Luna's Baublebilities

It has been a crazy week!







Lauren's wedding was lovely - very simple with family and lots of fun and dancing. The bride and groom were gorgeous and soon I will post photos of lovely Lauren in her jewelry. It was perfect for her dress. :)




















In between wedding festivities, a visit from my sister and cleaning the house to prepare for a realtor's walk through , I've been unpacking and playing with my new beads. Here are some samples. There are lots more and they are all slowly being uploaded to GoblinsMarket . They are exactly what I had hoped for.

So - Here is the finished wedding jewelry - pending the Bride's approval.


I switched out the monster jump rings for these smaller ones to join the pearl strands to the brass filigree. See - they are almost invisible now, compared to the first draft. Thank you, funkyfindings for getting these jump rings to me on time!




I removed one link from the large linked pearls to make the whole pendant hang asymmetrically and added a few beads to the pale pearl strand to cause that to drape a little deeper than the copper strand of pearls.


The earrings are made from two large champagne sand colored pearls and copper beads & button pearls. I got the gold plated leverbacks from beads4ewe because I forgot to include gold colored ear wires in my last bulk supply order. Beads4ewe shipped them out very quickly and at a great price.


That's one of the things I love about Etsy. I was able to go to an Etsy supply shop and pick up the few findings I needed for very little money and very reasonable shipping rates for this project. There were no minimum order requirements, no monstrous Fed Ex shipping charge and the mark up on the findings was not huge, compared to the prices I can get when I order similar things wholesale. Hooray for Etsy supply shops!



As a finishing touch, I added a teeny blue button pearl at the clasp to fulfill the "something blue" requirement. :) I'll try to snap some good photos of the bride in her whole ensemble on Saturday.










I'm planing adding lots more kits and mixes to GoblinsMarket this spring, including some involved bead weaving kits with detailed and illustrated instructions. Anyone interested in creating an ensemble similar to Lauren's wedding jewelry can just leave me a message here and I will let you know when I've got all the necessary pieces together for a kit.

I have been slobbering around my favorite supplier's website for several months now cobbling together the perfect basket full of beads. (Thank heavens for auto-save shopping carts!) I don't know if it is the weather or what, but I am now anxiously awaiting a shipment of beads in a very springy theme - lots of pinks and vibrant greens. Here's a partial preview. Because I took the time to craft this order in a very specific color range, I will probably put together some kits or mixes based on these beads so people can enjoy a few of each at pretty low cost.

After I put this cart together, I checked the color forecast guides and some of these colors are coming up this spring and summer in the fashion world. I'm not sure whether to be encouraged about this or worried. I made the mistake one year of using color forecast guides to dictate what colors I used for dyes and didn't get a great response. Now I go with my own instincts for colors and have better success and more personal satisfaction. I suspect that most of my customers are like me - they create with the colors they want to use at the moment - not with whatever Christian Dior sent down the runway last week. But somebody might be looking for just that special shade of green and maybe I'll have it - that's always nice.

I've also ordered a quarter kilo of permanent finish gold seed beads that I'm really excited about. I've had a friend request something special in velvet dyed purple with gold netted seed bead fringe. I don't even have the fabric dyed yet, but I'm already breathless over THAT project! I love looking at the seed beds this seller has - and I want to order a kilo of every color but . . . seed beads don't tend to sell well of Etsy and it is very expensive to stock lots of seed beads. Maybe if I ever open up a real bead store, I will make the financial commitment to carry a full line of seed beads . . . .

Enough wool gathering! Time to go figure my NS Sales Tax payment for this year. That's why I placed my order Before I did my bookwork this morning!