2nd Bead Packet Design Challenge

Note:  I set this blog article to run early this morning at 1:30 am to coincide with Sharyl's, but for some reason it didn't work.  :(  Anyhooos .... here it is:

For those who have been following Sharyl on her blog you know she has a "2nd Bead Packet Design Challenge" going on this month, where jewelry designers purchase a set of 9 pre-picked NKPBEADS and come up with their own designs ...Here is a link to her original blog post: Click Here

 Because my beads were in the spotlight I decided to make things more interesting by throwing in a $25 gift certificate to one of the participants by drawing a name out of a 'hat', randomly of course.  Here is a link to that blog post:  Click Here

For the 'hat' I used one of my pots that I made out of sparkly micacious clay.  I printed out the entries, cut and folded them before placing them into the pot.    I swirled my hand around exactly 20 times and then picked out a name.  

  The winner is: Whimsical Monkey!

WM:  Please leave your email address in the comments and I will contact you with instructions on how to collect your $25 in beads from my NKP Beads etsy store.  

   CONGRATULATIONS!

Below are the participants and their blogs. Please click over and take a look at each design.  Also, hop over to Sharyl's blog.

Sudafulee... Always in Bloom
http://sadafulee.blogspot.com
Kashmira Patel

All the Pretty Things
http://www.allprettythings.ca/
Alicia

Creative Designs by Cheri
http://creativedesignsbycheri.blogspot.com/
Cheri

Laren Dee Designs
http://larendeedesigns.blogspot.com/
Laren Dee Barton

Beads and Bread
http://www.beadsandbread.blogspot.com/
Shirley Moore

Alice's Beads and Baubles
http://alicesbeadsandbaubles.blogspot.com/
Alice Craddick

Tell Your Girlfriends
http://www.tellyourgirlfriends.com/
Cilla

Whimsical Monkey
http://whimsicalweavings.blogspot.com/
Whimsical Monkey

KayzKreationz
http://kayzkreationz.blogspot.com/
KayzKreationz

Jean A. Wells Handcrafted Artisan Jewelry
http://jeanawells.blogspot.com/
Jean A. Wells

Thank you to all the participants.  This was a lot of fun!  I look forward to seeing all the beautiful items you designed with some of my beads.

Ceramic Owl

There is an Owl contest over at Artisan Whimsey, a new website for jewelry component makers of all mediums as well as for Jewelry Designers. 

I was hesitant to enter at first because I was afraid that my owl would look too much like someone elses.  However, I think I was able to craft a unique owl in the end. 

I used a glaze called "Waterfall".  It shows up nicely on this porcelain glaze.  I used sprigs of clay and textured with a skewer.  Both the front and the back have this same owl shape.

Voting begins on Artisan Whimsey on October  28th at Midnight and continues until October 30th midnight.  The winners will be posted on October 30th midnight.  There are two categories: one for component makers and the other for jewelry designs, a nice blend of participants I think.

Here's the link to vote at:  http://artisanwhimsy.ning.com/page/hooters .  I would urge you to vote for mine but there are already some spectacular entries posted. Just participate and vote for your favorite.  Then leave a post here and I'll enter you in a drawing to win this particular owl.  The voting doesn't start for two more days so bookmark this page to come back and vote and leave a comment at that time.

Yes, that's right, you don't have to vote for this owl but you can definitely have a chance to win it!

Thanks for stopping by!

Crazy Lace Agate Circles

I went to a small wholesale mineral show held in Dallas last week and picked up this pair of Crazy Lace Agate circles.  

I think they look like miniature landscapes. 

I plan to eventually work these in some sort of bezel, maybe clay, maybe metal, I don't know.  In the meantime I can dream. 

The Whole Herd of Elephant Beads

These are what came out of the kiln about a week ago.  I just wanted to share a quick pic of them. Thanks for stopping by!

Sharyl's Bead Packet Design Challenge Participants Announcement

I wanted to let my blog readers who may be following along that Sharyl of Sharyl's Jewelry has 10 participants that have been announced on her blog.  Read all about it here:   http://www.sharylsjewelry.blogspot.com/2012/09/announcement-of-participants-2nd-bead.html

If you asked to be a part of it and need details, the link above is the place to go to learn further details. She has all her packets of beads ready to be mailed.

As  I stated in this blog article  I am giving a $25 gift certificate to my bead store to one of the 10 participating designers to be revealed the day of the mini bead blog hop on October 27.  The winner's name will be drawn randomly.  It's going to be a lot of fun to see what designs the participants come up with! 

Marbling Clay

 I have three distinct types of bodies in these marbled beads:  brown stoneware, red stoneware, and porcelain.

This photo on the left shows what the glaze I used (Sea Glass Gloss by mayco) looks like individually on all three, and the fourth is a marbled nugget of all three clays mixed together.

It's a light glaze which lets the clay body shine through with a touch of minty green.

I have these four nugget beads on the right on sale in my shop right now. If you're interested: Click here.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Making of a Seed Pod Bead

At the end of the day it is great to relax with a bit of clay and some mellow music. Enjoy.

New Tool of the Year

This year I bought myself a birthday gift, a Peter Pugger pugmill. I have lots of dried out clay in my studio that needs to be reclaimed and I have slowly been doing that but it's very hard on my wrists and so this was an expensive, but lovely, solution. It's supposed to arrive on Friday. FRIDAY! :)

Jewelry Challange and Gift Certificates

Sharyl over at Sharyl's Jewelry blog is having a Second Bead Package Design Challenge using some of my beads.  Hop over there and read all about it.  The deadline to ask to participate is Friday, September 21st.  To make things more interesting I'm throwing in a $25 gift certificate for my nkpbeads Etsy store to one participating designer drawn at random to be chosen on October 27th, the mini-blog hop date.

Sharyl is opening up the challenge to 10 designers and emphasizing Art Beads as part of the creations.

Sharyl is also having a drawing for a $25 gift certificate to "Sharyl's Jewelry" from among all who ask to participate in this event.

It's going to be SO MUCH FUN! 

Artsie Beads

Tomorrow when I load the kiln, these will be in there.  After they are fired, the black will turn a maroon brown.  The glaze is a robin egg blue with cobalt blue speckles throughout.

Basically I drew three circles and Zentangled the insides with circles and rectangles and such.  I printed them onto decal paper with my laser printer and cut them into 4ths, and reassembled them onto the round bead.

Okay, onto the next experiment!

Porcelain Beads of Eggplant Purple and Pale Golden Yellow

I pulled these out of the kiln this morning.  I was hoping for a darker shade of yellow but these have grown on me over the last couple of hours.

Anybody want the entire batch for $30 plus $2 shipping?  If so, leave me a comment and your email.  If there is no interest, I'll list them in my Etsy store  individually.

Sizes?  The daisy lentil near the top is 22 mm and 17 mm at its thickest. The smaller round with the leaf imprint (there are four imprints on the entire bead) is 17 mm hole to hole and 16 mm at its thickest.  The other lentil bead near the bottom is approx 24 at its widest.   If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment.  Here's a close up of them individually.

 

Studio Updates

Do you like my jack bead?  I tried to make more of these but for some reason or another only ended up with this one.  It is a brown stoneware clay to which I applied a purple underglaze.  I sponged off the excess glaze so it only peeked out from the recesses before coating it with (my favorite) Victoria Red mayco glaze.  I rather like the effect. I've been using blacks or greens for underglazes and now I'm utilizing some dark purples.

I sat down yesterday with a lump of clay in my hands and made some new bead styles, variations of things I've already done actually.  As I look at them I wonder when I will glaze and fire them. I have so many beads I have not glazed and many more that are sitting around glazed but not fired.  They sit on paper plates on my studio shelves with cone numbers written on them:  cone 1, cone 04, cone 6, otherwise I will forget and fire them at the wrong temperature.

Yesterday I cleaned out my studio closet and threw out boxes that I have saved (hoarded) and suddenly my closet was navigable.

The day before I hand built some saucers for myself using my small tabletop portable slab roller.  I bought this several years ago and have hardly used it.  It is so easy to use I'm ashamed I haven't played with it before now. It's is absolutely darling to work with.  My husband has requested all new dishes and so I have begun doing that.  I tried to fire the big kiln the day before that and the relay blew. I am awaiting a new relay.  I don't know why my relays blow so often. At least this time I didn't automatically replace all the coils before figuring out the real problem.  I've done that the last two times the relay has blown.  I'm actually afraid to load beads into my smaller kiln for fear I will find that something is wrong with that kiln too! They tend to all break down about the same time.

I have been also photographing beads and trying to put as many online in a single listing as possible (you know, batches) but I'm finding I really do only have a few of each kind, except for a particular green bead which I am finding in all sorts of places in my bead stashes. 

I was thinking about that yesterday when I was creating some beads and so I tried to make at least 24 beads per style but I must have forgotten all about that because by the time I put the tray away I had 10 beads with only 1 style per 2 beads.  It is almost painful to make the same bead more than twice.  Some days I am more disciplined than others.

I went hopping through my already sold beads which is now totaling about 60 etsy pages and I found several styles of beads I want to remake but I can't remember which glazes I used.  On one particular bead I will never get that color of brown ever again because I've tried ... several times.

In one of my past bead sales I used this photo above with the piggies standing all around it. I confess I was in an odd mood that day.  I had gone to the dollar store and found this package of piggies and thought they would be good models to look at pigs while I tried to sculpt a pig. Come to think of it, I haven't tried to hand sculpt a piggie in quite a long time.  I love their little ears and snouts.  Too cute.   Maybe I'll try to create a couple today. What are you going to be doing?

Thanks for stopping by!  -- Natalie

How Does She Do That?

https://www.etsy.com/listing/106840639/sky-blue-ceramic-lentil-bead

I'm going through all my beads and checking them twice.  I have had two listings that have been in my Etsy store that were not in my stash. One I caught before it sold. The other I did not.

Both of the listings were relisted under the new Quantity functions.  I caught the first 'already sold out' listings in my expired area.  One day I renewed it and immediately realized, "Hey, I don't have any of those left" and promptly deleted the listing. I should have send Etsy an email about it, but I didn't think too much about it until a day or so later when I sold something else that I had renewed which had sold out completely.  Unfortunately I didn't notice that I had renewed it like I had the other.  Since them I've been looking at all my multiple quantity listings and (finger crossed and many prayers) all seems to be in order.

That brings me to the subject of today: How Do I Store My Beads that I have listed. Well, I have them in their individual tiny jewelry bags stored in large Ziplock bags.  I have the bags labeled "2" "3" "4".  So if a listing has 2 beads, it goes into the large Ziplock bag labeled "2" and if the listing has 3 beads, it goes into the large Ziplock bag labeled "3" and so on.

All the single focal beads (packaged in tiny jewelry bags) go into large Ziplock bags according to type (handpainted, nugget, decal, sprig, etc ...).

About a year ago I decided that it was much too easy to accidentally send the wrong bead to a customer (um .... don't ask .... lol) ...

Now I take the listing number (or copy number) of each listing and add it to the bottom of each listing.  It looks something like this:  "#594830292"

And I write that same number on a slip of paper and add it to the small jewelry plastic bag with the bead.  And I double-check the number on each listing.  Now instead of 1 focal bead in a certain glaze, I can offer many more at a single time. 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/104087346/sky-blue-ceramic-bead

It's not foolproof but it helps.  If anybody has some other great ideas to improve my system, feel free to share.

Thanks for stopping by!

Shop Sections Changes

Howdy!  Today I waded through all my listings.  I haven't been happy with my sections the last few months. 

I have eliminated the Sprig Beads section. 

It was fine when I first started making them and didn't have very many, but I have just way too many and in all different shapes.  I have round ones, lentil shape ones, nugget shaped ones ... blah blah blah, you get the idea. 

I also got rid of the 'handpainted' 'decals' and 'iron oxides', for the same reason. I'm doing them all in different shapes and it is just too much.

There are so many decisions to make sometimes when listing and why add to the confusion?  I hope this has simplified things, and not just for me.

The bead above is a nugget bead, with textures, with sprigs AND it's green!  Here's where I put it: In the Nugget section!  Woo hoo! Go eat some cake or ice cream or something to celebrate! :) 

Elephant Safari with Jean A Wells and Stringing Magazine

The long awaited event is here. I've been waiting all summer for this fall issue of Stringing magazine because Jean A. Wells had a necklace accepted for publication with one of my hand sculptured elephant beads as the focal bead.

It should already be in stores and I expect you should go out and get yours today because they won't be on the shelves long and you definitely want to see Jean's other two pieces of fabulous jewelry which are also in this magazine. Or you could click over to her blog and check it out there first.

I really enjoyed making this elephant that Jean eventually included in this necklace.  When she told me that it was accepted for publication she asked if I would be sculpting any more. I immediately said yes and then sat down and tried to remember how I had created one.

It took me a couple of tries and I did make a few.  However, the glaze didn't come out the same on these as they did in the magazine. I realized after I had fired all of them that I had used a soldate 60 clay and not a white stoneware clay.  I remade some and had them fired in the gas kiln at the college and brought them home for glazing.

At the moment they are on my glaze shelf waiting to be fired. Hopefully by next week they will be finished. Until then, check these out:  Click Here for Elephants .