Long days....

Long days behind, long days ahead.

I know, I've been neglecting my blog again. Can't blame me much; since Dad died, it's been a mess - literally as well as figuratively.

The winter found us packing his things for storage in the barn, which was not a fun task.
The winter found us realizing there was definitely something missing at Christmas.
The winter found us working harder to stop the hurt.

... It mostly worked.

It's not so raw, at least for me, now.

One thing that did help me while away hours I might have spend moping was creating. I placed an order for Valentine's Day stuff and St. Patrick's Day stuff.
.. It came the day after Valentines Day. Oops.

No worries! I got the St. Patrick's Day stuff done early enough - which featured the debut of a new line.
That's right. Dream Weaver now does RINGS.

I'm still a bit of a beginner, but, yes, I can do rings now. The first one was posted with the other St. Patty's Day things - the Lucky Clover set - listed separately.

Here is the Lucky Clover Ring.


Here is the Lucky Clover Bracelet to go with it...


Here is the Lucky Clover Pendant...


And finally the Lucky Clover Earrings.

I also decided to be adventurous.

I created an Artfire Studio to see how I do there. So now, DreamWeaverJewelry is now on Artfire.

Only a handful of things up right now, but one of them is the Spiral Bridal Set I was working on last year. I debut my sister, Cathy, as the lovely bride model for this set - and plan to offer a complimenting bridal party set that will feature the spirals, but with fewer. The bride has to stand out, after all!

The bride's set is priced so she won't break the bank and wind up spending as much or more than she did on her dress! The bridal party's sets (Bridesmaids and Maid/Matron of Honor sets will be different) will also be priced so her attendants won't break the bank either.

I will also be offering all of these things as packages for those brides who gift their attendants with the jewelry.

I know from personal experience how hard it is to find jewelry to 1. match the dress, 2. compliment the bride's set, and 3. DO BOTH. When Cathy was married, my other sister and I searched quite a few places, and we couldn't do ANY OF IT ... unless we had things custom done... which would have cost more than the WEDDING.

So I decided to offer to do a little of both.

This may be the first one I have geared directly towards a bride, but any of my work can be worn for bridal - and this won't be the LAST bridal set I'll offer, for sure. I have other ideas!

But it DOES take time to make ideas into jewelry... As I learned quickly while hand-tooling those spirals. The first ones were not uniform, the wire crimped on me, I swore an awful lot, tried again, and after many many MANY hours, I started making spirals that were uniform, got the hang of it, and the earrings were the first, and easiest. The bracelet was a longer time in forming, since the spiral had to be uniform on both sides AND fit the crystal in the center, and by the time I made the necklace, it wasn't so hard anymore. I'm pleased, but not TOTALLY satisfied with the outcome. But then, I'm an artist. I never WILL be.

I also found, through Facebook, a site that I decided to throw my hand in, and leave things to fate. I found Heartsy.me.

On this site, deals and discounts are offered, and I've read good things about it from other Estyans, other sellers, and buyers both.

To be considered as a feature, you must get 30 votes in a 72 hour period on your link. Mine is here. Before even 12 hours had passed, I got my 30, so I'm being considered now for a featured deal. I am hoping that this will lead to a few sales; I'm waiting now to hear back. I am hoping this will bring new clicks, customers, and more sales!

In the meantime, go check them out - sign up, get deals of your own, buying OR selling. There are some BEAUTIFUL things there, and I lost a couple of hours last night clicking through things and voting.

For now, I have work to do. On my Facebook, I have promised new spring colors, and since those colors are waiting for me, I should attend to them. I did get two new colors in of the butterflies I'm so fond of, so I need to make them into the cascades, and possibly a ring or two. So I'm off to do that.

Thanks everyone for reading!

Sales, Prom, and Geeking Out

I finally landed a couple of sales, thanks to an Etsyan who asked me to custom design a two-fingered hand-flower/Slave-bracelet.

It was a lot of fun to design this piece, as well as the 3 others I did, one of which I got to redo for my neice's Prom:

Her theme was green butterflies. I also did a necklace, and earrings for her. The earrings stem from a design I have up now in two colors (Cascading Swarovski Butterflies in Aquamarine and Cascading Swarovski Butterflies in Clear). I used two different shades of green for them, though, drawing a bit more attention to them:

While Beth was doing this photoshoot for me, I asked her to model some other things for me. The album can be found on my Facebook Fan Page, here.

Also looking at my page, two additional sales went up. A Mother's Day order of two sets, both of which I am extremely proud of; I thought out of the box in accordance to the style I was asked for. I heard after that both sets were much appreciated by the two Mothers they were given to.

And yes, I mentioned Geekery.

I have made phone charm tag things. Lots of them. In World of Warcraft colors.

... Let me explain.

One day I looked at my Priest shirt and thought I had some jewelry to go with it... I did. My Ocean Blue bracelet. After a few minutes of admiring the way it almost matched, I thought "waitasec...." And thought about doing jewelry to match the shirts' colors, or at least complimenting them.

I went to over to Jinx and looked up the shirts for each class, and then got crystals about the same colors. While I waited for that crystal to arrive, I made a few "Spec" (or Specialization) arrangements in Fire, Frost, Shadow, Nature, and Poison. I put Frost, Shadow, and Nature up on my Etsy.. though they haven't gotten too much attention. Once the crystal for the rest arrived, I made all of the classes (Warrior, Priest, Shaman, Druid, Death Knight, Warlock, Rogue, Mage, Paladin, and Hunter). Not all of the colors exactly match the shirts, but are close. On each of the tags, I used the four primary colors on the symbol of the class. It made a few of them kind of awkward, like Warrior, which doesn't have many colors to choose from.

I am now looking over the banners for each city, so I can customize tags further - I can now break down the tags, which each has three crystal components, into Faction/Race (by city banner), Class, specialization.

I also was challenged to do class/specialization bracelets, which I can also do now. The Demonology Warlock bracelet came out really well. (For the record, my warlock is destruction ;)

Since I figured making jewelry and geekery tend to go well together, I started this line... We shall see how it does. Right now, I can do phone tags, bracelets, and wine glass charms/bottle charms (what LAN party is without its bottle charms for the raid beer?)

To go back a bit, one of the orders I did for Mother's Day was done in Opal crystal and Freshwater Pearls. Looking at the pieces I did for that order, they would look quite at home on any bride. And yes, Beth showed those off for me, daring the sunlight in her eyes:

For the Mother's Day order, I tarnished the silver as requested, but took this photo before I did so. I think that this set would look wonderful on a bride, and I'm seriously pondering remaking it to offer up as a bridal set; and seeing about matching designs in colors instead of the pearls.

We shall see how this goes!

Ta for now.