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I decided to have one more little sale before the holidays!
Buy any single ready to ship item AND a polishing square and receive a FREE single organic stacking ring. When placing your order, please let me know what size you would like!
**custom orders are excluded - it must be a ready to ship item to count for a free ring!**
Happy Holidays to everyone! Hope you are having a lovely and festive season!
*orders placed on 12/12 will be shipped on 12/15
Just wanted to add a little extra addition to my buy one get one free sales - my organic stacking rings! A simple and sweet little ring that is just great stacking with others!
check it out here.
Starting today, Black Friday through "Cyber" Monday I am running a very special sale - Buy any pair of earrings and receive a free pair. You get to choose your free pair - either my xsmall organic vine earrings, or my large hammered circles!
Buy a pair for a gift and keep one for yourself!!
It'll be a suprise, but one worth waiting for!!! come and check it out tomorrow!!!
Here are the three rings all finished and they've been listed on Etsy now.
This one is sodalite and is listed here.
This one is aventurine and is here.
and this one is blue chalcedony and is here.
I was inspired to do these rings for several reasons. I'd been feeling kind of claustrophobic (for lack of a better word). I've been going through lots of things in my life and clearing out. There are several pieces I've had listed for sale and they haven't sold. I was tired of looking at them. Some pieces are going to be melted down in to something new, others will be turned in to something else! Like these rings! Some of the organic vine rings just didn't have the pizazz on their own that they needed, but as a band accompaniment to a lovely stone - they are perfect!! I feel like they are starting to give me the depth to my work I've been looking for.
I have so many stones that I really love and they just sit there. I'm hoping that habit is going to stop now and that I continue pairing up the stones to make some fabulous pieces.
I was also inspired by my friend Christine - who does amazing work, but like a lot of artists, is pushing herself forward and coming up with new designs to keep her creativity and passion in full swing. She created three rings that were just super lovely and inspired me to get out of my own run. Check out her shop - keep an eye on her - she is always adding new and amazing items.
I am having a special sale this weekend - a very spur of the moment sale. A great chance to stock up on some cute christmas gifts!!
After this weekend though, many of these items will no longer be in my shop - so get them now while you can!!
I will be adding many new items this coming week and am making room for new exciting pieces!!
Check out the sale section in my shop!
Lark Books is having a design challenge - several of us at EtsyMetal are jumping on board to participate!! It sounds like loads of fun and a great way to get inspired and to inspire others! I've been thinking a lot about what I want to use for mine. Its harder than I thought it would be!!
Check out more info here on the Lark site.
Entry Deadline is January 26th!
Seriously, you see that look? The subtext was "and if you don't, I'll bite your face" you don't want to mess w/ her. So go out and vote if you haven't already!!
Its an extremely important day, election, and a time in our history. I know I want to be a part of it, as should every American. Wouldn't it be nice if the president was elected by the majority of Americans, not just who happened to actually vote that day? Yes. Yes it would.
Just got back from voting! It took me a little over two hours. Of which I got some good reading in from this book Your Marketing Sucks. Which obviously is about marketing, what is bad about most marketing and what is good. It is encouraging and inspiring. A good read for standing in line!
I am so excited - for my birthday my sweetheart is going to help me build a proper workbench. I had planned on buying one - but there are some strange, uh... floor requirements that have to be worked around - and buying one would require altering - so building one from scrap with a lot of material we already have seemed to make much more sense. Today we've been working on some drawings, doing some measurements and figuring out the structural components. I'm VERY excited and can't wait til it is all done!
Several months ago I got a GRS Benchmate - but haven't been able to set it up b/c of the table I work at now... I guess I should have done the workbench first and THEN got the benchmate! ah, well, this is just making me get the workbench done.
Thank you to everyone for the birthday well wishes and the support of my birthday sale!
Today is the day!!!
All ready to ship items have free shipping - custom orders are excluded.
I got my sale all finished up - loads over items are on sale - some up to $40 off the original price! The sale runs today only and tomorrow, everything will be back to normal again.
Check out my shop here and sale section here.
What is it? Whats the sale? Why is it special?
Stay tuned for tomorrow and you will find out!
Victoria and Janos are two of my best EtsyMetal friends and a few flickr buddies were inspired by a piece Victoria made and had posted on flickr (how can you not be inspired by her??) This led to the Corno Project which was just featured in the Storque on Etsy! Congrats!!!! All the pieces are truly amazing - but I would expect nothing less.
I've been really productive this week. Got waxes done Monday morning, invested and in the kiln, while working on more waxes, cast that night. Then invested Tues. morning, more in the kiln, more cast Tues. night - I've been working all day to finish up everything I cast and I am super super excited with what will be coming out of the tumbler this afternoon!! Most of them are custom pieces... well, actually, they are all custom pieces, one is a new design. Something similar to pieces I've done before, but am expanding on a little bit with some help from my lovely customer, Linnea. I think she is going to be super excited to see it all finished, as am I!
No photos yet, so I will just create some suspense!
So I finally have the 'animation' process down. It is quite easy and loads of fun! I am by no means an expert, but its pretty simple. I should mention I am on a mac, so things might be different on a pc. Here's how I made mine:
1. Open up photoshop
2. Open images you want to use.
3. Crop all images the same size - add text if desired, then either flatten the image or 'merge visible' I like 'command E' (shortcuts are my friend)
4. I like to open a new blank canvas to paste them all in to, that way I can save it separate from all of the other images.
5. Copy and Paste each image to that one new canvas - You are creating a layer for each image, but since they are all the same size and opaque, you only see one image, basically just like stacking up pieces of paper, they're all there, but you can only see the top one. (Command A - select all, Command C - copy, click on new canvas, Command V - paste)
6. There is a nice little button in my version of photoshop that is at the bottom of the 'tools' bar "Edit in ImageReady" - it is also under 'File'
7. Image Ready opens up.
8. Make sure the animation window and layers window are both open. If not, go to 'window' and click to select them
9. This is where it started to get a little confusing for me, but once I did it a couple times, its really a cinch. One image, the top image, will appear in the animation window. Depending on how you layered the images and what image you want to have first will depend on the next step. It all has to do with the visibility (that little eye in the layers window). I usually layer mine so the first image ends up being #1 and at the bottom. So I deselect all of the visibility of the layers above it. Now I have the first image in the animation window.
10. To ad the second frame click the 'duplicate' icon in the animation window (should be right next to the trash can)
11. In the Layers window, click to make the second window visible. Now you should have two frames in your animation window with two different images. Continue to duplicate and adjust visibility based on what you want.
12. Once you have finished adding each frame, you need to adjust the time each frame will be visible. You will see a 0 sec under each frame, click the down arrow and change the time. For this animation I did 2 sec - you can experiment to what works best for you and by pressing the 'play' button can have a preview.
13. When you get the timing down, you're ready to save! Go to 'File' and 'Save Optimized As' and you are done!
There is obviously a lot more that you can do and honestly I don't know most of it! But that is the basic on how to make an animated ad! You can upload it to flickr or email simply as you would any other photo. When I first uploaded it to flickr, I thought it hadn't worked, but to view the animation you go to 'all sizes' and then the animation will work.
Yesterday on my way in to my studio, I saw this lovely walking stick on the door. Walking sticks are one of the most fascinating insects to me as they hardly look like an insect at all! Even upclose and personal there isn't much to make out as far as a 'face'. 
I'm sure this grandaddy long legs thought differently though, as they seemed to be having a staring contest - the entire day! They both just hung out, staring at each other, hardly moving for over 12 hours. I have no idea what they were doing, but they must have finished by this morning b/c neither was there. It was such a treat to get to see the walking stick though - and the day after the praying mantis! Late summer/early fall definitely brings in some lovely critters.
So I finally got my account set up and ordered the findings I needed that NO ONE else had - and was expecting them at any moment, when this box arrived. I picked it up and though 'hmphft, these are some heavy findings!" then thinking, 'oh they must have sent me a catalog.' A catalog does not describe what they sent.
I had no idea they had a whole massive collection of catalogs. They are incredibly exciting and I haven't even had the chance to start going through them yet. You can be I'll be ordering from them a lot!
This is a test... only a test....
I'm trying to learn how to make animated gifs... this is my first try and I'm wondering if it will show up animated on the blog! I hope so.
Its not the final 'draft' but hopefully will include some words and I'll slow down the pace. but I was just glad I finally got it to work! Course if it doesn't work here, you can check it out on flickr by looking at 'all sizes'
The artists are:
Kathy of studiometalsmith
Elizabeth of erosasjewelry
Catherine Chandler
Sara Westermark
Cynthia Del Giudice
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