Organization

Good Morning y'all...Check this out.

I am trying my best to have stock made up for my web orders. Over the last ten years of making beads I have attempted to become organized with my stock. About six years ago I remember getting ten of each style of my large beads made for my site. I got busy after that and couldn't continue. I have never attempted it again, until now. I seem to be a bit smarter now about things, I have done some things that I keep saying to myself, "Jennifer why didn't you do this years ago?" First of all I printed out everything on my website twice. The first copy I hung in my glaze studio that way when I get an order for an FBB-1, I know that is a red and yellow link and I don't have to go looking it up on my computer. Duh, should have done that years ago. With my second set of print outs I cut them up and put each picture in it's own compartment in a tray. Now I can see what I have and if I don't have it, I at least have a picture of it. The pictures below looks like I have a ton of stock, it's just that I do have my pairs and links made. There are other sections that are totally empty. But I am working on that.

Now I do have to say in my defense, a few years ago I wouldn't have been able to stay so organized because I would have been packing it up to take to shows every weekend. Now that I only take my beads to the Bead and Button Show every year, I am able to track my stock better. Woohoo! I get real happy when I figure out how to do something better.

Today is the last day for free shipping at the Jangles website!
Have a great day,

Pinwheel Inspiration

Coralina Bracelet

Look at these great jewelry designs. These were all done by the folks at Fusion Beads. I was shopping a few weeks ago at their site and came across the Coralina color collection. I loved the coral and turquoise together. I got to poking around and I saw they had used one of my pinwheel beads in a bracelet. I was super excited. If you don't already know Fusion has loads of inspiration on their site and if you click on the Coralina Title above it will take you to the written project for this bracelet. How cool is that?

Below are a couple more inspiration projects that used my beads. I love them all.

Have a great day,
Jennifer

Buttons and Fabric

Happy Friday! I am super excited for so many things right now. First, my new buttons are up on the site. These are the buttons that match my new fabrics. Second, my fabrics are available for order through In The Beginning Fabrics now. Wahoo! This is only wholesale. For you sewers wanting to get your hands on some, unfortunately, you have to wait until September. That is when Happy will show up in Independent Quilt Shops across the country and the world. But please...oh...please go ask you quilt shop to order now. I will show you more of the collection soon, there are 24 fabrics in all.

I don't want to leave you hanging so remember the logo above? Here is the fabric that is used in it. It will also be available in a really pretty turquoise and a purpley-periwinkle color. I can't stop thinking of all the things I am going to make with it. EEEk!

So have a Happy Friday,

Coming Along

Hey, Hey! Things are coming along in the studio. I have been working really hard to get things back into place. I just want my studio back to normal! Above is a picture of my walls after the drywall had been put up. It was part of my inspiration for the floor color. Michelle from Beadalotta had commented on my blog about yellow and aqua would make it have a beachy feel. That stuck with me because I love the beach. So I went to the store and picked out a turquoise and when I came home and had it in the studio, it matched the drywall exactly! I was torn where to put it though and when I saw it underneath the yellow, I knew it had to be the floor. I had really thought I was going to add some lime green and maybe a periwinkle but once they were in the studio light they made me sick-ish. I don't think I could have handle a whole studio. That's when I realized the reason I originally went with the yellow was to be cheerful and bright. There was not going to be another color to top it. I stuck with the same. I did paint over the flowers, etc. that I had on the walls. Once things get messy in here it gets really crazy. Right now I realize it's a bit boring, but trust me give it a month and I will be thankful. You can see a picture below of the studio in progress. I will do better and more photos down the road.
Have a great day,

Happy Monday

Happy Monday! Hope you all a warm and wonderful weekend. We enjoyed a cook out on the back porch, it was so nice. Yesterday it rained, so I spent the day inside painting. I painted the studio and both of the boys bedrooms. Whew! I am exhausted and sore. But I am so much closer to being back to work in the studio. The final work is being done today and then it will just be up to me to paint the floor. I will show pictures soon. It's going to take me awhile to get it all back together.

Above is a cute necklace I made with my new disco links. I am lovin' it and it was so simple.

Have a great day,

Studio Re-do

Hey Hey,

I just found out that I am going to get to paint my studio this weekend! Wahoo. Not that I am really excited about painting, it's more that I am excited to get things back to normal. I scored a paint chip fan book thingy at a thrift sale last weekend. I bought it just to have all those colors in one place, I thought it could be handy for designing fabric. It never crossed my mind that I might actually use it for selecting paint. I found myself searching through it last night. I think I came up with a pretty cool combo. More on that later...

In the meantime, I have been thinking about the things I like and don't like about my studio. It's not that anything was really bad, it's just here's my chance to tweak things. In the last studio I did a lot of painting on the walls. I have some big flowers painted on one wall, some stripes, and some dots. I have found that it really gets lost in there. Plus, I found myself always rearranging to not cover up certain elements. This time the walls will be solid and then the focus will be more on what's in the place.

I also found I have no where to store finished projects. When it was jewelry only, I had a tabletop with some stands and that was enough to hold and display it. Now that I have been doing more mixed media and sewing, the projects are bigger and piling up. I need some shelves.

The lighting has never been good. Since I had an electrician in the studio the other day we spoke about my lighting options. I am going to go look tonight and see what I can find. but I am thinking track lights.

I would also like a giant bulletin board. When I was designing my first line of fabrics I found myself taping printed papers out in any flat surface. I need to let things hang for awhile so I can walk by and think about them. I also would like a place to hang quilts in progress. I am thinking a big foam board covered in flannel would double as a bulletin board and a quilt layout board.

And one last thing, I need a better sewing area. I am hoping for some kind of sewing table on wheels. Something gigantic. I find myself using my big studio table all of the time for the project du jour. I would like a couple big tables like that so I can have more than one thing going on.

Now fitting all of these things in to my studio is going to be difficult. I am guessing there will be lots of rearranging to get it right.

Whew! Let's see it's Friday and sometimes I do a give away but let's do something different today. How about 25% off of retail sales in the Etsy shop? I will take the discount and send you an updated invoice or I can credit your paypal account with the 25%. The sale will run through until Monday at 6:00 am.

Have a great weekend!

Makeshift Studio

Good Morning! The jack hammering is over and the cement is drying, I am getting one step closer to getting back into my studio. As of right now it looks like everything will be finished by Monday afternoon. The walls are a mess, so any hope of just painting the bottom is gone. There are marks from the jack hammer and splattered dirt, etc. Thank you for the color suggestions I am still deciding.

Here is my make shift jewelry studio. I put together jewelry all day yesterday. Seriously, I think I went up and down the stairs fifty times to get things. The table still looks like this today because I just have a few more orders to get assembled.

In the middle of the table are Birk's new pet frogs, Spring and Dupree. Before you ask, I have no idea where the names came from. I spent the day with them and broke up what I thought was a really bad fight. Nik informed me later, they were probably mating. Oops

Here's a shot of a bunch of my beaded necklaces that I put together. They are some of my hardest to put together because it's all random beads with my ceramic beads mixed in. Making things look not put together is really hard! I usually try to do a bunch of these at once so I don't strain my brain.
I am trying to spare you with all of the dirty basement photos, but here's just one. I am feeling better now but watching them tear up the concrete in my once beautiful studio was hard.

Everyone have a good day to day!

Green

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Here are some things that are green.

Palm Tree

Lime Toggle

Dotted Bead Pair

A Charm

A button

A Disco LinkA Flower Link

My new Shoes, who knew tennis shoes came in lime green?

Big and Noisey Week

Good Morning! It's here, it's the week they are going to fix my basement. Wahoo! After nine weeks of leaking water straight, today is the day it's going to end. Or at least that's what they tell me. :) Here is a picture of my studio today. Gulp...not so pretty and very dusty. Today is going to be worse, they are bringing in the jack hammers. I am planning on being in the glaze studio, it the farthest away from the noise but I think it's still going to be loud.

I put the little snail bead above because I hate to see the first picture of my post be an ugly one. He's a bead I made instead of a charm. I have a couple listed in my Etsy shop right now.

My comments from the give away were great. I got some good suggestions for new beads, I am always up for a challenge so I am going to see if I can come up with some of them. The winner of my Friday Give Away is comment number 14 from the random number generator(I love that thing!). Shona Murphy, Congratulations! I will mail out your owl and twig today.

Now that my studio is pretty torn up and I have to paint, I am stuck with a dilemma. Do I paint it the same color again or do I go with something totally different? What do you think? I would love a lime green wall but I am thinking I might not like it with the yellow. What ever it is, it has to be bright, it's a basement room without windows.

Have a great day!

Give-Away-Friday

Happy Friday! One reason it's happy is because I am giving away beads. Wahoo! More about that later...

Here is another necklace with my new Woodland Beads. Last week I made an owl sitting on a real twig but I got to thinking about how a polka dotted stick would be much better. I think this stick could be used just as easily alone as with the owl. I am working on a design with them now. I will show and tell about it another day. The fun hoop at the bottom could be used as earrings too. How fun! Okay, Okay, here the info on how to win some beads.

Leave me a comment about what your favorite woodland bead is or what you would like to make with them. I will pick a random winner on Monday. The winner will receive the owl and twig combo shown below. Good luck!


Have a great weekend,

A New Necklace

Hey, Hey,

I promised a necklace with my new flower vines and here it is. I have designed all sorts of jewelry with my new beads. I am loving them. This is one of my more simple necklaces. I connected gun metal chain to each side of the link and a little Czech crystal at the bottom and voila a new necklace. I am loving this one and wearing it a lot.

Here's the whole view. Come back tomorrow and I will show you another necklace with my new Woodland Beads. Tomorrow I am going to have a give away too. Wahoo! Give-Away-Friday!

New Beads!

Flower Vine

Good Morning!

I woke up again Saturday morning and had new beads in my head . I hope this is a trend that continues. Here are a few of the new things, you can see them all here at the website. I will have something made up for tomorrow with these new components. I have lots of ideas but need to find the time, you know how that goes.

I have a big week coming up and I am trying to prepare for it now. My studio is continuing to leak but we have found the man to fix our problem! Wahoo! Jangles will be dry soon. But to get to a drier state, I have to move everything out of my studio. Yep...everything. They will be jackhammering a drainage ditch and more. It's going to be messy and take at least a week. I am in the planning stages of where everything is going to go into the house, what I will be working on, etc. I am trying to come up with work stations around the house. I am a planner, it's genetic(thanks mom), so I am probably overly obsessing. I hate to loose things and I know this move will loose things. I have already lost my notebook this morning and I need it to plan. What a mess!

Any who...the good news is this. I have to paint the floor and walls again in parts, this is giving me the opportunity to change things if I would like. So I am dreaming up new layouts and colors. I am planning(there I go again) to take it slow moving things back in so I can get it just the way I want it. I really don't ever want to move things again.

Disco Hoop

Flower Link

By the way, don't forget there is free shipping all month at the Jangles website.

Everybody have a good day!

Pendants

This is going to be a real quick post....I am finishing up my Buyers Market jewelry orders today and tomorrow. I am working fast and feverish to get them finished. This way I can focus on beads for awhile. I have some jewelry ideas in my head that just need to get out. Come back soon and you'll get to see them. For now you can have a look at some of the pendants I am making today.

Have a good day,

What's Going On

I thought today I would do a post about the happenings in the studio and outside. I have been working hard around here and haven't had time for much else. This always happens right after the Buyers Market so it's not surprising to be so loaded down with things to do. But first of all, it snowed. See the Heynen Hula Hut? That's part of our tropical hangout on the back porch...not very tropical, eh? I just have to keep reminding myself, one of the days we'll have leaves on the trees again and I will be complaining about how hot it is.

Enough about the weather...back to beads. I have been making beads and buttons during the day and then at night I sit with the TV on and assemble jewelry. Here a box all sorted out and ready to go for bracelets. I love to see all of my beads lined up like that. Below are my seed beads that also go into many of my pieces. I have had to reload my bowl three times now because I am using so many seed beads.

Last but not least are my buttons. I told you about my line of fabrics for In The Beginning. Well, for them to sell and distribute my buttons, they need samples. These are the buttons that will be glued onto the sample cards that the stores will get to order from. Only a few more to come out of the kiln and they will be shipped off. And only a few more weeks until I can show you the whole collection. I can't wait.

As you can see I have been a very busy bee, I like to be busy so all these projects make me happy.

Have a Great Day,