New Shop = New Blog :(

I'm very excited to announce that I've come up with a name for my new shop! My new gemstone jewlery shop will be called Elizabethxoxo (http://www.elizabethxoxo.etsy.com). I still haven't thought of a name for my polymer clay jewelry shop, but that will hopefully follow. As it is I'm not ready to open that shop yet anyway, as I've decided to do everything one shop at a time. I've been thinking of names like Elizabethrosexoxo as a lot of the pieces I will be planning to sell on that shop will involve roses or some other kind of flower, but I'm not for sure yet.

I will let you know as soon as I'm sure what I want my second shop to be called, unfortunately it won't be on this blog.

I made this blog to match the name of my etsy shop, and now that I'm moving away from that shop, I realized I'd have to make a new blog as well. I'm not happy about having to make a new blog, but I feel like I have to to be consistent with my shop name.

my new blog is http://www.elizabethxoxo.blogspot.com, and I will start posting on there once my blog opens on Tuesday August 25th 2009.

Thanks for following! I hope you had as much fun reading as I did writing.

Painting The Roses Red

I've felt a lot like '"Alice in Wonderland" lately, practicing making my clay roses over and over for my new jewelry shop I mentioned earlier. I'm pleased to say that after much practice my roses look much nicer than the clay one I blogged about before. However at this moment I only have white clay, so after my roses were baked I had to literally paint the white roses red :P.

I'm hoping to have my new shop up and running by the first of September. I have a few ideas of what I want to do with the name of the shop, but I think I'll keep them to myself until I have something for sure ^-^

I've only just started turning the roses into jewelry and I have many many ideas for designs and colors for those designs, which means I have some work to do! I also have a list of new ideas for my precious metal and gemstone jewelry shop - including my new "love you forever" line I will be putting out soon - though I don't have a date as of yet for the grand unveiling, I think I'm going to wait until after my new shop is done, just to keep me from losing my mind :)

Jewelry Video Tutorials

I had a few friends asking me how to make wire wrapped jewelry, and after showing them the basics of it I decided to make this video so that everyone who wants to can learn at least the basics for free on youtube, instead of having to have to buy "how to" books ect. like I did when I was starting out :)

The video was fun to make, though I must have gone through about 50 little pieces of wire, because every time I'd mess up a word I'd be half way through wrapping it, and the wire was no good anymore :P

I think I'll probably make more videos like this one, with other tutorials like "how to wrap a briolette" and simple things like that for now. I'll get into the more elaborate stuff as I go along.

I hope people find them useful ^-^ I also have a little version of the video from youtube on the side-bar of my blog with a link under it to the youtube page. I'll be putting new ones there in their place as they come up :)

Baking Practice Inspires New Jewelry Shop

I mentioned a few posts ago that my sister recently became engaged (yay ^-^) and that she and I have taken on the task of her wedding cake. Neither of us have ever taken any sort of baking or cake decorating course, but we figure if we practice a lot during her three year engagement we can pull it off (if not do it well) with what knowledge we have.

So today was gum paste day. She wants to put gum paste roses on her cake, which are a little difficult to do - especially to do nicely, so we're starting practicing now. We watched a couple tutorials, and this is what I came up with.





They aren't perfect by ANY stretch of the imagination, but next time I'll roll the gum paste a little thinner and stretch them out a little more. Regardless I was happy with it for a first try. Then I had the idea to make necklaces out of them! I think I will be opening up a shop that I will connect to my shop to sell non-gemstone jewelry so I can sell jewelry with these polymer clay roses :)

This is my first attempt at a polymer clay rose in plain old boring white:





Again, not stunning, but maybe after another 100 tries :P My new shop won't be opening for a while, but I'm very excited for when it does.