New Special Offer through Jan 3

At long last, gold is finally coming back into fashion jewelry in a big way. It's still a little hard to get unique findings in gold, all the good designs having gone the way of the silver ghetto, and don't even ask me about copper, but it's nice to be seeing a lot of it again.

Consequently! This week, get 10% off up to three items containing goldtone metals when you use the code "andrew."


Available here.

Discounts will be given through PayPal after purchase. Just enter the code in the "Notes to Seller" section when you buy!

Shells, shells, shells

I have no idea what the professional etiquette is for this kind of thing, so I'll just be as anonymous as possible ...

I might be doing a beach-wedding line on consignment for a brick-and-mortar bridal store.

I sent a photo of this:



And they want a whole line of more like that. The original is sold, but I'll make several similar pieces.

It may not work out, of course. They may be consignment-scalpers out for my beaded blood. They may just decide not to use me. But the interest is flattering and ....

Eeeeee.

That is all.

I have a caaaaaamera!

This will make custom orders tons easier, let me tell you. Previously I haven't been able to photograph things at M's except with my cell (which results in shots like the 1960's Charm Bracelet - blur city), so this will be a huge blessing.

This also means that I prowled the house playing with settings and photographing eeeverything (like Lilo!), so um ... have a picture of our fish!



This is Miso. Miso's our betta. He's a pretty boy. He is also a very, very spoiled little fish, who lives in a tank more than twice the recommended size for bettas. We put him in the store-recommended one, then our Googling led us to a betta-fancier site that made us feel guilty and we dropped over a hundred bucks on our stupid fish. That's his writing desk at the lower edge and his tank background is actually wrapping paper with old world maps on it, cut to fit (he's a highly educated fish who requires a writing desk and a map of the world, possibly a pirate captain fish?).

In other news, my latest obsession is bento boxes. Simple techniques in infinite combinations, the mating of two disparate elements (cuisine and ... well, scrapbooking, almost), and totally obsessive, just the kind of thing I like to do! Can I justify this with bento-inspired jewelry? Of course I can.

No, seriously, I have to stop ordering bento boxes and alligator hair clips now. Stop, Chelsea, stop, you will regret this before the first of the month!

Some Christmas Eve thoughts

1. Just got back from a Christmas Eve afternoon trip to Wal*Mart. Once upon a time I refused to shop there, being fiercely pro-labor, but that was before I discovered poverty. :p Hypocrite? Who, me? Anyway. Was actually surprisingly fun -- M and I flirted with a cheerful and very attractive sales associate with skin the color of dark French roast who was kind enough to show us where the matchbooks were (hint: they're not next to firelogs, candles, picnic stuff or toothpicks) and then the very speedy checkout girl had an electronic singing Santa hat. Christmas kitsch for the win!


2. I read all three volumes of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen yesterday. I'm ... I'm sorry, I'm just not that impressed. I probably would have been if I'd stopped with the first one. I mean, they're blindingly racist and cheerfully misogynistic, but this is deliberate, a genre-savvy sort of thing, and even though Captain Nemo is perpetually referred to and addressed with cringe-worthy racial slurs, he's also probably the most noble and most effective character in the series. I can deal with that in the same way I can deal with Huck Finn. What I can't deal with is the crazy mood whiplash in the second volume (spoilers ahead). You can write a very good comic that's sarcastic and self-parodying. You can write a very good comic that includes a graphically detailed scene in which a woman is brutally beaten to the point of vomiting. Possibly you can even do them in the same comic. But not within a few pages of each other. Even to someone who plays violent and disgusting video games with happy abandon, I found that part deeply shocking and unsettling. And then there's the fact that the characters change their character between novels. I mean, Mina and Allan in vol. 1 wouldn't even have a nodding acquaintance with Mina and Allan in the Black Dossier. Though I have to say, I really enjoyed Hyde and the complexity of his relationships and motivations.

It's ... I'm about to turn in my geek points. There were things that the movie did better. There. I said it.


3. If anyone needs lovely little personalized keepsakes, I highly recommend SweetScarlett. She did a wonderful little set of vintage-graphic owl-and-magpie bookplates for me to give to M. Free customization, too, since it was originally a crow. She's across the pond, but speedy and lovely and I highly recommend her.


4. If anyone needs T-shirts or decals, I highly recommend Broake & Thumb Studios, especially if you love Vikings. The artist did a custom-sized Viking Navy T-shirt for me. Their decals are also great, and quite sizable, and their dice bags are lovely high-quality pieces.


5. I've been reading up on blacksmithing. It's fascinating.


6. I just found out the the Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie is slated for next December. I am very, very excited as that was my favorite Narnia book (though in close competition with the horse one, me being a seven-year-old girl at the time). Also, dragons. Also, ships. Also, Ben Barnes and his Sultry Accent. Did you know he based it on Inigo Montoya? This makes the (spoiler if you live under a kiddie-lit-free rock) "you killed my father" scene in Prince Caspian rather entertaining.


7. Yesterday:

"Ooh, do I get street cred?"

"M, I have read Prisoner of Azkaban over thirty times. I know who Tuor killed at the Fall of Gondolin in The Silmarillion. I own a d20. I am not qualified to award street cred."


8. And of course, a Merry Christmas and/or Yuletide to all! We sort of celebrate both -- ritual on Yule (M's an ordained priestess), Christmas Eve with her half of the family and Christmas Day with my half.

My favorite Christmas song this year is, by the way, Bing Crosby and David Bowie's Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth mashup. Usually it's something by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, but I've bought their Beethoven's Last Night album since then, which is a non-Christmas rock opera, and am still having trouble not going "Why is Mephistopheles singing about chests of toys and old letters? What's in that chest?"

Now, mind you, I hate the Little Drummer Boy, I think it's vapid and excessively saccharine. But that dual song is about what ... well, what it's about. About giving more love than you receive to make the world a better place. Gives me warm fuzzies quite beyond the aesthetic tingle of a really good counterpoint duet.

So whether it is Christmas Eve or just past Yule, or Die Natali Sol Invictis, or early Kwanzaa or belated Hannukah, have a happy one.

Stocking Stuffer Sale and Squee!

FYI -- a lot of the pendants and earrings in the shop have gone to 10%, 15% or 20% off for a Stocking Stuffer Sale. Personally I can't think of a better stocking stuffer than a handmade pendant. They have quite a bit of impact!

FY further I -- I've just added a lot of the new Geometrica pendants and a ring to the relevant set on my Flickr stream. Some of my absolute favorite pieces have just gone up there, pieces where I really felt like I accomplished the marriage of elements I was looking for. Perhaps all my weird combinations of plastic and pearls, all my bizzare charm-bracelet designs are all in a quest for that seamless marriage of what doesn't belong into a coherent whole. Perhaps this is a metaphor for my quest to heal the rift between my faith in humanity and my perception of the world. Perhaps I need to put down Civilization and its Discontents now.

And, in Squee of the Month -- both M and I have just been unexpectedly informed that we've been hired back for winter quarter! Me on Monday and her today. So that's just ... well, really awesome, and we're very thankful for it.

New Special Offer through Dec 20

Still have a girly-girl to shop for?


Available here.

Through December 20, give the discount code "salt" in the Notes to Seller section to get a free pendant or pair of earrings -- your choice, just let me know which -- when you order anything pink.

Pendants make great stocking stuffers due to their small size and big impact, and no woman can possibly have enough pairs of earrings -- the idea is simply ludicrous.


On the other hand, maybe you have someone a little less girly but still a lover of stylish jewelry yet to cross off your list.


Available here.

No problem! Give the discount code "pepper" to get the same offer when you order anything black.

Just don't forget to tell me whether you'd prefer earrings or a pendant!

Beady-eyed Beadywoman posts, posts late

*sigh of relief*

Law final is done.

Yesterday, M caught a baby. She's a doula (a professional labor assistant; basically a midwife without some of the medical training) and her client gave birth yesterday to a seven-pound baby girl named either Elizabeth or Bellarosa. My vote is on Bellarosa.

So we stayed at the home of a friend who lives near the hospital, and this morning I was surprised in the altogether by a crazy friend of said friend who still, for some reason, has a key to their house to go with her aversion to knocking, and also I made a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer references to people who didn't understand them, and had a melon shake thrown at me, and assisted in a police investigation, and friended M's grandmother on Facebook, and invented a court case that never existed to illustrate a point about tort law, and ate ravioli, and read study guides for an AP exam I took five years ago, and got medical advice from the entire staff of the campus convenience store, and thought in grave and excessive detail about elf genetics in Tolkien, and closely examined maps of South Carolina, and all this was kinda mundane but sounds very mysterious and exciting because I don't explain it. That's called suspense. Er, by the standards of Jerry B. Jenkins that's called suspense.

Tomorrow, when I am a little more awake, it is possible that I will come back and explain this tomorrow. But I might still be easily entertained by myself then, or I might just be trying to keep M from climbing out of a dentist's chair and forget, so no promises. Bed now? Bed now.

Medieval Polish Voodoo Zombies and New Special Offer

I just took a final in my Medieval Law and Society course. I wrote an essay in which I used the phrase "zombie of good repute." I restrained myself from "the voodoo that Saint Stanislaw do(es)," but I did manage to work in "This leaves the reader with a perhaps-unintentional impression that the prior of Barnwell was afflicted with grabby hands."

I hope my professor appreciates some mildly ill-placed humor. I think he will -- he wore a Tigger tie the other day, always a good sign -- but this is a guy who loves medieval primary sources. He waxes lyrical, saying things like, "This is my absolute favorite medieval document. It doesn't have to be yours, but it's definitely mine." He grows furious with intrusive translator footnotes, like a tender suitor disturbed in his lovemaking by an unsubtle voyeur with his textual pants down. I must say, it adds a layer of fascination to the Polish ius commune of the eleventh century.

ANYway, now that I'm between exams, special offer time!


Available here.

Since I posted my 111th item on Monday (and I'm not expecting to survive tomorrow night's law final, so what the hell), take 11% off your first two items when at least one of them is from the section called "Earthy, Tribal, Ethnic." Use the discount code "clemson" in the Notes to Seller section and I'll refund you through PayPal.

Now to study for the intro class that technically precedes the one I just final'd for ... which, again, is going to be the death of me. Pray for my soul.

Good show, good show!

Had a show today! UCR's Market Day, to be exact. It's never been a hugely profitable venue but I maintained my hopes and ... er ... was rewarded. There's a lot of competition from the little let's-buy-lots-of-child-labor-plastic-crap-and-sell-it-for-a-dollar outfits, but I tend to do okay.

Last night was spent agonizing over packing my jewelry into its carrying drawers (WalMart clear plastic storage drawers with a liner of squishy eggcrate foam -- works like a dream) and trying to figure out how exactly I display some of the new products: the button bracelets have to be fastened around a bracelet roll in order to look right, and I have rings and pendants to deal with now ... bigger table, though, which helped.

Incidentally, the fastest way to make a bracelet roll for display? A paint-roller, some Elmer's spray adhesive and a little of your table-cover fabric.

But, point is, I made about my average ... and then someone came at the very end of the day and spent ninety dollars on me.

Squee.

A very cool charity

As a small businesswoman, I'm trying to do some charity this Christmas even though M and I are rather impoverished and the employment front is looking ugly. Due to that situation, it's mostly been little things -- a jewelry set to be auctioned by a school for autistic students and some beads I'm packing up for a charity that teaches crafting classes to underprivileged kids.

And then I saw a banner ad on insanejournal for Kiva. I have to blog about this. It is so cool.

Basically, you pick an entrepreneur in a less developed country and make them a microloan (from $25 to ... whatever amount it is they need). They use the money for what they need (feed for a dairy cow, a display case for selling hand-embroidery work, rent on studio space) and they pay you back through the site. So you're helping them get on their feet, but you actually end up getting the money back.

I am sort of a passive-aggressive psuedo-Marxist, so any charity or program or effort that puts the means of production in the hands of the workers is exactly what I want to be contributing to. This is just ideal for me. What a cool idea! I wonder who came up with it?