This slowness is killing me

I only have two pictures to share with you today, because a problem (most likely with BT than with the internet as a whole) with slowness means that I am having serious trouble uploading pictures, to both Flickr and Etsy. Maybe later I will have the patience to try one at a time :P

Anyway, the two creations are a pair of earrings and a bracelet. The earrings were fairly simple to make, just me experimenting with chainmaille weaves for cascading earrings. The charm bracelet is one I made back in July whey I started out on this jewellery-making endeavour, but with my new-found skillz and pliers I have neatened it up a lot; now the charms are even lengths, have nice rounded ends, and will not fall off! Both are up on Etsy, but the earrings currently only have one picture attached.




I'm quite upset that I'm having difficulty uploading, because I have also done two rather complex designs. One, a choker in chainmaille, a weave called the Butterfly weave. It took hours and I'm really proud of it. The second piece is a necklace I'd been thinking about for a while, essentially a garden. Copper chain with purple flowers and green leaves, intertwined with green wire. The intertwining didn't work out too well, but I'm fairly pleased with what I did instead. I also added tendrils with Swarovski crystals, they complement the colours used perfectly. I am considering re-attaching all the flowers and leaves, but without a picture of it in its current state I can't get any feedback :\

Here's hoping Flickr will work later!

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Listening to: Talking Heads - Slippery People (Extended Version)
via FoxyTunes

Fortune pig phone charms

I've finally got around to photographing the charms I made out of the ceramic pigs I mentioned at the beginning of December. I've accented one with a light amethyst Swarovski crystal on a baby pink phone strap, and the other with green dyed jade, rose quartz, and another light amethyst crystal on a light green phone strap. Both pigs are pink, but the one on the pink strap is ever so slightly darker. Both are available on Etsy for £4/£4.25.



I've also got a photo of one of the stretch bracelets I made with the elastic I got at the same time as the pigs, and have listed it on Etsy for £6:


Ah yes! An update on my stone identification issue - it is green aventurine. :)

Identify me?

So I haven't posted for a while.. haven't made much, but have sold some :D It's been fantastic!

Today I went out and bought a few things.. mostly pearls and supplies for a custom order, but I'd been playing earlier with a mixed bag of gemstones I've got, trying to identify things, and thought I'd identified one as labradorite. When I was in the bead store I saw some labradorite beads so I bought a few for comparison.. and now I'm pretty sure my mystery bead is not labradorite. It just doesn't have those fabulous iridescences. So I've taken a picture of it in the hopes that someone will shed some light on it! It's a greenish grey colour, and has darker green flecks in it. There is a band of brown across one side. It's fairly opaque. There's also a picture here of it next to my labradorite bead, in different light. Any ideas?


Next up is a picture of a piece I made out of wire (with my shiny new Christmas-present pliers - I really need a picture of them too, as they are awesome with black & white stripy handles!) I'm not entirely sure what to do with it - even after trying to harden it I'm not sure it would stand up to the stress of being free in part of a necklace, so I'm considering putting it between glass slides. Got to finalise that though as my previous attempts at doing things with glass slides didn't really look too good - it was the metal tape I used rather than solder, but I don't have a soldering iron or a place to use one.


Oh okay then I'll give you pictures of the earrings I made today too :) And one of my jellyfish pendants - adorable. Click for larger.

Until I make a longer post...

Here are my newest items on Etsy:

Edit: bat charm and organza ribbon necklace now Sold!

Craft fair results

Craft fair was fun. Two of my catalogue items went - Autumnal earrings and Hematite & pink phonecharm. Yay :)

Here's a pic of the massive collection of hoop earrings I created for the fair. Only one pair went, sadly, but that does mean I now have lots more for sale :)



Catalogue updated accordingly.

Love it when a plan comes together..

Today seems to be one of those days when things come together, at least crafting-wise. True the new bead store that's opened near me was closed when I went past, but a nice delivery of beads and bits was waiting for me when I got home so I still had new things to play with :)
One packet was a mix of small gemstone shapes, including a heart in what looks like the same stone as a set of beads I had identified as Russian Amazonite. Suddenly I knew what to do with these beads that had been clamoring to be used, but with no inspiration. Yay!

My sodalite has arrived too which is great, I can finally do two of my custom orders.

Thursday I went shopping, exploring the local bead stores, and came away with so much great stuff. As well as a new pair of pliers and a jig for shaping wire, I got two cute ceramic pig charms with flowers and the Chinese symbols for 'fortune' painted on them. Utterly adorable. Also some velveteen and organza ribbon for a necklace idea I have, and some of that stretchy bead wire for bracelets. I was hoping to have quite a large number of them by Saturday (craft fair, yay!) but am having real trouble getting the knots to hold - they just seem to spring undone. May have to use superglue :\

Still, I'm churning out keyrings and phone charms like my life depends on it, I have my organza pouches and paper bags for the fair, and my reprinted Moo cards arrived, so I seem to be on track :) Pictures soon.

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Listening to: Iron Maiden - The Clansman
via FoxyTunes

New photos, new items, new group :)

Two updates today:
1) Users of Facebook, feel free to jointhe Handcrafted by Fleurione group and invite your friends. Am taking custom orders for Christmas, and will provide info on the craft fairs I'm attending.

2) I've dug out a pure white sheet from my cupboard and some boxes to create a photographing station in my kitchen. I think the plain background works so much better than my previous use of mulberry paper, and allows for much easier white-correction whilst keeping the colours correct. Here, demonstrating my new photography style, is a stunning bracelet I made last night:

Much improved, yes? Bracelet is purchasable here on Etsy for £18.

Along with that bracelet I've made another memory-wire beaded bracelet in yellow, and a new range of key/phone charms using Hemalyke (man-made hematite substitute) animal totems. Check my flickr for most of those pics: www.flickr.com/photos/fleurione.

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Listening to: The Search - She Lives Near a Garden
via FoxyTunes

Craft Fair and tonight's creations

Just to let anyone local know that I will have a table at the ShelterSoc Christmas Craft Fair on Saturday 8th December. It will be running between 2-4pm in Teviot Mezzanine.
It's free entry to the fair and there'll be buckets circulating - donations welcome. The table fees and buckets will go to Shelter Scotland, and at the end of the day I'll hopefully have sold enough to make a percentage donation myself.

I'm sure I'll get nervous when we get closer, but for now I'm just happily planning how to display my items, how many business cards to print, what colour cloth I should use... *bounce*

I've made/finished seven new items this evening and am pleased with all of them! No proper pictures yet, but here are group shots to tease you:


Left: Two-tone glass squares and Swarovski crystals on silver
Right: Dyed mother-of-pearl in green, pearls.


Left: Swarovski crystals and silver spacers. Crystals available in many colours.
Middle and Right: Amethyst glass nuggets on silver and chain.


Left: Pewter bat, red and black glass beads, anodized aluminum jump ring, silver chain
Right: Faceted green glass, Peridot Swarovski crystals, peridot enamel copper jump rings, silver chain

I rewarded myself with hot chocolate and marshmallows :>

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Listening to: Aerosmith - Dream On
via FoxyTunes

Moo reprint

So after emailing Moo to let them know that some of my cards had misprinted margins, they emailed me back to say that they are running the print again free of charge. More importantly they haven't asked for the spoiled batch back, so I essentially have 60 cards free :)
I've sent some of this currently lot to my mother, and will send her more from the new set, to be handed out around school. *fingers crossed for results*

And I got my stickerbooks today. They are all kinds of awesome! I'm resisting the urge to cover everything I own in stickers..

Preparing for Christmas...

Well I've made my first Christmas-themed item! A memory-wire bracelet:



I'm trying another memory-wire bracelet currently with gold and brown seed and bugle beads, silver spacers and brown and gold lampwork beads. It's going well so far, I just need to get more of my seed beads.. the only problem is the memory wire itself I think :\ I'm finding that it's very small (the loops only have an inner diameter of 5cm) and doesn't fit comfortably on my wrist... the one I gave my mother is a little tight but she seems to like it.. maybe I just like looser bracelets? I have another wire-wrap bracelet given as a present which has an inner diameter of 6cm. One centimeter, but it really does seem to make a difference. But it's the only wire my main bead store does! Ack. Looks like I may need to actually start traveling farther afield than my back door for local supplies!

My other big news is that yesterday I helped create a team of Etsy sellers called Creative Crafters Discounts (CCD) who have a discount promotion. For every transaction at one of the participating stores you get a coupon for 15% off a transaction at one of the other stores. One of the members had a few sales yesterday to go out, so we already have I think 5 coupons in circulation.. I'm hoping I can drum up some sales for Christmas and get some coupons out too :)
For more info on this, please check our community info: http://cc_discount.livejournal.com. You can also search for items on etsy with the tag 'ccd'.

Lastly I got my Moo cards delivered (but not my stickerbooks.. though I did get an advert card about them!) and I'm actually disappointed. About a third of them have been cut badly so that the image contains a strip of another image on one side. Not very professional-looking for promotion cards. I'm obviously going to have to send them back and get them reprinted (and they'd better be free!) but I don't know if I can start using the ones that are okay or if the whole batch will need to be returned. It's frustrating because there's a few sellers on Etsy at the moment gathering promo material from members to give out at shows they're doing soon.
Some of my images too haven't come out so well when professionally printed; I really should set aside some time for making a light box.


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Listening to: Bauhaus - Third Uncle
via FoxyTunes