Monday, Monday, So Good to Me

So for a Monday, today has been going pretty well. (Why does Monday always have that stigma? Poor Monday...) After waiting a MONTH with a whole lot of complications with my order, my new work bench FINALLY arrived! Yay! You should have seen me trying to drag this thing in the house from the front porch. I suppose if you weren't me it might have been comical to watch me struggle and heave on a huge box that nearly weighed as much as I do. I was a little miffed that the UPS guy just dumped it, rang the bell, and ran. I'm sure he had one of those little trolly things to get it to my door which would have been super handy had he hung around for 5 more seconds till I got to the door. But alas, I got it inside. Had to do some pretty fancy manhandling to get it out of the box too. Loki (more commonly known as the puppymonster) was very confused/enraptured by this whole episode. Anyhoo, got it built all by my little self (I feel handy!) and then drug it into my office. It looks lovely laden with all my tools and paraphernalia.

As soon as I got everything set up, I just couldn't stand it- I had to try it out! I had a pendant laying around barely started because I got frustrated trying to work on it without a stable workspace. Problem solved. With the new bench and bench pin, sawing was a breeze. I was a sawing FIEND! Then when I'd gotten all the bits cut out, I broke out the hammer for the texture. (Hammer time!) It's sooo nice to have a proper bench to work on again. Not sure yet just what I'm going to do with this pendant now that its finished. I will just have to wait until it speaks to me. Lol. But really, that's kind of how it works. Sometimes things just click right and it looks great. Some days there's not a darn thing that comes out right. Kind of a coin flip I guess. :)

And now, simply because its stuck in my head, I have decreed so shall it be in yours. Hah!

  

xo

Lindsey :)

Celebration time

 

image source 

Hey guys, I've got something to celebrate! (Other than how awesome giraffes are, of course) This month is the first time in the year since I started my shop that I've managed to hit (and exceed!!!) my monthly profit goal! Granted, my goal wasn't huge or anything. But its still a milestone worth celebrating and I'm super excited about this. I was, honestly, starting to wonder whether I should just give up and go find a job somewhere. Every time I jump on that train of thought though, it seems like there's always something that says "Hey! Get off that train!". I've read countless accounts of people whose businesses took years to turn any kind of profit. I just have to keep reminding myself that I'm still new at this game and to hang on. So I'd really like to say thanks to all the people that made this month possible and for all the encouragement in general. You guys are awesome. :)

View on my morning run

 

One thing I've found I do like about Oklahoma: Summer = Sunflowers. I do love me some sunflowers.  And yes, I stopped running so I could take pictures. Good thing I run with my iphone :)

DIY Earring Display Stands from Coat Hangers

There are a lot of beautiful jewelry display stands on the market, but a lot of them can be quite pricey. Not exactly rolling in the dough myself, I decided to try and make my own! Like me, you'll probably have most of what you need lying around the house already. The only things I purchased to make these were the wooden wheels for bases and the spray paint. That's it. Less than $10 and so far I've made 4 stands with supplies to spare!

What you'll need:

-Wire coat hanger

-Small wooden wheels with pre-drilled holes (pictured below-I found mine in the wood section at Hobby Lobby)

-Wire cutters

-Pliers

-Hot glue gun

-Spray paint

 

 Now how do we go from this to a fun and functional earring stand? I shall show you!

I apologize in advance because I got a little excited and didn't start photographing till a couple steps in. The first few are pretty self explanatory though, so here we go:

1) Use your wire cutters to cut off the actual hanging bendy part at the top of the hanger. If your hanger is like mine you'll already have two pieces of wire left (the wire doesn't go all the way through the cardboard bit on mine). Otherwise, employ your wire cutters again and cut down the wire to the desired length. (For a full wire hanger, cutting it in half will make the larger stands shown in the last picture)

2) Use your pliers to straighten out the wire. I used a pair of blunt, wider nosed pliers which made this step super easy but it should work with whatever pair you've got lying around. 

Now for pictures!

 

3)Use your pliers to bend the wire in half. Squeeze the bottom of the V together so that it will fit through the hole in your wooden wheel/base.

 4) Using the pliers again, begin to round and shape the arms of your stand. Bend a little at a time working from the tip of the wire towards the center. Don't try to get the shape all at once. It's a gradual transformation.

5) These are the little wheel things I was telling you about. They come in a little baggie of about a million for only $3.99. (And by a million, I mean somewhere around 20.) Now for the funnest (yes, I said funnest) part! Glue gun! Who doesn't love playing with hot glue? Seriously? If you don't (Blasphemer!), I hereby strip thee of the title Crafter! Anyhoo, moving on. Warm up your hot glue gun and squirt a glob down into the hole of your wheel. Before the glue sets, push center of your wire stand down through the hole. Some glue will probably just squirt out the bottom. I just wiped it off with my finger. So what if its hot? I'm just that awesome.

 6) You should now have something that looks a bit like this. Now you could leave it like that. I wanted mine to be extra snazzy though, so I spray painted them white. You know, for uniformity and all that jazz. Anyway, spray paint them, let them dry, aaaaaaaaaaand...

VOILA! You've made your very own earring display stands! Hang up some darn earrings already! 

Also, FYI (shameless plug in 3... 2... 1...) you can find all of the earrings pictured above in my shop which you can find here!

Did you have fun? I hope so! I know I did! :D

xo
Lindsey

Broken Bow Lake Trip

Trying out a new style. I've come across several blogs that I enjoy that feature tons of pictures. Sometimes ONLY pics, and I love getting a glimpse into people's every day lives. So. Here we go.

 Last week we took a trip down to a little town called Broken Bow to hang out with some friends. Above is one of my fav photos from the trip-My husband with our crazy fuzzy, Loki.(Both actually smiling and looking normal. lol) We decided to take the puppymonster with us and she did really great! We've never taken a longish car ride with her and she did much better than expected. It turned out to be a pretty good trip. There was river rafting, great bbq, bonfires, wine, and playtime at the lake with the pups. All in all, great time had by everyone. :)

Here are some more pics from the trip! Enjoy!

 (I've started playing around with instagram a lot lately. Love it!)

 (Love this one too. Far more typical. Both monsters making faces! Lol :) Also, yay for playing with my new camera!!! :D)

 XO

Lindsey :)

New camera + new blooms = new post!

So I got a new camera for my birthday. Super exciting. My old point and shoot finally died so my hubby got me a shiny new Cannon Rebel T3! Yay!!! Haven't used it for much so far except shooting some photos of my jewelry.

Today though, I noticed there were some new blooms on my day lillies out in the front yard (and some more buds as well!). This is a big deal. You must understand. I've been known to kill cacti. Cacti mind you. I don't even know how... So yeah, super awesome. So I decided that that was a perfect reason to pull out my camera and play around a bit. Above is the result. Zero editing, straight from the camera. I think for starters that's pretty good, don't you? :D

I'm hoping to make this a new start for this blog. I know I've restarted a bazillion times already... And I can't promise this wont turn out like the previous times. I always have trouble coming up with something to write about. But I really want to explore more with my camera and I have some personal exploring to do as well. So perhaps we can squeeze a couple posts out of this, yes?

Fingers crossed.

Brass Pendant- How I Did It!

Heya! So with all the new jewelry going up in my shop, I thought you might enjoy a little behind the scenes peek on how some of it is made! The following is a pendant that I made for myself and I'll show you how I did it!

 1- Starting with a flat brass sheet. I believe it was somewhere around 18-20 gauge.

 

 2- I used my super nifty circle cutter (my Christmas gift last year!) and a heavy brass hammer to cut the circle for the pendant out of the sheet. The cutter can cut circles of many different sizes. You secure the metal between the two steel plates with the corresponding hole size you'd like to cut. You then insert the die (the cylindrical piece in the first and third pictures that actually does the cutting) into the hole and pound the ever loving crap out of it till it cuts all the way through the metal!

 3- Sand and polish till shiny! (I shall spare you the tedium by only using one picture. But please note, this takes FOREVERRRRRRRR!!!) Basically you work your way down through increasingly smoother grits of sandpaper (I use about three different ones) and then polish and smooth further with steel wool.

 

 4- I pulled out my metal stamps and used an ink pad to stamp the desired phrase onto paper. ("Here comes the sun" from one of my favorite Beatles songs) Cut up, it helps me decide the placement of the stamps on my piece and to make sure everything will fit.

5- Once I had decided my placement, I drew a guide line down the right side of the circle. I used this to line up my stamps starting from right to left on each line. The stamping is done on a steel block (which is the shiny silver behind the brass). This gives you a nice strong base. Wood and other softer surfaces have too much give and bounce and would not produce a clean deep stamp. When the metal is pressed between the steel block and the steel stamp, it is compressed rather than pushed outward thus keeping your piece flat.

6- A bit more sanding and polishing to remove the sharpie line

 7- Deciding I wanted it textured, I used another hammer with rounded head to essentially beat the metal into submission :)

This is also done on a steel block (which you can now see the entirety of) for the same reason as above. 

8- This nifty little gadget is a metal hole punch. Each end has a different size punch you use the handles to screw down into and cut the metal. Similar concept to the hole cutter only using the pressure from the screw instead of the hammer. (Also, much tinier circles) This is what I used to add the hole in my pendant that it will hang from.

9- Voila! With the addition of a jump ring and a chain, the pendant is ready to wear!