Metal Me This

It’s a Virtual Craft Show! Day 2

joolzbylisa — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:00:26 +0000

DAY TWO Promises to be just as much fun as Day One.

7 Days, 70 Artists, GIVING AWAY 70 things.

Can you believe it????

Visit Day Two by clicking here!

I hope you’ll take the time to visit these 10 new artisans’ shops and blogs, too.

Visit Lori’s page and follow the instructions to get points for entries into the drawing!

I’ve got a great sampler set of beadcaps in the drawing at her blog and I was in the Day One grouping.

In the meantime, you can save 20% in my Metal Me This Etsy store
with Etsy coupon VCS2011

It’s a Virtual Craft Show!

joolzbylisa — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 06:49:08 +0000

7 Days, 70 Artists, GIVING AWAY 70 things.

Can you believe it????

Visit Day One by clicking here!

I hope you’ll take the time to visit all these artisans’ shops and blogs, too.

Visit Lori’s page and follow the instructions to get points for entries into the drawing!

I’ve got a great sampler set of beadcaps in the drawing at her blog.

In the meantime, you can save 20% in my Metal Me This Etsy store
with Etsy coupon VCS2011

Countdown to BeadFest Texas

joolzbylisa — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:10:46 +0000

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks (months) between travel to Colorado, a three-fold increase in book projects, and trying to get ready for my first Metal Me This show in Dallas (this coming weekend!).

I’m down to 72 hours left before my flight on Thursday and things are looking so-s0. Still lots and lots to do and some of it just isn’t going to get done.

The beadcaps that look the same color as the tray still need cleaning up, but in reality, that can happen on the plane or the night before the show, or during the 3 days of the show. And there’s bags and bags of ones already packaged up.

I’ve always been a master at multi-tasking and finding more productive ways of eking a few more hours out of a day…It’s when I have to leave my fate in the hands of others that things get dicey.

I’ve done numerous jewelry shows over the years and have enough display pieces for 2 to 3 eight-foot tables…unfortunately, only about 3 of those display pieces are useful with this new endeavor. So I knew I’d need to reconfigure things and come up with effective displays, that would travel well (e.g. flat and lightweight!). No biggie…right? I found some perfect displays and was told they’d be done in plenty of time…and that’s the last I heard. (The downside of relying on someone else…actually two different “someone elses”…)

I’m staying with a bead friend north of Dallas this weekend. BJ generously opened her home to myself and two other friends who are traveling in for BeadFest. BJ also understood that the main focus of my sales were my handmade, etched beadcaps and that I needed something to effectively display the zillions (OK…that’s an exaggeration, but there are dozens and dozens of styles and sizes and slapping them in a big bowl like Halloween candy wasn’t an option!). She got the design specs out of me, refined them with her background in measuring stained glass, and recruited a retired neighbor to build me a couple of displays. Talk about the upside of relying on someone else! Here’s the result:

Add some cup hooks and some price signs plus rows and rows of bags of beadcaps…and it folds flat and is reasonably lightweight.

You can’t imagine my relief! The rest of the table set-up exists on my phone in a photo of little paper cutouts somewhat to scale…I’ll be winging it much more than I like, but thanks to BJ’s thoughtfulness and her handy neighbor, I’m on the right track!

I hope if you’re in the Dallas area, you’ll stop by booth 607 this Friday through Sunday at the Arlington Convention Center. Here’s a link for a free pass.

Free pass HERE.

Time to get back to the books…more production photos tomorrow maybe…

Rocky Mountain Air

joolzbylisa — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:07:11 +0000

ETA: Not getting the hang of editing in wordpress on the iPad, so quitting since I can’t seem to get to the end of the post to add more…so much for technology!

I’m in Colorado Springs this week helping my mom after her second hip replacement. Balmy temperatures. (ok, 37 degrees one morning was a bit of a shock.)

Technology makes it pretty easy to move both the book design business and the Metal Me This business along with me. I can connect to my Phoenix office computer from my laptop here pretty easily since I set up a wireless router here on the last trip…the grandkids will be very appreciative on future trips to Grandma’s house.

The bead caps and sheets pack up pretty nicely for carry-on, and that works great as I have a show coming up next month. I’m working on labels and packaging and finishing (not in that order).

Not getting a lot of sleep getting up with mom during the night for pain medication, but it’s easier on me than on my 80-year-old father.

Bead Soup is Served!

joolzbylisa — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:00:43 +0000

I’ve participated in Lori Anderson’s Bead Soup Blog Party several times and she’s such a lovely person to work with. One day, I hope to take her out for pie.

This Bead Soup catches me on my way (like airborne if you are looking at this Saturday morning) to Colorado to help my amazing mother with her second hip replacement in 4 months. So it’s been a crazy week wrapping up projects to get out of town and also keep two businesses running while I’m in the mountains.

I’m a procrastinator…sometimes by choice and sometimes by situation. It was definitely situational this time. Add a little (OK HUGE) creative block and general trepidation to make Jen’s beads look good and you have an all out panic attack yesterday afternoon.

But I figured it out.

Here’s a recap of what my partner, Jennifer Geldard, sent me:

And here’s the result! If you keep reading, you’ll see close up shots of the various components.

I wanted to showcase the awesome bird and also tie in the the hollow rounds, plus get the brass from the clasp tied in with the copper loopy chain. It was a major case of “edit thoughtfully” in the words of Tim Gunn. I was snipping and cutting right up to showtime!

Here is a close-up of the bird, sitting on the branch bead with a few of my textured beadcaps for spacers to tie in the copper/metal theme.

Next is a close-up of the other beaded element. I ended up going for balanced asymmetry (I may have just made up a phrase). This was where editing came in. Jen sent 4 of these amazing hollows. I tried to work more in and it just wasn’t working for me. So you’ll see in the last photos that I made earrings from a couple.

You can see one of the hollows with an etched copper and etched brass beadcap wired to some cool brick red lava stone that I had on hand. It went well with the turquoise rondelles that Jen sent.

I started this off with two full strands of chain. The copper circles in circles and the medium-weight brass chain. It just wasn’t working for me, so round two of “balanced asymmetry”. The copper chain wasn’t adding a thing to the hollow/lava/turquoise segment, so I ditched it.

Last up (almost) is this amazing clasp that Jen made from brass wire and metal and stone. I really wanted to showcase it in front somehow, but I also wanted it in the same piece as the bird focal. So, it lives as a traditional closure in the back. The good news is my hair is usually very short in back so it will be visible when I wear this.

Here’s another view of the component. It really is amazing. I think you’ll be seeing more of these from Jen.

So, there you have it! Oh, wait…I said “earrings” earlier, didn’t I.

Here are the earrings I made to wear with this. they look heavy, but they aren’t. The lava beads are very lightweight, as are the hollows.

And one last shot of the full necklace. Thanks for stopping by. Now head out to see the other great Bead Soup results. Thanks to Jen for an amazing batch of ingredients. Stop by her blog to see what she made with what I sent to her. And if you leave a comment, I’ll enter your name in a drawing for a pendant with the last Jennifer Geldard ivory hollow bead…it’s half-finished…by the time everyone gets through the blogs, I’ll be done and one of you lucky people will be the winner.

Here’s the list: Click on each name to go to their blogs.

These are the partner pairs.

The Hostess, Lori Anderson and her partner, Manuela Wutschke

1. Aimee Wheaton and Barbara York
2. Alice Craddick and Sandra Richardson
3. Alison Sachs and Amy Severino
4. Allison Scott and Cynthia Abner
5. Amanda Cargill Austin and Charlene Sevier
6. Amanda Davie and Patsy Evins
7. Amber Dawn and Kim Ballor
8. Ambra Gostoli and Christine Hansen
9. Amy Freeland and Christine Altmiller
10. Ana Krepel-Novak and Eleanor Snare