It was another slow week last week. Sometimes it's hard to get myself motivated. I want to make new jewelry, but I have SOOO much existing stuff that I need to photograph. On top of that, I could stand to re-make things that have sold... but I just want to keep going with new ideas. I guess if I want to make this work, I'll have to be a little more disciplined. I did manage to list a couple of things today. Hope to keep that momentum going.

I did expand my crafting repertoire in the last week or so. My husband usually comes along when I go to craft stores, and he's become more and more interested in developing a crafty hobby. He was doing wooden puzzles for awhile. He had a lot of fun, but it wasn't especially creative to put together a puzzle. I'm really happy he did it, though. The Eiffel Tower he built attracted a lot of attention when I put it on my table at my last craft show. :)

Austin decided to try his hand at knitting last weekend. I used an old Barnes and Noble gift card to buy an instruction book for him. Then we got the essential yarns and knitting needles. As he was learning I became intrigued and tried it myself. I just finished my first project. It's a cranberry-red scarf. Goes great with my University of Minnesota Gopher gear.

I also made a little stuffed hamster out of felt. My cat freaking loved it. Since she liked it so much, I made another one for my cousin's cat. I brought it to a family get-together and everyone thought it was very cute.



My dad commissioned me to make a gerbil for him. He has two pet gerbils that he loves. A gerbil will be a little more complex, but I'm up for the challenge. I might try to use some material from old, worn-out clothing that my husband wants to throw away. Hurray recycling!

Glaze, Artbeads, Spanish

I got some "Diamond Glaze" in the mail today. I bought it on eBay. An eBay gift card was pretty much the best thing ever to put on my wish list... it makes me feel like I can buy all kinds of new craft stuff without the guilt of spending "real" money.

Anyway, Diamond Glaze. They should probably just call it MOST-AWESOME-STUFF-EVER. I took all of my photo pendants out of my store because they got sticky after they sat around for awhile. I needed some kind of coating for them, but everything I tried was either sticky or murky. Things that other artists pointed me to were either too expensive, or too complicated/messy for me to want to try. Diamond Glaze was relatively cheap and has a little applicator. All I did was squeeze the stuff out on my pendants and pop the little bubbles with a safety pin. No waste, no toxic fumes, virtually no mess. I can spread it around with my fingertips if I need to, and it comes right off of my hands. My little pendants aren't sticking to anything anymore. LOVE IT. Kind of want to buy the ridiculously large refill bottle now... but we'll see how long the little bottle lasts me.

If anyone bought one of my old "sticky" pendants and wants a new glazed one, I'll replace it for you. Sorry I didn't detect the problem sooner!

Artbeads.com was nice to me today. I ordered a Swarovski pendant for a necklace I want to put in my craft display. It had a huge crack down the side of it. :( Their web site says you have to return items before they'll send a replacement, so I e-mailed them and asked if I could put it in bubble wrap and mail it in a letter-sized envelope (since it was already damaged anyway). They replied and said that they were just going to send me a new one. Couldn't believe it! Usually when I deal with big jewelry supply sites, they act like huge jerks when I have a problem. Go Artbeads!

I've been practicing my Spanish. I listen to language-learning podcasts when I'm making jewelry, and I've been spending some time at www.lang-8.com. It's pretty cool. It connects you with native speakers of the language you're trying to learn, and the idea is that you help each other learn the other's language. It's nice to feel like I'm doing something intellectually stimulating... haha.