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 :)

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.

Sonic Gets a Bath

Yesterday was a busy day. I made a new twitter layout, and a new Etsy shop banner, finally ordered all of my supplies that I've been working on doing for days, and bathed my hedgehog.

He was not very happy with me, but he needed it. Every time a hedgehog smells something they like they insist on licking it and spitting it all over themselves so that they too will smell like whatever it was they found pleasant. Yesterday it was a new lotion of mine.

After all that I didn't have too much time before I had to work the evening shift at work, so today will be dedicated instead to learning HTML and to finish designing my new jewelry pieces for when my supplies come in. Hopefully I will be able to make that new blog layout I have designed in my head soon, and design some website pages because as soon as I'm done learning all this html stuff I'm going to get my own domain name and start a website of my own, while still continuing with etsy ofcourse.

New Supplies For a New Line!

Supply ordering day is usually a headache, and today is no exception. I've been designing my new line of jewelry (due out in a few weeks now! very exciting) for a couple months now, and I'm finally getting the supplies I need to put out that line - so this time I can't just fall into the rut of supplies I usually get, and things I'm running out of. I've actually had to shop around and pull out my measuring tape to make sure the beads I'm getting match the sizes of the beads I'm thinking of in my head and in my designs.

Also today I actually went out and bought my new HTML book, so now I can learn how to make myself a beautiful blogger template that I'll love forever and ever (or at least hopefully longer than a week :P) and design the website of my dreams. Here's hoping my money wasn't put to waste and I can actually learn this thing!

Sales Where you Least Expect Them

As a crafter - an entrepreneur, one must believe in what they do with all of their heart. I recently went to a large family function and was pressed to bring my jewelry with me. I was extremely hesitant, because I DO NOT in any way believe in pushing my jewelry on relatives, but it actually went really well! They had never heard that I made jewelry before, and were all really excited about it I made quite a few sales! It just goes to show that sales are made in all sorts of ways. Now I have big plans on new products I want to make. Many with a romantic theme - and that's all the hints you get for now!