why I love my customers

Happy Easter!  I've been working on a custom order this week.  The woman loved my Beaded Bracelet - Double Linked - Chocolate and Cream and wanted coordinating earrings and pendant to go with it.  She had a pretty clear idea what she wanted.  Together we finalized the details.  The bracelet was made to order so she got a brand new version of it in a custom length.

The customer also wanted me to take a picture of the whole set together.

I love my customers because I never would have conceptualized the earrings and pendant on my own.  I have made lots of shell earrings, but I wouldn't have thought to use two shell beads and to use the beads that I used in the bracelet.  And I've never made a shell pendant before.  I love the final result, though!

The design for this bracelet is something that came about with a little idea that I had to rework several times to create this final result.  It drove me up the wall the first and the second time that I made it.  This third time went so much more smoothly.  Third time's the charm, right?  I felt like I finally got into the rhythm of this pattern and didn't have to spend much time going back and adding or redoing anything.

So...I might make a couple more sets of these in other colors.  I love having the earrings and pendant that coordinate now.  I love the idea of doing a set in turquoise.  I haven't thought much past that yet.  Any thoughts, let me know.

voting for the August EBW Challenge and my newest red piece

Before I get to red, I want to mention that voting started for the August EBW Challenge Gold and Silver today!  Voting is August 9th-15th on the Etsy Beadweavers blog: http://etsy-beadweavers.blogspot.com.  Voting is on the right side of the page.  You can view all of the entries in the most recent blog post.  My entry is number 5: Gold and Silver Wrapped Skinny Peyote Cuff Bracelet.  Thank you so much to everyone who has already voted for it!

For those who are bead weavers, you can purchase the pattern for this cuff here.

And now the other topic for this post: red. :) I know that I've written this before here, but I still believe that red is one of the most underrated colors.  I remade my Red Striped Beadwoven Peyote Triangle Pendant design this week.  Because it took me so long to finish the coordinating cuff after the pendant, I never did photograph both pieces together.  I figured that now would be a good a time as any to do that.  I shot some new pictures of the cuff as well.  The originals weren't bad, but these are better.

Because the ribbons were such a big hit at the Arts Festival, I'm photographing all of my pendants with ribbons now.

Here's one of my shots of the two pieces together.  You can see the other shot in the triangle listing.

In an effort to show more modeling poses, I took a few pictures of myself wearing the pendant.  This was the best one.  I don't know if I'm going to use something like this for all of my listings now, but I think that's worth continuing to experiment with the idea.

Also, at everyone's urging, I experimented with some different arm/hand model poses for the cuff.  Let me know what you think.

I still love how the coordinating cuff turned out.  It was a lot of work coming up with this design, but it was well worth it!

up and running again

I got up a couple more old listings up and running today.  The first is the companion piece to the embellished champagne peyote cuff that I posted yesterday.  Here is the champagne peyote triangle pendant.

I will do a little adjusting with my glass/propped up poses in my new outdoor photo set up later this week.  I'm really happy with how the music background poses are turning out.  This was the first time that I'd shot earrings and pendants with the white back drop outside.  I think that it will work, but it will need some tweaking.  The above shots are still MUCH better than the old ones.

The second recently revived listing is my Christmas button charm bracelet.  I sold the original at the Arts Festival, and I made a new one this week.  I am really happy with it.  It's more full and vibrant than the original.

It is part of the Christmas in July sale and will be 25% off for the rest of the month.

One of my EBW members kindly agreed to proofread my pattern today.  Thanks Jacquie!  I'm still planning to have it up and running later this week.  I most likely won't have all of my old pictures re-shot for another week, but I've updated the other information for almost all of my other listings now.  I'll put in the final pictures as I get them done.  Hopefully all of the changes/updates/upgrades will help me continue to increase my sales!

As promised, here is the picture of me wearing my new pendant:

I have everything ready to send to the boutique and will mail it tomorrow after work. I am really proud of how many pieces I finished this past week - 9 different pieces, several of which I made two of so I can list one on Etsy and send one off to the boutique. I will be listing the over the next week or so. I'm going to post pictures of my three favorites (which was hard because I love them all):



This is my husband's favorite. He helped me pick out the colors. I'm calling it Defying Gravity peyote cuff as a tribute to Wicked (same colors):