I made a sale!

I just made another sale on Monday, so now I'm at 12 sales! Woo-hoo! I sold my "Margarita" necklace to a lovely woman in Austin for her wedding - and she had me make a pair of matching earrings too. If only everyone was so willing to splurge! :)

Here's what I sold, in case you don't remember (I've got a lot of positive comments about it from friends as well as Etsians):
http://www.etsy.com/view_transaction.php?transaction_id=19865212

So, time for some new stock in the shop then! I have 3 items ready to list, I just keep getting distracted. I was taking pictures of my items when I decided the light was good enough to re-take pictures for some earrings that were about to expire and needed better images.

Imagine my non-surprise when those pictures didn't turn out well. *sigh* No need to discuss my failure at a photographer once again. Nope, let's take about photo manipulation software malfunctions and crappy screens, shall we?

I have a beautiful iMac upstairs with a 21" screen - running Gimp photo manipulation software. That kind of broke my computer every time I tried to start it. So now I use my laptop for almost everything, and it has Photoshop on it. Sweet! Yesterday I decided to check out my shop on the big screen upstairs, and it was a huge slap in the face - this laptop is about 50% darker than my iMac's screen. So all the photos I've thought are too dark or washed out, I've been making better to work on my screen. But for the rest of the world, the colors are contorted into something garish. OK, only the earrings that I worked so hard on yesterday looked really bad. But it was truly startling how different everything looked on the better screen.

So it's time to break down and buy Photoshop for my iMac. I am trying to download a trial version of Photoshop Elements 6.0 to see if it meets my needs. It's 1.3GB!! I was expecting it to take awhile, but this morning when I started, it was quoting between 13-17 hours to finish downloading! I checked on it tonight and despite changing my settings so the computer wouldn't go to sleep mid-download, the connection was interrupted and the whole thing had to start over from the beginning. I am currently not a fan of this house's wireless network. One positive: now that it's downloading again, it's quoting just over 2 hours. Woo-hoo!

Anyway, wish me luck!

Blog Carnival 09.25.09 - Show Yourself

Oh the horror! To decide whether to show my face or show my crafting space. Yikes! As I don't want to go around the house taking pix of the various piles of crafting junk currently occupying all my spaces, I'm going with option #1. Thanks to Memories For Life for the example!

I am...
a daughter, a sister, a cousin, an aunt, a niece, a wife
mommy to some very spoiled cats
married to my high-school sweetheart, Eric
a self-employed jewelry designer and Etsian
a writer
addicted to the internet, television, food, and beads
a homebody who longs to wander
creative yet lead a boring life
shy and quiet but very opinionated
depressed but happy
a pessimist with hope
strong on the outside but weak on the inside
Obsessive/Compulsive except when it comes to cleaning
trying to become a better photographer
crazy-in-love with film

EtsyBloggers Street Team: Featured Shop for September 2009

This month's Featured EtsyBlogger is DesignsByVanessa, a sweet little shop with simple but elegant items.






I think what I like best about this shop is the cohesive theme of minimalist designs featuring birds. Currently on sale are jewelry and paper products that, combined with a range of prices, anyone should be able to fit anyone's taste and budget. Congratulations for being our Featured EtsyBlogger this month Vanessa, your shop has earned it!

Reviews: California Bead Stores, Part 1

Last week my husband and I drove the Coast of California from San Francisco to Anaheim. For us, that's a lot of driving, so we made a lot of stops to stretch it out for a full week. I was hoping to hit quite a few bead shops along the way, if only to see something different. Unfortunately, the list of shops I had made (which I had meticulously compiled from the internet and bead magazines) was left behind on the living room coffee table. So things were a little more hit-and-miss than I would have liked, but oh well. Anyway, I thought you guys might like to hear about some of the shops I visited, in case you're planning your own Central California trip!

Day 1: San Francisco
We arrived to our hotel quite late in the afternoon, so we only had time for one destination, and we chose Chinatown. It was beautiful, colorful, smelled amazing, and was busting to the seams with tiny shops selling all sorts of items. Half of which seemed to be jewelry shops selling strands of pearls, turquoise, coral, and occasionally other gemstones right in their doorways. I resisted the temptation to bore my husband to tears, knowing that with the emphasis on pearls I probably wouldn't find anything I liked anyway. But boy was it difficult to stay out of those shops!

Day 2: Monterey
Monterey is a sweet little coastal town with so much to see and do. Cannery Row, a shopping district next to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, was a bit of a tourist trap but still lots of fun to explore!

Let It Bead at 700 Cannery Row, 2nd Floor, Monterey CA
This is a very pretty shop, with faeries, tiny lights, and all sorts of fun and shiny items decorating the entrance area. Unfortunately for me, this shop is meant to cater to tourists who want to make their own jewelry on the spot: lots of glass and plastic beads to choose from, with help behind-the-counter to finish it up for you or just answer questions. While this may be a good business model for a shop in a touristy destination, it is not at all what a beader with any sort of experience is looking for. They had a few interesting pendants behind the counter, pinned to a wall, but in the end it wasn't worth it to interrupt the conversation between the salesperson and the customer she was helping make a bracelet for. As the only bead shop in town (that I could find anyway), it was quite disappointing.

Silver, Sand, and Stone at 700 Cannery Row, 2nd Floor, Monterey CA
Their windows filled with turquoise and coral looked promising, so I stepped inside. What I had thought were strands of turquoise turned out to be necklaces. This is a little shop with a gorgeous selection of handmade Native American jewelry. No real beads on sale, but quite easy to spend too much time and money there anyway!

Rock Your World at 685 Cannery Row, Suite 109, Monterey CA
This is such a cute rock shop! Occasionally while perusing a rock shop, you may make an interesting find between the shelves of crystals, fossils, and jaspers. This was not my lucky day for such a find, but there was plenty to look at, and I had a nice chat with the woman behind the counter about the mysterious Monterey Bay fog.

Day 3: Drive to San Simeon via Carmel
We actually spent much of the day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, so with so much driving in front of us, we only had time to visit one bead shop in Carmel-by-the-Bay. Unfortunately, A Bead Above was no more - we confirmed with another shop in the building that we did have the right address, but that the shop had closed down. There is a possibility that this is actually Let It Bead's original location, since the only website address I can find re-directs to that shop's "in-progress" website.

Quick Vacation Update

So tonight we are in the little Danish town of Solvang, CA. It's been quite an experience! I had really wanted to hit as many bead stores as possible during the trip, but having a daily schedule for a road trip seems to be asking for trouble. Not much about the trip has gone quite as expected!

I will say that the bead stores I found in Monterey were... amazingly disappointing. There was a lovely little bead shop in Cambria, and another in Morro Bay that I only got to see through the windows because they were closed. Apparently Paula Radke has her own shop not a block away on Main Street! I sooo wish those two shops had been open! The place in Cambria was very small, but had a nice selection, including some interesting Czech glass beads that were quite tempting because they weren't the standard-issue pressed glass, but they didn't have any Picasso style so I passed. Picked up a nice half strand of beautiful aquamarine though! :)

OK, time for some internet searching for more bead shops to try to hit tomorrow!