Ok blogreaderes

If there is anyone actually reading this, show me :) If you comment you can take 15% of any ready made itemsover $15 currently listed at my shop. Great time to stock up on holiday gifts! Just put "blogg" under comments when you check out!

Happy Halloween

I just wanted to wish any readers who are celebrating a happy and safe Halloween! I don't really do the Halloween thing myself, but suspect that if I did I would be more into the wiccan/hallowed ever sort of practice than the dressing up. Then again, I love costumes, so it is a pretty tough call.

On the left you have a great little creepy crawly who can keep you company right through the holiday season.

I remember the last time I dressed up for Halloween I went as a Goth (what my sister tells me are now called Emos"). I wore all black and a bunch of dangly, victorian-esque jewelery. Made it a point to talk about death and destruction a lot. (Think Lydia in Beetlejuice). The thing is, I am not sure anyone noticed a difference.

It's official, CBC SHOW

PhonyArt will be on the new vendors at this years CBC gift show. Now in it's 10th year the CBC craft show is an annual fundraiser for Breast Cancer research. If you are in Toronto please come by and check us out!

Thursday November 29th, 2007
10am-5pm

Christmas in the Heart of the Entertainment District

Canadian Broadcasting Centre (Front & John Streets)

Also, I have another show tentatively booked that night (crazy day!) for the Children's Wish Foundation at a night club but I am not sure I have the stock (or energy) for two shows in one day.

Toronto Winter Clothing show part 2 (a triligoy in an, as of yet, unknown number of parts)

Ok, so,

IF I can get the money together for the booth, and
IF I can figure out how to make the whole Saturday thing work (not being able to run or profit from a booth on a Saturday for religious reasons, and
IF I can figure out that even with the above little problem it is still worth doing, and
IF I can get childcare for those days and maybe the day before, and
IF I can get someone to work a booth with me

THEN I think I am going to do this.

Clearly I am channeling high school science teachers and various computer programming class instructors. Only back then I was only allowed to have one "IF: per each 'THEN" in a science hypothesis? Clearly I was not paying attention so well.

Toronto Winter Clothing Show

So I think i am stuck in a little bit of a catch 22.

I am thinking of participating in the Winter clothing show. It is notoriously non-fat-friendly. To the best of my knowledge there is only one vendor who even carries any plus sized clothes.

Great right, go in, sell my stuff, have a bit of a captive audience.

The thing is, I think most of us plussies know that, and so we do not even bother going to the show.

So I might get there, hoping for a captive audience, only to find that there is no one there to whom I can sell anything!

I am curious. To those who are reading this. Do you bother going to this sort of thing? should I take that leap and be the big fish in the small pond?

Blog Action day

Today is Blog Action Day. Bloggers around the web are uniting to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Those of us participating will each post about the environment in our own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

So bearing that in mind I present to you (dum da da dum)

Mr. Holly-Go-Lightly

Mr. Holley-Go-Lightly is made up entirely from parts taken from an energy efficient lightbulb that had previously been lighting my workspace for the last 2 years. It finally died on me and broke when I was taking it out of the lamp. When the base opened I saw all these fun colours! I took them and put them aside as at the time I had no idea what to do with them.

Every so often I would fiddle with them, but just nothing came to me. Last week, during my usual 3AM fiddle, there he was!

I really need to start taking apart more broken stuff rather than just throwing it out!

Look around, you will be amazed what you can find.

This bracelet is one of my favourites. I made it to see at one of my first craft shows, and never actually managed to put it on sale. I fell in love with it and decided that I deserved a treat once in a while as well!

I wear it at least a couple of times a week with everything from jeans and a sweater to black tie formal wear and it never fails to be a perfect accent and look right at home on my wrist. I am constantly getting comments on how crisp and clean and modern it looks.

Now the secret. This was a chain belt I found in a charity rummage sale a couple of years ago. I bought it thinking that I would use it as a belt. The trouble with that was whenever I put it on I looked like I was dressed for a great party... in 1986!

I had it kicking around for a while and one day got the idea to break it up and see what I could do with it. I added a clasp and voila! I ended up with a wonderful addition to any outfit, and because it had started life as a belt it had a bit of a larger scale that was just perfect for my look.

So look around. Chances are there is loads of stuff around you that can be updated into great accent pieces for your wardrobe.

Help please!

I have come up with a new design playing on some of my own medieval thoughts of thoughts as of late. Ok, that and I just finished reading "The Queen's Fool" (Philippa Gregory) and this design came from a doodle in my sketchbook while I was reading. Now, I have a touch of a problem. I have to completely different sets of livery for this fool, but as I only plan to make one I am not sure which one to go with! I will open a poll in the sidebar, please let me know which set of colours you prefer.

Oh, I should get add that it will be silver and the colour will be resin.

Good score :)

I just got a nice deal on some onyx, some lovely small amethysts, a couple of carnelian, and best of all, some beautiful nuggets of furnace glass that will look simply incredible when I get them set into silver as pendants or maybe a bracelet. B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L!!!

I will be honest. When it comes to glass I am a total noob. I know nothing. I have taken a class or two, made a couple of pieces in the classes, and hated it. I love the time you get to play with softened metal. I love the time you can put into getting your curves or your corners "just so". I found with glass you need to work FAST. You need to know exactly what you are doing or don't bother trying to make something presentable. On the other hand, I do know that to do really nice work takes a skilled hand and patience that I admire. Those people who do beautiful lampwork beads are real artisans, and the speed at which they need to work is incredible.

These are not lampwork. They are nothing even particularly impressive,

but All I can tell you is that I like them. I like them a lot. I am already thinking of things to do with them.

These are going to look amazing in my new high colour series :)

Advice always welcome

A would like to take a fellow (fellow-ette?) etsymom for taking the time to check out my new shop and give me some feedback on some of my information. I am now going through and updating every item in the shop with the information you suggested. Thank you very much!

If anyone ever has any advice they would like to share I am always greatfull for the help. The creative part I can do on my own. The business and marketing, well that I can always use the assistance!

Thanks :)

Can't join the fad?

Do you have trouble wearing most pieces of fashion jewelery because it turns your skin green, bothers your ears, or otherwise makes you look like an alien? Feel like you can never have fun with your jewelery because you can only buy the really expensive stuff?

There are options!

there are coatings available that brush on like nail polish and create an invisible barrier between your skin and your jewelery. Some are made from medical grade silicone and have an almost zero reaction rate amongst anyone. This is the same stuff that is used in breast implants, plastic surgery, skin grafts, etc. Although I am not 100% sure I would want to have it inserted permanently into my body, I would not hesitate to wear it against my skin (and even in piercings) for long periods of time.

Metal can react with skin to turn both the metal and your skin green, black, purple or a variety of other colours that are pretty on My Little Ponies (if not necessarily on you). This does not mean that there is something wrong with your jewelery. Some metals just react that way with some people, and the acidity, oils, bacteria, etc. on your skin can make that chemical reaction happen faster or slower than if someone else were to wear the exact same piece.

If your skin reacts to metal by changing colour, a coat of hardware store spray paint (I like high gloss Tremclad at $3.49 a bottle and I am still on my first bottle) that will just coat the metal and keep the air, which is what causes the reactions, out. (I do not think I would use the spray pain on earring posts. Something about spray paint just screams "For external use only").

So go! A whole new world is opened to you for only the cost of a can of spray paint!

Tagged!

Ok, so I have been tagged by Donna of Donna Says to tell you 8 things about myself. Now the question is, what should they be.

1. I am a mother and would not trade anything in the world for my little girl. She is the centre of my world. I orriginally went back to school to learn to do jewelery so I could have an excuse to stay home and be with her rather than going back to office work.

2. I am Jewish, and this plays a really big part in every aspect of my life. As tough as it can be to lead a Modern Orthodox life, I would not give it up for anything in the world. It adds to my sense of self, and gives me a direction to work towards... even if I know I am not there yet.

3. I am a grade school teacher by training, and taught for only a year before realizing I had made an enormous mistake.

4. As funny and talkative as most people think I am, I rarely make new friends in real life. Crowds scare me a little.

5. I have a cheap IKEA couch that is the most comfortable thing in the world. I had it recovered in brown Ultrasuede and now people think it is a very expensive piece of furniture. I crack up every time someone tells me where they think I got it.

6. I have a total black thumb. I can not grow ANYTHING. My husband will not even let me dress my daughter in green because he is worried I might forget to feed her.

7. My work bench is made from the same desk I did my homework on as a kid. Before that it was my mother's desk as a kid. Before that my great aunt used it for the same thing. It never saw this coming.

8. I am an insomniac. I regularly work until 3 in the morning, then complain that I do not get enough sleep if someoen calls and wakes me up at 10am.

Ok, now I need to tag some people. Not sure how I know who will read this, but I figure I can try :)

Fat Chick
The Tale of a Canadian in Israel and Other Stories
The Rotund

That is all I have for now. I will try to add more shortly.

Sentimental and Practical

What makes and estate piece of jewelery valuable? Certainly it is not the cost of the materials or the effort involved as often these piece go for a price high above what would appear to be their value. Often an estate piece may have no intrinsic value at all... a pretty piece of glass handed down through the generations. A small brass locket holding a piece of an ancestors hair. It is the historical significance and tradition behind the piece that elevates it to a whole new level and brings out that "special" quality.

So why not create a historical estate piece from something you might have hiding in a musty box in your basement?

Do you love rings but have trouble finding ones that suit you? How about something filled with family history and tradition, while also being bulky and funky enough to look like a piece of sculpture on your finger?

This ring, made for my own collection, is created from an heirloom piece of my great grandmother's silverware! Almost any piece of metal can be made into jewelery.

What a wonderful gift this would make to children or grandchildren, or even a new bride. A lovely way to carry on the tradition of "family silver" while allowing the bride to choose her own pieces for use on her table.

Each ring can be made to size, but there is another option. Each ring can also be created so that it is adjustable to within 4 sizes. This means that it can be moved from finger to finger with only a minimum of pressure. No tools needed. 1 ring, many sizes!

I can use a spoon with your family history behind it, or pick one up at a pawn shop and we can create a history together. Please feel free to contact me for more information.