Finally!

Ok, I am giving away this necklace and earrings tonight if I have to deliver them myself! lol. There were 35 emails and I numbered them in the order they came in. Random.org drew number 7. Lucky number 7 is Gianetta Palmer! I have sent G and email. We are over halfway to 500 Likes on Facebook now. When we hit #500 I will giveaway something else.

Giveaway, Try Number 2!

Ok, so the winner of this necklace and earrings did not contact me, so I am trying again. Back to random.org to draw a number and this time the winner is...


Number 20. Number 20 on the Facebook like list is . If you are the winner, you have until 5:00 p.m. tomorrow, Monday, November 26th to email me at kristi@bgfdesigns.com with your address to mail out the necklace and earrings.

Giveaway!

It is time to celebrating going over the 400 Likes mark on my Facebook page. First, I want each and everyone of you to know how much I appreciate you. In the year's time I have been doing this, I have met so many wonderful and nice people. I love interacting with all of you on Facebook and I really appreciate that you like my jewelry and designs. Now on to the giveaway...
To celebrate going over 400 Likes, I am giving away this necklace and earring set. The pendant is fused glass wrapped in dark annealed wire. The necklace is a variety of different jaspers and silver plated accent beads. The earrings match the necklace. For the drawing, I just numbered everyone in my Likes list in sequential order and used random.org to draw a number between 1 and 432 (which is the number of likes at the time I drew). And the lucky winner is...

Number 67 and that is                 , you are the winner and you have until tomorrow, Sunday November 25th at 4:00 pm ET to email me at kristi@bgfdesigns.com and give me your address so I can ship it out.

Thanks again to everyone! And, don't forget, I will do another giveaway at 500 Likes.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with their friends and family.

Bead Soup Party!

I participated in a Bead Soup Party from Kalmbach Bookstore. A couple of weeks ago I received this wonderful package in the mail with beautiful beads and findings from Eva Sherman at Grand River Beads. Now, how to put this all together into beautiful jewelry.

I had to think about it for awhile, but eventually it came to me. Since I had a beautiful butterfly and flower to work with, I wanted something very nature inspired and flowing. I combined all of this with some antique bronze and titanium enameled wire and some brown suede cord and here are the pictures of what I came up with:

I hope you like them.

300 Facebook Fans Drawing

Well, tonight is the night. I have to say that I am rather surprised that only 7 people came to the blog and entered the contest. I know that quite a few more people came to the blog and viewed the post about the contest, but did not enter and I am not quite sure why. Any messages or emails on why you chose not to leave a comment to enter would be appreciated.

Anyway, here is the list of names of those who entered the contest. Thank you all for participating. I appreciate the participation and the nice comments you left me. I put your names and numbers together based upon the order you left your comments in. As I always do, I went to random.org and had it pick a number. And, the number is...

Number 2! That would be Amy B! Amy, please send me a Facebook message and we will work out the details of the piece that you want.
Thanks to those who participated and thanks to everyone who likes my page and my jewelry!

Yay! We hit 300 Likes on the Facebook page!

We have reached the 300 Like milestone on the Facebook fan page! I would like to take a minute to thank each and every one of you for taking the time to like my page, read my posts and respond. It really does mean a great deal to me. I am very fortunate to be able to do what I do. Being able to have an artistic release is such an important part of my life. I spend a great deal of time working with technology and teaching, and working with glass and wire gives me much needed time away from that.

On to the drawing. I have decided to move this contest to the blog so that I am not in violation of any Facebook rules (don’t want to have my page shut down). So, here are the rules for getting entered into the drawing. The winner of the drawing will win a piece of jewelry (up to $45) of their choice. It can either be from my Etsy store, or if you have a piece you have seen on the Facebook page that I haven’t listed yet let me know. In order to register for the drawing, you will need to leave a comment on this post here on the blog to let me know you want to be entered. You can comment by clicking on the Comments link at the bottom of the post. I will run the comment period from today, August 18^th, through next Sunday, August 26^th. Next Sunday evening and 8:00 pm ET, I will assign numbers to everyone who left a comment and use random.org to draw a random number. I will then do a blog post and announce the winner’s name. You will then need to either leave me a Facebook message or email me at kristi@bgfdesigns to claim your prize.

If you have friends that you know also like the Big Grass Farm Designs Facebook page, make sure they know about the competition. I never know who all is seeing my posts with the new Facebook pages post rules. Best of luck to everyone.

Blog Buddy Beads

Ok, ok, ok...I know I have been extremely lax in my posts to the blog, but it has been somewhat boring around here. School, school and more school has taken up all of my time again. I will be so glad when this term is over and summer will be here. Conversion to semesters will finally happen in the fall and hopefully I will have that all under control.

Anyway, on to the main point of tonight's blog post. As I posted on Facebook earlier in the week, I won Magpie Gemstones Blog Buddy Bead Giveaway. Szarka Carter is the proprietor of Magpie and also a wonderful jewelry artist. You can see her work at Szarka's Artisan Couture Jewelry. I have "virtually" known Szarka for awhile now because we belong to several online jewelry artisan groups. I purchase some of my supplies, in particular gemstone beads, from Magpie and the quality is wonderful. For my jewelry making friends, I highly recommend Magpie, and I am happy to do this promotion. For my friends who love jewelry, please go check out Szarka's page. There are tons of lovely things to see.

Now on to what I did with my beads. If you checked out my Facebook page earlier in the week, you saw that I received what is in the picture on the right. First, is an abalone mosaic heart pendant and along with it is 2 strands of laboradorite beads. I wish my camera was better so you could see all of the wonderful colors in the pendant and beads. (For any family members who might read this money for my birthday to contribute to my camera fun would be great! Hint, hint. lol)

So, these all screamed out for sterling silver filled wire. First, I wrapped the pendant (no no, you don't get to see that yet). It needed to be hung on black suede cord, but you know me its not just plain black suede cord. Once I finished the necklace, I made a pair of matching heart earrings. Hearts made out of dark annealed wire with sterling and laboradite accents.

So here is the necklace on its embellished cord.

And, here is a close up of the cord.

Here is the set together.

I hope I did justice to these wonderful beads. Thanks Magpie Gemstones for picking me!

The Total Package

It has been awhile since I made a post. School is killing me this year. We have tons of changes...new classroom software, semester conversion, evaluations, assessments, grant, new course. It seems to be sucking the life out of me right now. Creative time has been fleeting, but I have managed to get a little bit of time in. I go crazy if I can't make something after awhile.

Since I'm getting very little creative time right now, I am doing my best to maximize the time I do get. I have been working really hard lately on stretching my creative abilities, going outside of the box, and trying to look at the total package. I think it has been a worthwhile exercise for me. I can see more growth and skill in the pieces I have made lately. I have never been one to achieve a goal and be perfectly satisfied with it. I am constantly driven to get better and to learn new things (this could explain why school is sucking up so much of my time as well).

Since my glass and wire wrapping skills have been getting better, I have been trying to stretch myself in the design area by looking at the total package of a necklace. I haven't been satisfied lately by putting my pendants on a cord. I have felt the need to make more dramatic pieces. So, I have been experimenting and testing my creativity in how I create the necklace portion of each piece. I've had some successes and some failures, but I am definitely learning a lot. These pictures are some of the recent pieces I've worked on.

I hope everyone likes the new pieces because I am having a thoroughly good time with this learning process.

For all of you who are having craft show withdrawals since the holidays are over, the Appalachian Artisans Guild Cabin Fever show will be coming up in March at the South Campus of Southern State Community College. I'll post more information on this later.

Photography Love!

Well, it finally came. I received my portable photography studio on Monday, but because of school I hadn't been able to play with it until today. It is so neat, because everything stores in this portable case with a handle. This case is actually what pops up to become the studio.

Everything I need came with it. The case opens up and their are 3 walls that you open up. It has black, white, red and blue backdrops, 2 lights and a camera tripod. The 2 side walls act as filters for the lights. You set your lights outside the walls and shine them through  the walls to filter the light so that you get less reflection on the objects you are photographing.

I had two initial pendants that I recently wrapped that I photographed today to try it out. The first one is this letter B initial pendant:

It is black fused glass and green dichroic glass, wrapped with gun metal colored wire. The top picture shows the true green color of the dichroic glass and the true dark silver color of the wire. The picture on the wright shows the correct green color of the dichroic glass, but the wire color has a slight yellow look, so I should have probably moved the lights slightly.





The next photograph I took was of this letter M initial pendant:

This piece of dichroic glass is more of a blue/green/silver color depending on the way the light hits it. The color of the glass in the photographs matches the color of the glass in the actual pendant. However, the wire color in the pictures is lighter than the actual antiqued bronze color that it is. So, again, I probably need to adjust my lights.

I did edit these in Photoshop, but the only edits I made were to crop the pictures, reduce the file size, and brush out a couple of dog hairs that Cheyenne has already donated to the studio that I didn't see when I took the picture (lol). I didn't do any color correcting.

Overall, I am really happy with the set up. Glass is notoriously hard to photograph because of the reflection on your light source. Having this set up is much better. Here is one of my previous pictures:

You can see much more of a reflection of the light source on the glass and the sterling silver, plus the heavy shadow behind it. I think that I will get better as I practice with it and experiment with placement of the lights. I can already see that is going to save me lots of time with photo editing and color correction.

I apologize to everyone who just wants to see jewelry for going on and on about the portable studio. But, I know my jewelry making friends are always looking for input on tools to make their photographs better.

Balancing Life

I am starting to let the stress get to me again. Preparing for next quarter's classes, grading for my online students, getting ready for Christmas and zero time to be creative. It was somehow fortuitous that I took a few minutes to read a newsletter post from a lady who has been in the jewelry business for a long time. In this article she addresses artists and entrepreneurs, but really it holds true no matter what you do in life. I am posting the article here in hopes that someone will benefit from it as I think I have. Sometimes you just need a new perspective (and yes, it says in the newsletter we can repost as long as we use her blurb at the bottom):

3 Essential Steps to Self Mastery: Balancing Life As An Artist

Being an entrepreneur or solo-preneur is a great balancing act. There's family, friends, production work, creative work, creative play, and then the icky, boring business schtuff.

How do we fit it all in a day's work without exhaustion, overwhelm, and unhappiness?
Our continuous overload of "must-do's" can be overwhelming which initiates that good ole fight or flight reaction in our lizard brains. Yep, right into reaction mode versus creation mode, which often results in procrastination. Funny that that particular words starts with "pro". I'm not "for" it by any means!
The more pressure we feel, the more easily we default to this mode which then becomes habit. Stress is in fact the absence of faith in ourselves. So it's essential to have tools to help us keep the faith in our ability to get it all done.
Yep, we all know this stuff, but what can we do to implement the tools to become masters of self. We can't manage time. Unless you can heard flies, forget about managing time. What we need to do is "manage self".

Here are 3 essential tools you'll need to implement to help balance life:

1- Evaluate & determine your circadian rhythm

There are 2-3 hours that are our most productive time. Time when we feel the most energetic. When is that for you?
Do you schedule your most important genius work during these hours? If not, it's time to reevaluate your schedule. Really think hard and determine when you'll include self-care, creative genius work, play, and business/marketing time.

2- Schedule your day the night before - batch your day

Now that you've figured out your most productive time, do a shortened version of the Sunday Summit every night.
Your subconscious then has time to work on any troubles or ideas you might have. How great is that! Wake up with a sense of clarity and purpose, with a rudder on your ship!
When you schedule your time, remember that we work best in 40-50 minute bursts. Try setting your timer at the beginning of the hour and then use the 10-20 minutes for breaks (dance, return calls, be social on facebook, drink water, etc).

3- Eliminate Distraction

Not only is it a good idea to remove distractions it's a good idea to have sacred space in which to do different tasks.
Turn off your email, facebook, chat, etc. It's only 40-50 minutes. You can do without it and then reward yourself later.
Athletes, writers and lots of others, implement triggers to signal their brain, "hey, it's time to do your genius work"! Baseball players will adjust the velcro on their glove, tap their shoes, etc. Others might put on certain music, light a candle, etc.

     Involve all the senses when creating habit and successful work/creative environments.

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Teacher, mentor, artist and founder of the Artful Success Program, Tonya Davidson helps artists take their techniques and business skills to the next level. As the CEO and founder of Whole Lotta Whimsy she has passionately empowered artists to live creatively from the inside out. Create the life you love by subscribing to her ezine, reading her blog, or following her on facebook/twitter! 

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And, I want to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Happy Holidays!

Computers, computers, computers, more computers...and a Web page

School is really kicking my backside right now. Every time I think I'm ahead of the game, something happens and I am further behind than ever. This is really stressing me out. Its a tough quarter because of the classes I'm teaching plus we upgraded our learning management system where my online courses are at and it seems nothing is working right. It seems like all I do is fight fires and get further and further behind in grades and prep.

Needless to say, this is playing havoc with my jewelry making (which stresses me out even more). I have two holiday shows coming up and I am getting nothing accomplished. Well, I am trying to make the best of it. Since I am spending so much time on the computer anyway, I am trying to put together the beginnings of a Web site for Big Grass Farm Designs.

 

I have put this off for waaayyyy too long. You see, this is what I do for a living. I teach computers...mainly multimedia and Web design. So, its kind of understandable that when I get away from that...building a Web site for my business is not my idea of relaxation. 

In between grading, preps, and fighting fires in my Blackboard classrooms I am tinkering around with the beginnings of a site. I am playing around with the structured and layout and some initial graphics and content. Trying to decide what needs to be on it, and what people will want to see.

 Anyway, stay tuned and maybe I will have something soon for people to look at and give me suggestions on. That is...if I keep my sanity!

Make Your Own Jewelry Party!

Last weekend was the Appalachian Mountain Artisans Festival that I have talked about before. It was long and it was tiring. It was my first multiple day festival that I have done. But, I did enjoy the experience. The thing that I enjoyed the most was the wire wrapping classes I taught. I just can't get away from the teaching thing. I guess since I come from a family of public school teachers, and I have been teaching computer science for almost 20 years and fused glass for 7 or 8...you could say it is in my blood.

 Anyway, as I was saying, I really enjoyed the wire wrapping classes I taught last weekend. I had a mom bring her two daughters and a grandmother bring her two granddaughters, plus several other lovely ladies who joined us.

We made some bead and wire pendants with some accent beads and a little flourish of the wire. It was fantastic. They were all really happy with the pendants they made. It really is fun for me to see everyone's reaction and to see how happy they were with the pendant they made on their own and got to take with them. There really is no right or wrong way to do it, and each and everyone is beautiful in its own way. Everyone has their own style, and the twists and turns of the wires makes each piece unique and very personal. I guess that is why I like doing this so much. Each time I finish one, I know there will never be another one like it.

So, with all the fun I had teaching these classes over the weekend, it has given me a new idea. I have been thinking about some mini-classes. These would be projects that could be completed in a short time frame, anywhere from half an hour to an hour. I could travel to meet groups and teach a mini-class. These classes could be done for different types of groups and occasions. Birthday party for a friend, ladies auxiliary group, girls night to get together...a perfect setting to do a short workshop and make a piece of jewelry.

I am working on some ideas for projects for earrings, pendants, etc. I am also trying to figure out a fee schedule. Since I will be doing the traveling I will
have to come up with some different rates depending on how far away I have to travel. Once I get this all figured out I will make a new blog page to explain it.

If anyone has any ideas that they would like to see me incorporate into any of the mini-classes, please let me know. This is all in the beginning planning stages and I am wide open to suggestions. All input is highly desirable, and welcome...as always, I am just flying by the seat of my pants. Lol.

Quilt Squares

Now, if you are not from Ohio you may not know what a big deal barn quilts are. Other states have them too, but Ohio seems to have a rather large amount of them and they are fairly popular. They have branched out from barns and are now on a variety of other buildings. We even have one at the college on the building where I work. Well as I mentioned earlier, Jo at Hilltop Designs hosts an art festival each year called the Appalachian Mountain Artisans Festival. On the side of her building she has one of the quilt squares. She asked me to make some jewelry with her quilt square on it to sell during the festival.

That took a great deal of research on my part. I can fuse images into my pieces, but they come in the form of water slide decals that are created to be placed on the glass and fired in the kiln. There are all types of images you can get on the decals. Everything from animals to flowers to trees, religious symbols, abstract designs, etc. I have yet to find water slide decal material that will go into the kiln that will allow you to print your own images first. I ended up having to special order ink jet decal paper that allowed me to print my quilt images from my ink jet printer.

This means I have to first cut my glass pieces and fire them in the kiln. Once they are done, I can then apply the images to the glass.

Now, my next problem. I needed some way to keep the images from scratching off of the glass. I am using a spray acrylic sealer that should do the trick. I am using about 4 coats of that so it means spray and then drying time in between each coat.

Finally, I have started making the cord necklaces and putting on the findings. I am happy to say that I am getting close to having 25 necklaces and 35 key chains done, but the process is a long one. It takes awhile to get from cutting the glass, through firing, applying the decals, spraying multiple coats of the sealer, making the cords, epoxying (is that a word) on the findings, and finishing things up.

I hope that these are popular for her and people like them. I now realize, however, I don't want to be a production jeweler. lol

I've Gone International!

I have the had the deepest sense of satisfaction today. I shipped my first piece of jewelry out of the country. My Facebook Fan page reached 100 fans, so I held a contest for all of those wonderful people. I gave everyone numbers and then used random.org to pick a random number. The winner was to get this necklace...

The wonderful lady whose number I drew lives in British Columbia. She was extremely excited that she won, and she said she had never won anything before. I am so happy that I got to break her losing streak for her. lol

I am also extremely happy about it. It made me feel good that she was so thrilled to have won the necklace. And, it made me feel good that I now have a piece that is international. :)

I can hardly wait until I hit 200 fans so we can have another contest. Shannon, I hope the necklace makes it to you soon and thanks for making my day!

New Shop

See this piece at bgfdesigns.etsy.com

Another first for me, I finally have my Etsy shop up and running! I guess that makes me an official online business. I have wanted to do this for years, but it seemed like life, work, kids, etc. were always getting in the way. I could barely keep enough inventory going for the shows I did and the shops I consigned to.

 Now that I have made a commitment to myself that I am going to grow my business and do all of things that goes along with that, I am starting to get some things accomplished. I now have the blog up and running, I am increasing my inventory in preparation for all the shows that I am going to be doing between now and the first of the year, and now my ETSY STORE!!!

See this piece at bgfdesigns.etsy.com

It seems that I am still really nervous about all of this. I am almost as nervous as I was when I started doing shows. I guess that I will always worry about people not liking my pieces. I don't seem to have that problem at the shows I do anymore. My sales are always good and I get a lot of praise about my work. I guess I will have to get over the jitters, just like I did when I started doing shows.

The one thing I did find out was that it takes a little time to get an item listed. Between taking pictures, editing pictures, writing descriptions, uploading, tagging, promoting, etc. its not as easy as just slapping an item up there.

See this piece at bgfdesigns.etsy.com

Any how, I have taken another step on my journey and it makes me feel accomplished. Now, if I were that close to being ready for school to start that would be saying something. lol

If you get the chance take a look at my Etsy store, bgfdesigns.etsy.com. Let me know what you think, if you have any comments, requests, or just a pat on the back that would be good too. :)