Making Progress

The earring page is starting to take shape. Check out what I posted yesterday.
http://mjanedesigns.com/Earrings/earrings.html

Not sure if any progress will happen today. Jam packed and not with jewelry unfortunately!

Here comes Monday again! Everyone made it out the door to school today - no one sick! Yeah!! That means I have 10-2 to get something accomplished. I'm working hard to get a substantial number of earring posted on the website for sale. It's a lot of work!! Make them, photograph, edit the photos, build and publish the webpages. Where is that staff I don't have? Maybe some day.... These are some of the finished earrings that I have sitting on my work table. I took the pic yesterday afternoon with the sun streaming through the window - a beautiful thing when you work in the basement!

Updating and updating

It's been so long since I've blogged, that I'm going to just jump in where I am instead of trying to catch you up. The last few weeks I have, at long last, been focusing on updating my website. I decided to start with my personalized stamped silver jewelry. Honestly, I picked there to start because I knew it would be the most difficult. With all the options (name, number of charms, etc) involved to order these pieces on-line, it takes quite a bit of coding behind the scenes. I knew that if I could get through this part, the one of a kind jewelry would be a breeze to add.

The "personalized jewelry" page is completely done! I have 3 more stamped pieces to add on the jewelry page, then on to the fun stuff!!. Check it out: mjanedesigns

Cool New Pendants

I've been fooling around for a while with collage & paper. I LOVE paper! Wondering how I could use it in my jewelry. Think I perfected these little collage pendants this weekend. They are made on wooden scrabble tiles and covered with resin. The resin gives the tile a really nice clear hard finish with a pretty domed shape. If you're interested in resins, I suggest you check out Beadwork's special issue "handcrafted jewelry". Handcrafted Jewelry - Interweave

They have a great article on resins which saved me a lot of time and expense. I've ordered glue on bails & hope to have these strung in time for my show on the 23rd. They are fun, fun, fun!

Beads, beads, beads

My 2 oldest children went back to school last week. I love them dearly, but it was so nice to have more time to focus - and breathe! My little guy is still here with me, but one is nothing to handle compared to 3. So last week was a very good week.

One of the projects I had some time for was finishing my new office/studio. I had already moved the supplies I use the most to the new space. But many little jars & containers still lingered in the cabinets above my old desk. I didn't realize how many beads I have!! They're in all different kind of containers & in no particular order at all. Makes it very difficult to find anything.

I found a very nice 60 drawer storage cabinet at ACE over the weekend. It's meant for screws and bolts & such, but is perfect for beads. Of course when I got it home it didn't fit on the shelves, so they had to be adjusted. Then I decided that I had the wrong style. The first one I bought had 30 small drawers and 12 large ones. Got home and figured out that I didn't need the large drawers. So it was back to ACE for an exchange. Thank goodness they open early. The new cabinet was perfect - but still not enough drawers for all the beads. So one more trip for little plastic dividers to go inside the drawers and one more smaller cabinet.

After a late night of sorting many, many beads, I finally have them all in place. I added a lamp behind the cabinet to make if easier to see inside. Turned out pretty good!

Where to put the school stuff

I tackled a project last week that I've been putting off for a long time. A really long time. My oldest is going into 5th grade & since she started school I've been trying to find a good way to store her school papers & mementos. If you have kids, you know that they bring home LOTS of stuff from school. You can't keep it all, or even keep most of it, but even with thinning out, there's still a lot to store & organize. I have 3 kids = equals lots of school stuff to save.

I've finally settled on a system that I think is going to work really well. I found underbed storage boxes that are big enough to hold everything, but compact enough to be manageable. Then I ordered a bunch of them from Amazon. Here's the link if you'd like to see or order them yourself. Sterilite 16558010 28 Quart Clear Storage Box See-through with White Lid 10-Pack Ordered as a 10 pack, the boxes were $7.50 each and shipping was free. Not a bad deal & much more convenient then having to haul everyone to the store and schlep them back home.

I made a simple label on the computer and put one on the side and end of each box. (That way you can see the contents no matter which direction you store them.) Luckily, most of the school memorabilia was somewhat separated already. I did need my oldest daughter to help identify some papers. 3rd or 4th grade? All & all, not nearly as horrible a process as I thought it would be.

So now all of the kids school memories are organized by grade. I made empty boxes for the new school year & put them where I can get to them easily. So far, so good. I'll let you know if the system makes it through the school year successfully.

Fly Away Home. . .

I can't believe summer is almost over. One of our late summer rituals is to buy ladybugs at the garden center and let the kids set them free in the yard. I think ladybugs are supposed to be good for your plants - but I really do it because the kids think it's so much fun. We got a good batch this time. There must have been 100s in there! As is often the case at our house on the weekends, several neighbor kids were around too. They all laughed and squealed as ladybugs crawled and flew everywhere. We checked their shady corner by the trumpet vine throughout the afternoon to see who would stick around. Eventually, all but a few had gone on their way. One more happy summer memory.