Prince charming and downsizing

I love doing frog prince charmings... 

They have to be ugly enough to make you hesitate to kiss them but have enough gold on their crown to be tempted.  Is this your prince charming in disguise?

 Besides the hand-painted pendant, this particular piece  has many found or salvaged components. I'm enjoying  combining my miniature paintings with   bits and bobs from my collection of vintage costume jewelry to create one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry.  This is getting addictive.

I just added the Prince charming to my jewelry  Etsy site along with the yellow and red piece with the African hand made and hand fired beads.

I am making headway on the downsizing issue... By making headway I mean I am seriously thinking about it and making plans....a start for me.  Actually I have to separate things to downsize....my CQ stash and my excess MOP buttons and painted button inventory and I have some tentative plans.. First  I want to phase out the Etsy button site. There aren't that many left as they keep selling and I have had to stop  painting the 1" buttons.  The smaller blank  MOPs will probably do best on Ebay as most are antique.  I used to paint on some 1/2 and 3/4" buttons and have a lot of those left.

 The bigger task is the CQ stash. I've decided that most  of the CQ stash I am going to pack into bundles and have giveaways on the blog...a lot of them....  Just the threads, ribbons and lace alone are formidable.    Have to decide the best way to bundle them... maybe do a couple bundles a week as long as it takes.    I want to finish my spider bag this fall  but the rest will all go.  A good winter project. I am still in the process of moving all the jewelry making supplies into the two narrow white cabinets.  The CQ stuff that was in them is now in big laundry baskets in the barn which I want gone, gone, gone.  I also want the large black tool cabinet to be gone, gone, gone and once empty it should be pretty easy to sell.

When I was wishing for someone with a long elegant neck to model my jewelry, was I thinking of the wrong part of the anatomy? 

Memories and next?

I know I have said at times that the house wren is my favorite bird or that a hummingbird is  my favorite but if the real truth were known it is the magpie that is my really truly favorite.  They delighted me for more than twenty years until the ravens moved in and drove them away..  Not too far... only about 1/2 mile down the road  to another farm but I miss them dearly... I get the occasional visit from one but not the daily chattering I adored.

When I was working on the Bead Journal Project I did this piece about (4x6") and somewhere I did a magpie block but now I want to do a magpie pendant for a necklace.  Somehow I want it to be slightly three  dimensional and will have to do some deep thinking...  I've never really done that so my first thought is to sculpt it on the MOP with E8000.  I'll have to see if there is a chemical reaction between the glue and the sealer...  Stay tuned on this project.

Magpies, in some cultures. are regarded as a good luck symbol of joy, marital bliss, and long lasting fortune. The ancient Romans viewed the magpie as a creature of high intellect and reasoning powers. I've always felt a special kinship to magpies because they  are so attracted to shiny bits and pieces and especially so since I have been doing the jewelry...

Going back in the blog I found several posts about my funny magpies.  One about their outrageous huge nests which they enter and exit from the underside.

Another post was the year I was able to watch the young magpies fledge from the nest in the hawthorn tree by the sheep pasture.  That nest was so low that it was at my eye level.  What a treat that was.

And now that I'm thinking about it I'm wondering whatever happened to that magpie block.. I will have to keep an eye out for it as I'm sorting through CQ stuff.  I think it was for a magazine or calendar or some such thing...















But my favorite post was how the magpie nest was part  of the squirrel's  "What's for dinner this  winter drama!"

What now?

I have the first lot of jewelry done and the Etsy site up which was a lot of detail work as they keep changing things to make it much more complicated than it should be.  I have these revolving racks with the necklaces hanging on them on a buffet in the living room.   I need to find more of these racks. With these the top  and bottom levels move in unison but I only find ones that the level move independently ...seems a small matter but it does matter.

 I love walking  by and seeing them sparkle...  Now I can relax a bit and get them on Pinterest and others sites.  But also now I want to make some smaller more sellable necklaces as well with smaller buttons, charms, stash etc. I found some old lockets and cool earring parts  Its definitely giving me a new creatively outlet.  We are in for some over 100 degree weather this week so it will be nice to have something to do in an air-conditioned house...

Shirlee commented today and I spent a most frustrating time trying to answer through blogger.  It used to be hers and other  comments came to my gmail and I could answer from there. Blogger ended all that and only Hotmail comes up when I try to answer.  I complied with all their wishes and still came up with "incorrect address" and "please edit" and I finally gave up...  They wanted me to make Hotmail my primary email address and if I didn't I had to use my Google password to access the Hotmail and it still wouldn't work with the address THEY had given me. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

Yesterday I was able to get most of the descriptions, etc. done on the new Etsy shop.  There is still some fine tuning but it can open at this state...  I will gradually close down the button site as time goes by.  I want to use it to sell some of my extra MOP stock that is too small to paint on. 

I do have a new logo designed for the new site but for some quirky reason I have not been able to upload it. I'm sure I'll find other errors as I finish up.

I look at this site as a resting place for the jewelry I create. I have priced things with my actual time in mind plus the rising fees of both Etsy and Paypal. We all know that everyone loves something handmade but few want to pay for the time involved.

Ideally a piece will sell now and then but not often enough to make me feel pressured to produce.  This whole new venture is supposed to be fun and relaxing and take the place of needlework which I miss so dearly..


Over the years my customers have used
my buttons in their jewelry ....such as the bluebird, frog, and goldfinch buttons here.  I have been also giving some thought to using some of the smaller painted buttons in stock in smaller pieces of jewelry...something to think about.  I have some old lockets that would work up nicely...



A long time CQ friend and button customer in Canada, Marilyn Nepper,  did the frog prince pendant with soutache.  I was amazed.

So I will be painting no more 1" buttons and focusing only on the jewelry... and glad to be moving on...

Stop by the new Etsy shop  and I hope you enjoy seeing my  efforts there. https://www.etsy.com/shop/UpcycledGemsbyGerry?ref=seller-platform-mcnav

No long necks

I had wanted to find someone tall with an elegant long neck to model my jewelry for photographs to use on the new Etsy site.  Since most of my friends have a bit of a saggy chin, I had to come up with an alternate plan... The jewelry forms I have are not long enough for most of my pieces so I sat one on 2 yoga blocks.












Then I draped it with material or a blouse and found 4 lights that were flexible.  It is especially hard to photograph mother of pearl as it is so reflective.

Not until I was almost done did I realize the battery in my "smart" camera was dying and wasn't quite so smart with the color.  But I had taken over 100 photos and just didn't have the gumption to start all over.

But they are useable and I will eventually replace them.  Now I just want to be done with getting them all loaded with descriptions. I hope to be done by the end of today.





A few days ago I was looking for some positive change I could make to feel in control of some part of my life.  It didn't take long to make that decision and it wasn't a tattoo.  I had only cut my hair short 3 times in my adult life... once when I was 20, once when I was about 40 and then when I was 70... Each time I was talked into it and each time I hated it.  Well I love it for about 2 days after it is cut and then I hate it... But I am the ONLY person who hates it.  Everyone loves it short and the person who loves it short the most is my husband.

After having long hair most of my life it was like losing an appendage and I miss it, so letting it grow is my decision to make a big change.  This is definitely going to be an issue with DH. But I figure he married me with long hair (photo on left) - he can bury me with long hair 


Right now I have only missed one haircut and look a little shaggy but hope to have hair as  long as below by February..... I know as it grows I know I will become stronger.