Why I'll Never Make It Big Selling Jewelry

There are trends. Trendy trends that if you hop on, you'll move a lot of stuff. I can spot a trend and I always, inevitably hate it. Probably because all my taste is in my mouth. Also, I'm old and new ideas scare me.

Take Pandora beads. Fire Mountain has had a much cheaper version of these called Dione add-a-bead system. This "system" hit me directly on my that's-not-really-making-jewelry button. Like the jewelry-maker made all the components for a lovely bracelet then got lazy. "Here's some stretchy string and some beads, you assemble it. I'm tired."

Then I got one as a gift for my birthday. Soon after that they showed up at craft shows selling for beaucoup bucks. Now they're sold --already assembled-- at Kay Jewelers where every kiss begins with a $1000 purchase.

My daughter, who lives with me and knows what I do at home all day long, went and bought herself some feather extension earrings. When they came in the mail, she opened them up right in front of me and put them on. When she saw my heartbroken face she said, "These earrings are not your style" and she was right. Not that I wouldn't have made her some. For free. Still, did I jump on the hair extension earring bandwagon? Of course not! That would mean spending more money on supplies for making earrings I didn't like. Plus there was that whole my-daughter-broke-my-heart thing going against it. And now look. Even Steven Tyler is looking silly in feather hair extension earrings.




You'll find neither Pandoras nor Hair extension jewelry at my Artfire studio nor my Etsy shop.

Because I Am Nothing Without A Project

Craft show season is almost over, the work table isn't gonna get made until I can wrangle my son into helping me on a weekend and I never found the heart to dismantle the dresser and transform it into a book depository-- now what do I do? How about a project started 5 years ago that will never, ever get finished? A project that can't be done, I'm all over it!

When this house was purchased, it came equipped with the nastiest, dirtiest, most stained-filled beige carpet known to man. At least I think it started out beige. The designer name for the color it is now would be Speckled Madness Grey. This Speckled Madness covered the floor in every room and hallway except one bedroom, the bathroom and kitchen. I immediately went to work pulling up this horror and got the one bedroom and the computer alcove done before the furniture was moved in. And when I say "I" I mean "I". The lazy fuckers who live with me whined and whined and dragged their feet and acted like pulling up the tack strips was the hardest job on planet and I was ruining their lives by forcing them to do such horrendous manual labor. It was worse than waterboarding and I was a controlling biotch for forcing them to roll and tie up the pulled carpet and pads. And that was just the boys. The girl didn't even pretend to help.

Then the furniture came in and all carpet removal stopped. That is, until the cats decided that they were gonna have a territorial spray marking fight on a far corner of the dining room carpet. Good thing the furniture in the dining room isn't heavy. Over the course of two months worth of weekends and holidays (but never after work days, because screw that!), I moved the furniture out and removed the carpet in manageable strips-- by myself. In the end, after watching me break my back for a month and a half, the lazy fuckers were shamed into pulling up staples and tack strips. The girl didn't even pretend to help. That was two years ago.

Yesterday I started on the hallway and stairs. Now, a regular person would probably be able to do this in a day or so, especially since there is no furniture to move. But I am not a regular person. I am old, fat and broken. I am broken in so many ways it would take more than one blog entry to list them all. So I am again removing the carpet in small, manageable strips.

This carpet is so filthy that I am afraid of catching an exotic, Dr. House baffling disease. Right now I'm still working on the hallway part and it's as easy as it ever gets but I'm not sure what is going to happen when I get to the stairs part of this project. I look at those stairs and think about how much I'd rather be failing at chain maille than doing this. Or writing a long, repetitive, long and repetitive, long entry about removing the carpet in which I repeat myself endlessly instead of removing carpet. Did I mention how dirty this carpet is? It is so filthy a Roomba cannot be used on it. The Roomba's wheels and dirt catchers get filled and tangled after just one foot of carpet cleaning. Am I repeating myself? Am I going to have to stop writing this and go remove carpet? The answer, I fear, is yes to both.

I Bring The Bad Mojo To The Nicest Ladies

Yesterday at the Unique Bazaar was not the worst I ever did at a craft show. That distinction is held by the second show I did at Astoria Market where, not only did I sell nothing, I spent a good 60 bucks on beer and food. No, Unique Bazaar was not the worst day ever but it sure was the most frustrating. You see, there was plenty of people. Gobs and gobs of people. At one point I came back from the bathroom and Hubby was mobbed. Imagine my excitement when I saw customers standing three deep at my table. That never happened to me before. And they all loved my stuff. The words "beautiful", "lovely" and "great" uttered as often as pronouns. But nobody bought anything. Well, practically nobody.

It wasn't only me. None of the other 6 set-ups around me made table. Which was especially surprising for the table next to me. She had these melted bottle thingies-- hard liquor bottles melted into ashtrays, beer bottles melted and mounted on wood with your choice of bottle opener mounted underneath-- that were fantastic and eye-catching and her booth was rarely empty. And yet she turned to me at about three in the afternoon and said, "This is crazy! What's going on?" I felt too guilty to tell her it was my bad craft show mojo.

Then there was the lovely Freckles. Her son died young and she sold jewelry she purchased in bulk on weekends to raise money for the children's hospital where he had gotten his treatments. She had cute little machine made trinkets, many as cheap as one dollar, that barely moved off her table. Freckles was the information lady. She told everyone where they were to set up. She admired my Display Thingie and my jewelry. "I've got these big, ugly earrings I'll never sell and some that came pre-broken too. I don't even display them. You can take them apart and use the components to make your pretty stuff." And as sure as the ham is eaten long before the turkey, Freckles gave me a two bags of stuff. Just like that!

Giving some serious thought into making and selling Display Thingies.

Finally, I'd like to give some fashion advice to the middle-aged and older men trailing behind their wives at the mall. You probably shouldn't listen to my advice on fashion since I dress in a combination of stretchy material and blouses that were given to me but I'm going to give you some advice anyway. Stop wearing shorts and sandals with windbreakers and leather jackets. I cannot believe how many men woke up and thought, 'man, today I'm gonna be a little chilly from the waist up and hot and sweaty from the waist down'. Really. What the hell?

Also some advice from Wesley Willis, a schizophrenic homeless man with more fashion sense that 1/16th of the mall-shopping male population:

The Most Eatingest Time of the Year

Besides slowly building up my stock for the upcoming craft and gift shows at the Tri-County Flea Market on 11/27 and 12/4, I am Thanksgiving it all up in here. The turkey was put in an apple, brown sugar and kosher salt (and other flavorings) brine last night, collard greens have been cleaned and chopped and stored in the fridge. Today I'm baking chocolate chip and hazelnut cookies to be hidden away until tomorrow. If I don't hide the cookies, they won't make it to Thanksgiving. Also on tap for today: soaking the Cook's ham, baking pumpkin pie, peeling and chopping of sweet potatoes, making of giblet and neckbone broth, and maybe a pecan pie.

P.S. I make a stockpot worth of giblet and neckbone broth and then use it for gravy (of course), stuffing, greens and anything else that calls for broth.

Goodbye until Monday the earliest. If you miss me you can always visit my Etsy shop and Artfire studio.

5 Top Books About Crafting

1. Atlas Rugged
   A guy takes his hook and rug project and petulantly goes home, showing the world that he doesn't need them but the world surely would fall apart without his rug.
2. Knit-01, Catch-22
   You gotta be crazy to be in this yarn craft circle, so stabbing yourself repeatedly with your crotchet hook is not the way to leave it.
3. The Grapes of Wraps
   The gripping novelization of this eHOw tutorial on making grape cluster earrings.
4. Something Wicker This Way Comes
   An artist community of basket weavers promises eternal crafting to all who join their drum circle.
5. A Clockwork Orange
   A harrowing tale of violence as the heroine searches Michael's, Jo-Ann's Fabrics and AC Moore's for a clockwork of a certain color to put into the perfect piece of driftwood she found.

None of these books can be found at either my Artfire Studio or my Etsy Store.

It's Sunday! Must Be Surreal Clown Day.

Only weirdness happens on Sunday, I've noticed that. Today is no different. In order to commence the weirdness, a confession. My Photobucket has a scary clown folder that I add to sporadically. Today was the first time I've added new pictures since forever. What kind of clowns do I collect? Well, scary ones for sure but also just plain surreal and weird ones.

Ronald McDonald features in a few. This one here is my favorite because you know what? That kid probably needed a good bitch-slap.

Ever wonder what a clown made up of naked women would look like? Well, wonder no more!

Bart: Can't sleep. Clown'll eat my penis.

What I imagine a clown penis would look like.
















This entry has absolutely nothing to do with jewelry, crafting, boxes, decoupage, painting or sanity. If you are looking for one of those things, they can be found on at my Etsy shop or perhaps at my Arftfire Studio.

Like Watching Paint Dry

The coat hook whozits is finished. See?

And it wasn't like watching paint dry. It was, in large part, actually watching paint dry. Right now it has hats and jackets on it, instead of the hats and jackets being placed on top of the file cabinet, so that's good. It was easy too.

First you need a piece of scrap wood given to you by your husband's co-worker who finished building a house and heard you might like some good scrap wood and didn't see why the wood should go into the garbage (also the source wood for the shelves in the storage closet).

Stain the scrap wood with Minwax rosewood stain that surprisingly is still good after 7 years sitting in one box after another. Many of my unused paints and stains survived close to a decade of neglect. The deciding factors: how well the container it came is was designed and how well I closed said containers.

Wax areas that you want a lot of wear. Here I did it mostly around the edges and one spot in the middle. If I had to do it over again, I'da made these spots wider and bigger. How'd I wax these areas? You may be wondering. Well wonder no more! I have some left over candle wax. I shaved some flakes off it, but the flakes in a used tealight tin and lit it from the bottom with a lighter. I used an old t-shirt to rub the wax on.

First I spread on some newly bought white crackle medium. I have 7 year old spray can white crackle that still works but spray on crackle would have been to thin. After the spreading (and the drying. Don't forget to watch it dry for hours after each step!) I sanded it by hand. At first.
Just because I had to wait hours and hours and hours for this piece of scrap to dry between each step didn't mean I had to spend hours and hours sanding it when I have an electric hand sander. After spending a half an hour with sandpaper, I got all the sanding done in 2 seconds with the electric sander.

Decoupaged the bottom and stenciled the top. The stencil is another old, old project leftover. See, I'm not a hoarder. I DO have uses for these old, used things.

The most expensive part of this project, the hooks and knobs. The knobs were a buck and the hooks a buck fifty each. The screws the hooks came with are too long for the scrap wood and I accidentally screwed the rack to the table. Good thing I decided to climb the TV mountain and use the power tools in the craft room. It would have been awful if I had screwed it to the bed.


Do not ask me how to hang it on the wall. The system I used-- mirror wire around two screws in the back hung over screws already in the wall when we bought the house- may not work for everyone. Plus, mirror wire may be strong, but it's not particularly stable.

As for the TV, the reason it still in the room and not at the bottom of the stairs in pieces is because hubby came in late last night and promised it will be out of the room this evening.

This is not for sale at either my Artfire Studio or my Etsy Shop.

5 Pin Tutorials That I Would Never Make

What I really want to be doing right now is finishing up my coat-hat-hangeruperthingie so I hoped to quickly find a few brooch tutorials to share. Only every single tutorial I found for pins and brooches involves gluing a pin back to the design. I don't glue my jewelry together. I firmly believe that if you make wire wrapped jewelry it should be held together by wire wraps, ingenuity and magic.

Still, some of these are kinda cute and I don't wanna spend any more time looking for brooch designs that don't use glued pin backs as I am itching to get back to work on my, um, coat hook project. Yes! That's it. Coat hook project! Why didn't I think of that before? It's so simple. Like calling a dishwasher a 'dishwasher' and not 'the washing machine for dishes'. Because when I call it 'the washing machine for dishes' my children look at me funny and then make fun of me.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, tutorials for brooches that involve gluing pin backs to them. Here you go:

Puzzle Piece Pin. The instructions don't say exactly where the pin back is glued. Must be a teeny pin back.

Bottle Cap Pin. I really like this pin. If I had a pin back, I'd make one for myself.

Brooches from old CDs. Reminds me of the Starship Enterprise.

Skeleton Pin. And me not drinking any coffee that isn't free. I'll never get to make this coffee tin man.

Beaded Wire Pin I go through miles and miles of Artistic Wire but I never beaded it quite this way.











As always you can not find these pins in my Artfire Studio or my Etsy Shop as any pins or brooches sold there are held together by ingenuity and magic.

I Shouldn't Want To Murder People

Went to see the site of the gift fairs on November 27th and December 4th. It is a flea market. Hubby says it looks like the Crenshaw Swap Meet, like I know what that is (it's a swap meet in Crenshaw, as my husband patiently explained to me)and it is a lovely place to shop. This I found out after I left Alan, who remembered me as the girl who can't add. And, as it always goes when I try to make money selling my stuff, I spent money instead. To be fair to myself, I wasn't selling stuff. Just arranging to sell stuff at a later date.

But, come on! I got 2 Queen sized sheet sets which includes fitted, flat and four pillow cases-- for 30 bucks! And, at another store, 4 serial romances for .77. Hubby got $40 worth of cologne. He takes pride in smelling good. Oh, we also got a 37" flat screen for the bedroom. This should make me happy as we have been without TV in the bedroom since our old one stopped working about 2 months ago. And I am happy to have a TV in the bedroom again. Especially since we got it so cheap at PC Richards.

Do you remember the craft room I cleaned out? I was doing my painting and woodworking in there. I was quite pleased with myself for clearing out that space and was making a date with my son to work on making myself a work table. I told people that that room was not a garbage dump or a storage room. Apparently, people don't care what I say because the old TV and the new TV box now block the entrance to the craft room.

This TV isn't a flat screened lightweight. No, this is a much older TV. It used to be in our living room 15 or so years ago. It is gigantic and it is very, very heavy. It is in the way of the door so it can't be closed. To enter the room, you must both squeeze by and vault over. Since I am the only one who enters this room, this is not a problem for the people who put it there.

Remember also how I said I needed to make me a coat hangeruperthingy for my entrance hall? Of course you don't but pretend you do. This project includes a fair amount of woodworking and painting. Every time I have to paint on the bed or sand in the living room it makes me that. much. angrier.

Junk day is Thursday. That TV better be out of the craft room by Wednesday night or I am shoving it right down the stairs. I am not even kidding.

You Think I Joke When I Say I'm Really, Really Stupid

Below are two actual e-mail exchanges I had with the organizer of the cancelled Hofstra Indoor Holiday Market. This is a direct copy and paste with a little clean up. Names have been changed to protect the retarded (that would be me).





Hofstra USA November 27 and December 4, 2011 (exchange number one)
Inbox
x
alan

Nov 3 (8 days ago)

to me


Hello Michele,

Confirming receipt of your $180 check #541.

What size space are you requesting for each date?

Here are the rental rates
8 1/2'x8 1/2' space
$150 For any one day
Single table space
$80 For any one day
Please log onto www.nassaucountycraftshows.com for vendor set up details and requirements.

Thank you,

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PinkSlinkie


Nov 3 (8 days ago)

to alan
A single table space for 2 days. Just to be sure, a single table space is a space big enough for a 5" folding table, correct?

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alan

Nov 3 (8 days ago)

to me
A single table for two days @$80 per day is a total of $160 :)
So, you have a $20 credit...Would you like refund or credit to your account for future rentals with us?
Yes, a single table space is big enough for a 5' folding table.

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PinkSlinkie

Nov 3 (8 days ago)

to alan
Holy crap! I can't add. Credit would be nice. Thank you.

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alan

Nov 3 (8 days ago)

to me
You got it, thanks.

---

Shows Cancelled at Hofstra USA and Levittown Hall (exchange number two)
Inbox
x

alan

Nov 6 (5 days ago)


You recently paid for one or more shows at Hofstra or Levittown.

An Email was recently sent to you announcing that we have cancelled the Hofstra and Levittown shows in November and December.

In the place of these two shows we will be at Tri-County Unique Bazaar Mall from November 15 thru December 24.

If you have paid for a 10'x8' space at either Hofstra or Levittown you have the choice of participating at Tri-County for the dates you paid for with no additional fee, or receiving a refund.

Please let us know what you would like us to do.

If you are asking for a refund please give us your name and the address to send your refund.

For details about Tri-County please log onto www.nassaucountycraftshows.com

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding,


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PinkSlinkie

9:55 AM (1 hour ago)

to alan
I will be going today to check out the site and will decide then. My hope is to keep the two dates I originally asked for 11/27 and 12/4. Once I see the venue, I will send an additional check. Or give a check at the site, if possible.


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alan

9:58 AM (1 hour ago)

to me
I apologize, but I can't figure out who you are?

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PinkSlinkie

10:39 AM (29 minutes ago)

to alan
Oh and I figured I was so memorable as the person who didn't know how to add $80 twice. My name is Michele C(redacted cuz I don't trust you internet stalkers). Sorry for being so mysterious.


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alan

10:45 AM (23 minutes ago)

to me
oh, hi Michele...see you later at Tri-County

---

Seriously, I don't know how I breathe sometimes, I'm so thick!


If I was smarter, I'd make a macro or signature that would post links to Etsy Shop and Artfire Studio.

Decoupage. You Should Do It.

Decoupaging. All it takes is paper, scissors, glue and a thing to be decorated. This is a great craft for the poor and/or cheap. I get a great deal of my decoupage supplies from my local 99 Cent Store. Whatever white glue they have, I buy. And then I water it down-- sometimes as much as one part water to one part glue. You can buy decoupage glue-- I have-- but all it is is watered down Elmer's that costs 5 times as much. The one place I may spend a little more would be on the star of the decoupage process: the paper.

Wrapping paper is ideal for decoupage due to its graphic nature. Again I check out my local 99 Cent Store and I search for the cheapest paper they have. This is not only because I'm a skinflint but because the cheaper the wrapping paper, the thinner it will be and thinness is good for decoupaging little boxes. The wrapping paper used for this box is not the thinnest and cheapest, however. This was a good grade wrap. I loved the crackle angels.

I could do a whole series of entries on handmade papers. Handmade paper can be a little bit more difficult to work with than wrapping paper. Some can be very thick, some quite delicate and most are quite a bit more expensive than 99 Cent Store wrapping paper. But it's so beautiful. I used to find packs of 5 X 5 handcrafted papers at Target but now all they have is card stock for scrapbooking. If I want handmade paper now it's the internet or a special trip to Micheal's. The paper pictured is called Banana paper.

My secret favorite decoupage paper-- napkins. Recently I was at a Party City near me for non-crafty reasons and ended up spending 30 bucks on napkins because they were so purdy! Like I had 30 bucks to spend on friggin paper. I'm supposed to be saving up money made from selling so that I can finally buy some precious metal but instead I spend thirty flippin' dollars on NAPKINS, for Allah's sake! What is wrong with me?! This is an example of one of the napkins I bought that day. I won't be able to buy real silver but at least the box is painted silver.


Decoupage boxes can be found on my Artfire Studio.
Examples of mostly non-precious metal earrings at my Etsy Store.

I Made Sorrel.

It is a drink from the Caribbean. As with many foods from the Caribbean, it is bursting with flavors and may be unsuitable for the bland taste buds of middle-America. You know who you are. You people who find black pepper too spicy. You all should be ashamed of yourselves.

Everybody makes their sorrel drink a bit different. For those of you with more adventurous palates, I will tell you how I made mine. The hardest part was getting the sorrel.

In a big ole pot boil 7 cups of water. Once the water is boiling add: An orange peel, a lemon peel, a dozen or so whole cloves, an inch of fresh ginger, a cup (and a little more, I like it sweet) of sugar and a whole 1 oz package of dried sorrel petals. Bring back to boil. Stir and stir until all the sugar has been dissolved. Take it off the fire, put a lid on it and let it steep overnight.

Did I say the hardest part was acquiring sorrel? I was wrong. The hardest part will be leaving some for the rest of the family to taste. I even found a pic. This is exactly what my sorrel looks like, right down to the shape of the glass. Except I don't have sorrel petals surrounding my glass. And my glass says 'Yuengling TRADITIONAL Lager. America's Oldest Brewery' on it. But besides that-- exactly the same!

Sadly, it cannot be shared over the internet or I'd fax you some to taste. I can, however, share my jewelry with you from both my Etsy shop and my Artfire studio.

Another One Handed Tutorial

Chain, beads, head pins. . . I've got the makings of a brooch-- if I only had a safety pin.

Me: Hubby, do you know if we have any safety pins?
Hubby: Me man! Mucho testosteroni. Know not of this saf. . .tee. . . pin of which you speak!

Which was strange coming from a guy who is fastidious about his clothes and does all of the sewing because he cannot stomach having his pants hem held up with tape or staples, my two go-to pants hem materials.

Well, if hubby doesn't know of any safety pins, that means we have no safety pins. I guess I'll just have to wing it. Here is a one handed tutorial of my own quick fashioned safety pins.

I made two brooches with my homemade safety pins. One that needs a bit more work to get it just right and one that came out just like I planned form the get go. Look how pretty:

That pretty pin will soon be in my Artfire Studio in a pill box. Perhaps in a week or two. Also I'm putting up a brand new pair of earrings Here's a preview:

The earrings are going up in a few hours. Get 'em while they're hot!

Sunday Macabre

This is a warning. Do not continue. Instead, go to church and pray to the deity of your choosing. There is no art here. No craft. No wire, jewelry, decoupage boxes or handiwork, unless you include the handiwork of demons. Below lies only nightmares.

Here-- a barrier of cuteness. Something to hold back the horror of what will follow.

That's it. Your last warning. Your last chance to look away. LOOK AWAY! NOW!

O.K., if you're still here that means you think you are ready for what is coming. You are wrong but willing. Here we are then. A gallery of
Hairless Mammals!!!!!



First up is Jambo. He is a hairless chimpanzee with gigantic balls.

He reminds me of the men who work at Belmont Park near my home. Compact little men who look like they could kick your ass even though they'd have to jump up to punch you in the face.




Apparently, all aardvarks are born this way:

Which is why they are rarely seen. Mother Nature likes to hide her shame.





What is this?

The surgical remains of a frontal lobotomy? No, it is a hairless bat. First, it's a bat and that is bad enough. But then it has the nerve to be hairless. WTF, bat?



Did you ever wish you could personally run down that damned raccoon that keeps rummaging through your garbage with a Humvee?

Now get into that Humvee and flee. FLEE!!!!



It's not like bears aren't scary as all get out what with their gigantic claws and chompy teeth. Remove their hair however. . .

And now you have the Souldrinker: Guardian of the Gates of Hell.




Well, that's all for today. Remember at my Artfire studio and Etsy shop there are no hairless mammals.

Damn it!

The promoter for the Hofstra Indoor Craft & Gift Show has cancelled it (along with another venue) and merged them all into the Tri-County Flea Market, a permanent flea market located inside a gigantic mall of flea markets. Not what I wanted. The packages being sold are both inconvenient and more expensive. For Hofstra I paid $80 per day for two consecutive Saturdays. The Tri-County Flea Market's least expensive deal is $450 for three consecutive days.

What can I do? I'm all geared up for pre-Christmas craft show sales. I'll bite the bullet and go for 11/27, 11/28 and 11/29. Total bummer.



Oh yeah, before I forget-- visit my Etsy shop for earrings and also visit my Artfire shop for trinkets in boxes.

What I've Been Up To

Instead of writing "Busy, busy, busy" like I tend to do, I've decided to list what it is I'm doing that is giving me that happy 'busy, busy, busy' feeling.

I have an irrational fear of running out of merchandize in the middle of a craft fair. Irrational because I have never, ever come close to selling out and have, in fact, done the opposite and sold nothing. This doesn't stop me from imagining standing behind an empty Display Thingie frantically making pin head earrings and trying to sell them as they are made one by one.

Selling out all my inventory would not be as good of a thing as it would seem. Empty Etsy and Artfire shops would kill my very tiny clientele list. That means when I have a craft show scheduled, I start making stuff like crazy. The Indoor Hofstra Craft & Gift Show isn't until after Thanksgiving but I've booked two Saturdays in a row and I'd like to end those two days with as much inventory as I have today, yet have sold hundreds, even thousands, of dollars worth of stuff.

So, I've been making things.

Being a veteran of a whole 4 craft shows, I saw some things. Some things that I would like to emulate. Two thirds of the battle is having people stop at your booth. One way vendors did this was not to put prices on anything, so a person had to stop and ask if they wanted to know. There was one exception, The Bargain Bin. The Bin didn't need to be an actual bin, just a collection of things that a vendor could put a sign over that read: All fignoogles $5! (a fignoogle being whatever it was that particular vendor was selling at a price significantly lower than everything else on his or her table.) I've decided that I was going to sell a fignoogle. Mine are the key chain holders in the upper left. All key chain holders $3!.

My boxes are getting just a wee bit Christmas-y, don't you think? The green one has a ring in it. The red flower pendant goes in the red box.

Not pictured:

The little pill boxes decoupaged with Christmas wrapping paper and glossed to a shiny finish. This is because they don't have a crunchy inside yet. The guys in the picture are on a temporary landing for completed projects not yet photographed. I do have a system. It may be silly but it's my own.


The really nice and big box I put the Extra Bling earrings into. It was a cigar box painted black with white glass tiles. The whole thing was coated in two layers of high gloss and when you lifted the lid, instead of seeing the cigar brand logo, you saw my own "logo". The reason it is not pictured is because I stupidly forgot to take a picture before I sent it out.


All the spray paint nozzles that are now sitting in the spray bottle caps soaking in nail polish remover. These guys are just about ready to be probed with a wire from the bottom up, put on a can of WD-40 for a squirt or to and then replaced on it's spray paint can. I could have avoided doing all this extra work if, when I was done using them, I had turned my spray paint cans upside down and sprayed until only clear stuff came out. Another route around all this extra work would be to buy new spray paint. But no. These cans are practically full. It takes very little spray paint to cover a pill box.


Trying to get a good handle on ear cuffs. They would go good in the slightly bigger boxes the pendants usually go in.


And that's my story. That's what I've been up to. Busy, busy, busy!

Ingenious!

Didja ever see a crafty-like thing and think, "Why, that's so simple yet so smart. Why didn't I think of that?" I do all the time. And of course the answer is that I lacked the ingenuity.

The site is called Always Order Dessert. You should presumably have a glass of wine with it. Never lose track of your drink. Plus, it's cute. Also-- duh, how easy is that to make?

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Shanty 2 Chic does that annoying alpha-numeric switcharoo but it can be forgiven because she had this nifty idea and I didn't. I have mason jars, I have wood, I need a place to hang stuff by the front door. I don't see why I didn't think to make this. Obviously Shanty is superior to me in every way.

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Lifehacker hacks life AND beverage containers. Now this I cannot say I could have thunk up myself. I'm too much in a hurry to get rid of milk cartons before they start to stink. And even if I kept one long enough and stared at it, I'da never seen that container.

This One's A Quickie. . .

. . .as I am about to head out the door to buy wire, spray paint and butternut squash.

These is the other Extra Bling earring I had floating in my head. I have one more blingtastic design and then, I'm outta ideas.










Still haven't chainsawed my dresser. Should also pick up enough wood for the legs of my table. Perhaps if I start cutting the wood for the table legs I'll get in enough of a chop-socky mood that I'll tackle the dresser.

And finally, apropos to absolutely nothing, I just found out that I've been dead wrong about a song for 38 years. The lyrics are not:
It's just a mystery, girl
You've got to get over it
He loved her from the start

But are actually:
It's just a misdemeanor
You've got to get over it
He loved her from the start

This mondegreen is especially stupid because the title of the song is Misdemeanor. This means I've been stupid wrong for almost my entire life.

I've Gotten Over Myself

Hubby's back to work and so am I. No more feeling sorry for myself-- today. I reserve the right to get back on the pity-train whenever the mood strikes me. I'll try not to ride it too long. I took a three day ride this time so I had a lot of things to get done.

Hofstra was the one fair that I was scared of. The promoters make sure every fair is well run, well organized, well attended, all papers must be in order and jury reviewed-- obviously not for a chump like me! And I needed a tent, which I didn't have until this Saturday. Well, guess what. November 27th starts the Holiday Indoor season. I've sent my application for the first two days along with my set up picture. Fingers crossed! The tent? Won't leave its box until next March at the very earliest.

Got those pictures done and, lemme tell ya, it was an ordeal. I do have a small light box set up on the dining room table but natural light makes for the best pictures. Even a cloudy day outside is better than all three of my little photograph lights going at once. So I trudged outside with my stuff, wearing flip-floppy slippers, knee-length shorts and a short sleeved shirt-- where it was very cold and windy. I damn near froze my tetas off. They are now sitting in my hard drive waiting for post production work. The pictures, not the tetas.

Started work on the Even More Bling earrings last night. Only, the more I worked on them, the more I didn't like them. Even if I put crystals on the attaching wires, I'm still not sure I'm gonna like it. What don't I like about it? It's just not solid enough, know what I mean? Of course you don't, you don't live in my head. If you did you'd know there's another Extra Bling design floating around in there.







I have failed to take chainsaw to dresser and I do not foresee when I will gather up the nerve to do so. Project Doom is living up to its name. I do not know why I lack the nerve to chainsaw the dresser. It seems like such a reckless and destructive thing to do. I should be trying to fix the dresser since it's a perfectly good dresser except for the fact that the bottom drawers don't close. . .. How obvious is it that I grew up in a family not blessed with a whole lot of money?

Also accomplished: writing in my blog and linking to my Artfire studio and my Etsy shop.