Winner Of Heart Pendant Giveaway

Thank you all for your participation in our free heart pendant giveaway. A winner was drawn at random this morning and the lucky winner is Rita Lemos of Portugal. Here is a link to her beautiful blog http://lovely-lala.blogspot.com/. Congratulations Rita!

We will be annoucing a new giveaway in the near future.

Thanks again to all who participated!

Dichroic Heart Pendant Give Away

Helix Elemental Studio is giving away a three layered dichroic heart pendant with silver plated chain with a silver plated lobster clasp. It is valued at $17.00 in my etsy store. A random drawing will be held Sunday January 17 and the winner announced. It is easy to enter the drawing. Here's how:

1. Follow my blog and comment here. This equals one entry.



2. If you already follow my blog comment here. This equals one entry.



3. Post contest on your blog and comment here with link. Good for one entry.



4. Visit http://www.helixelemental.etsy.com/. Browse and comment here with a link to your favorite item. Good for one entry.



5. Post a link to this contest on any social networking site (twitter, Facebook, Ning, etc) Comment here with a link. One entry for each link.

Thank you all in advance for your participation. Have fun and win!!!!

My New ShopBot! Click and SEE!

Snowman Set

This is my first example of jewelry that recognizes a holiday. An area I've been pretty negligent. I guess my fear has been being stuck with some unsold items that sit around for a year before I can try to sell them again. But I had a custom order request for snowman pendant and earrings, and thus I'm quite pleased. Sufficiently silly looking dichroic snowman jewelry. I've decided to make another pair of the earrings to list in my Etsy shop.

A Cure For Crafty Hands

I have to say I never realized how torn up my fingers could get doing glass work. Holding small pieces of glass against grinders and ring saw blades had left my fingertips cracked, cut, peeling, bleeding and so sensitive I could barely stand to touch anything. If I let them callus the calluses would split and bleed. When I tried taping them up there were times when I'd remove the tape to find my skin peeling off with the tape. For months I tried everything I could think of to get them to heel. I think there's also something about glass dust (more like glass mud since it's wet) that is very bad for hands. They would dry and crack in addition to the trauma that the glass edges did to my finger tips.
One day my wife brought home a product called O'Keeffe's Working Hands. It comes as a lotion in a tube and as a cream in a round container. If you're one of those folks who get those painful cracks near your nail beds, this stuff will heal them almost overnight. After using this stuff every night at bedtime and throughout the day my hands and finger tips are almost completely healed. If you could have seen how ravaged they were before you'd know what an accomplishment that is.
So between grinding down the edges of the glass before I press it against the ring saw blade and the regular application of O'Keeffe's Working Hands my misery has been greatly relieved. I mean, it's not like I'd ever consider quitting doing glass work. Something had to give.

New Designs

The jewelry market is VERY saturated and it is not easy to keep sales coming in with so many talented artisans out there. I felt it was time to evolve. For most of the time I've been making fused glass jewelry I preferred to do a shallow "tack" fuse on my pieces. This resulted in more defined edges, and rather than incorporating the glass I pretty much just layered it. I like the interactions from the different layers of transparent glass. I rarely used opaque glass.
I decided to do a few things differently. First I began a marketing campaign, which is pretty much an OJT thing for me. I'm learning as I go along, trying to decide where best to focus my resources. Then I lowerd my prices. I took an average of about three dollars off of my jewelry. And lastly I began to shift direction with my designs. I'll keep some of my more popular items (like the puzzle pendants), but now I'm doing more of the full fusing designs and using alot of the fusible decals to embellish my pieces. Above is a comparison of my old vs my new designs. I have really enjoyed creating in this new style.

First Double Puzzle Dangles

I havent crafted a great many of the double puzzle pendants, but I have made a couple recently. Actually both of them sold at the craft fair yesterday. I also had a pair of double puzzle dangles on display which matched one of the pendants. But the dangles didn't sell yet.
My previous attempts to make the double puzzle dangles didn't go too well. Simply because they were much smaller than the pendants. As I've gotten better at making the pendants I decided to try to make another pair of the dangles. Actually the trick to success is to just to be VERY patient with the removal of the glass. I have to alter the puzzle shaped templates I use to cut out the puzzle shapes in Photoshop (or by hand whichever the case may be) so they sorta kinda fit together. Then I have to make the final fit happen by meticulously taking off minute amounts of glass, checking the fit and then taking off a little more. It's VERY easy to overdo it, and if you do you've pretty much blown it. They don't always have to fit perfectly, but there has to be enough contact for the pieces to fuse together securely, and I do a pretty shallow fuse on my pieces (though I do add two minutes to my fire time when I fire connecting puzzles.
Now, of course, I've got to make more!