  Have lots of the miniature lights and can get them locally so as I need them I can go out and buy a strand or two.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Fun with Wood

One of the themes in the exchange group one month was “wood”, had to produce an ornament which was wooden or used wood.  I took a couple of the wooden turned eggs which you can find at craft stores and used finger nail polish to create my ornament.  The polish produced a shiny enamel coating.  Using pieces of painter’s tape I created resist strips and applied several coating of the polish. 






I also used additional wood turnings to create wooden drops, again using nail polish as the coloring medium.

Have thought about doing more with the polish, but have not gotten around to it yet.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Getting closer to returning to making ornaments.

Have been slammed at work.  I have had to do my regular job plus pulling together and producing the updated corporate catalogue.  When I asked earlier this year if I needed to start planning the catalogue out, I was told that it would be out-sourced to a local company and wouldn’t have to worry about it.  On June 26th, I was handed the initial design of the catalogue and was told that I would need to do it because the company was not able.  They would still be doing the printing.  With a few days for vacation and holiday, I began work on July 8th and was ready to printing a couple of galleys on July 12th, worked 45+ hours.  So I have been frantically producing said catalogue with only a few photos left to take to update product look.  I was able to go from a 32-page to a 28-page piece, have galleys produced for editing.  Have three photos and one product description to do (with place-markers holding position) then I hope I can be finished with the catalogue and I can send my creative juices back to Christmas ornaments.  Have several ideas forming for some regular sized, some miniatures.  I also have several branches made for the proto-type of the German-style feather tree, need to take photos and make more branches.

Monday, July 8, 2013

Update 2013/07/08

Have had to work on other items recently and not had a chance to create any ornaments, but that hasn’t stopped my brain from imagining.  Was up until the wee hours of the morning doing “What if I did this?” and the “I wonder if this would work?”  Which is usually how it works but when the first alarm goes off at 5am, it makes for a long morning.

During the ‘vacation’/holiday I did purchase several items for not only miniatures but also full sized ornaments.  I also have been looking at a couple of sites which I want to try and incorporate their techniques into my Christmas ornaments, but those will be a couple years away.  The next ornament will be for friends who got married several months ago.  They are expecting their first-born sometime this month and I have two gifts for them.  The first are two 6mm square cut rubies, the second will be a light blue ornament with ‘2013' date tag. 

My god-daughter still hasn’t decided which ornament she wants to do for her Senior Project.  She told me she wanted to do hand-made ornaments but didn’t think there was enough information for her literature review.  I chuckled and told her I had more than enough information and reference books to satisfy her teacher.  I’m trying to get her interested in the Cracker Box ornament kits for several reasons.  The first being that I can hopefully help her long-distance when she has questions, so she can work on it when I’m not in North Carolina.  The second reason, I have always wanted to do them since I first found out about them in the late 70s.  I thought I would let her pick an ornament and then, I would order 2 so that both of us do them on different colored balls.  I told her that if she liked doing them, I would buy her a couple more.  She has told me she wants to learn to make some of my ornaments and while I am flattered, I think she may just want to be able to raid my ornaments and pass them off as her own work.  In the past, when I have helped her on school projects, she would take my beginning of the work and then turn it in, receive a good grade and then fail to complete the assignment.  I have told her that she HAS to do the work, I would help her, but I wouldn’t do it for her.  Six years ago I helped her older brother with his senior project, but he did do 98% of the work.  His project was Gem-Stone faceting and I would start the tier and let him finish.  He was a quick study and he picked-up the operations fairly quickly.  Only when a new procedure such as transferring and re-aligning the stone from working on the bottom to beginning to work on the crown was help required.

I purchased the Cracker Box catalogue and on my last visit to NC told her to look through it to find a simple one.  Everyone she looked at, I felt daunted at the complexity, thinking I would find it challenging and completely overwhelming for a 17 year-old who has never done anything like them.  I may go ahead and order a couple so that when I go to NC later this summer I can give her an ornament to work on (and I can go ahead and order a couple for me).