Mid-Week Mutterings - More LosCon Pictures

Well, I still haven't unloaded most of the things I took to L.A. with me from my car. Next time I'm taking Tuesday off, too so I can 1)sleep in and 2)unpack!

Because many of my tools and quite a few of my supplies are in the various bins and boxes still in the car, I haven't worked on any new pieces to share. I can, however share about the con and show you a few more pictures I took.

Two of my pieces were bought by Joseph Corsentino and Donny Ha of Time of the Faeries to be worn by their models in future art. Please visit their site to see the beautiful work they do! I am so thrilled and honored they thought my jewelry was suitable.

Here's a Steampunk family that browsed by

And here's one of the many beautiful costumes worn by Wolfcat.

After seeing so many interesting costumes in the dealer's room, my father and I decided to attend the Masquerade. It was fun, although I was surprised at how few entrants were there. But I was thrilled to have made the acquaintance of one of the entrants who won for her workmanship (and I believe other categories, but I can't find any mention of the Masquerade anywhere) of a beautiful Agatha Heterodyne costume. Because my memory is shot, I cannot for the life of me remember her name - it's on the tip of my tongue, but it stays just out of reach. She wore several clever costumes throughout the con. *sigh*

It was so wonderful to have Dad there to help (especially when I'm getting so forgetful)! Not only was I able to get away from the table from time to time without having to inconvenience my neighbors, but he and I had a great time just chatting about Science Fiction and fandom.

Well, it's getting late and I'm still pretty tired from the weekend. More tomorrow!

Tuesday Tidbit - Home from the Con!

I got back last night and was so tired from driving home that I just couldn't manage to post. I have some more pictures from the rest of Los Con that I will post this week. I was busy enough to not have time to do any live blogging, and after each day's work I was rather too exhausted to think!

It was a fabulous convention with wonderful people. I hope to be invited back for next year - it's a juried dealer's room, so I have to be selected. I wish I had more time this morning to post, but I have to get ready for work. Just wanted to let you know that I'm back and will be posting on the usual daily schedule until the Christmas holiday when I may be traveling again and posting may be irregular then.

Until tomorrow!

Dawno

LosCon Day 1!

Woke up early, drove to the hotel and had breakfast with Dad who has been sitting with me at the booth all day. Talk about "World's Greatest Dad" - anyone who does a show probably knows how great it is to have someone who can sit and watch things while you go use the restroom or grab a quick bite!

Things are about to close down, so I only have a minute - but thought I'd share a couple of pictures.

The front, bracelets and my "best" lanyards. What you see in the center are some ribbons hanging down from last BayCon - attracts a lot of attention! I've kept the front low so I can engage with the passers-by, all the tall stuff is to the sides - hiding in the back is Dad.

One side - necklaces


The other side - lanyards

And here are some wonderful Steampunk costumed visitors!

Might be back tomorrow! Having fun, hope you had a great Thanksgiving and if you were out today at the Black Friday sales that you got everything you wanted at amazingly good prices!!

Dawno

Rhodonite & Filigree Necklace

I have had this rhodonite oval bead glued to a four leaf filigree from Accessories Susan, in which I had curled each of the leaves into a tube shape, sitting on my worktable for ages. I liked the idea, just wasn't sure where to go with it.

Then I found these huge rhodonite ovals at Michael's and thought I'd try making it into a pendant that hung under the filigree piece. I used the same chain and a long eyepin to attach it. I thought it looked too plain, but I wore it anyway to see if it got any notice. Didn't get a peep.

Got home and set it on the table to ponder it some more. Then I got the idea to embellish the huge oval somehow, maybe use some filigree to wrap around it. Finally decided to glue an embossed sterling silver plated filigree piece to it and added a little rhinestone to the center. I think I'm going to add some clear Swarovski bicones and filigree tube links on the chain next.

This has been a very busy week at work and when I'm home I'm pretty tired, although I do manage to do a piece or two each night. As I mentioned yesterday I was focusing on bracelets and meant to get some earrings done, but I keep making new bracelets - I'll show them and possibly a new necklace, if I finish it in time, tomorrow.

The countdown clock is ticking away - I'm starting to obsess about my display now, and how I'll get it all in the car for the long drive to L.A. Since my daughter is coming up over the weekend to spend Thanksgiving week here, I'll have to clear all my stuff out of her bedroom which doubles as a photography "studio" and storage for all my displays and other related stuff. The dining room is going to be overwhelmed since it will become my staging area until I pack it up for next Wednesday's trip.

Hope you'll drop by again tomorrow!

A Winning Design

Wow! I won the Beadfly Fall Design contest! Thank you to the Beadfly folks. I've enjoyed being a member of this new site and its forum. I blogged about the winning design here, too.

So, what is Beadfly? It's a very web 2.0 type of site for beaders. It has an interactive forum, a place to upload and showcase one's work and talk about the inspiration for it, it provides members with opportunities to give and get reviews. It's got a good look, some neat features and I'd love it if you'd join and be my "friend" on the site. I'd also love to get a group going - another fun social networking feature they offer. I was thinking either a regional group (Northern California) or one of folk who do vintage style jewelry would be fun.

Now if I could only find the time to really concentrate on getting my stuff in the public eye and sell some of it! I have a new domain but haven't figured out how to get it on the hosting site account (which is set up under my husband's name with the hosting co.) nor how to build a storefront website.

I've got some good Googlejuice on the search "beaded badge lanyards" since I blog here so often and make sure to tag nearly every post with that phrase, but other than that, I'm still floundering a bit as to how to market my work. I had really hoped to get into LosCon (as I've whined about before) and get a few more sales this year, but absent that opportunity, I'm just not sure what to try next. I tried Google Ads for several months, but tracked no sales from that investment so I stopped it. I love Etsy, but it's a huge site and unless someone knows about me specifically, I doubt if they'll just stumble on my site and make a purchase.

Not going to give up, though! Eventually I'll figure something out, and next year I'll contact some cons much earlier than I did this year.

To cheer myself up, I'm working on a new necklace - turns out these stones and colors I'm using are pretty close to some of the the "Pantone Fall 2008" fashion color report colors. I'm thrilled about purples being 'in' as that's one of my favorite colors to wear.

I'm using 20 gauge copper wire to 'string' and attach squares of hemimorphite, bright, fluted copper beads and antiqued copper bead caps, faceted amethyst colored rondells and oval beads in this one. May not take this pattern all the way around the neck, have some nice antique copper chain I can use, too.

I Figured it Out - With Help, Of Course

I have learned how to do the Byzantine pattern chain from jumprings!I really thought it would be a big challenge but it hasn't been too bad. The well illustrated and easy to follow steps came from "Bead Man". I've run out of jump rings in this size and color - but I had enough to get the hang of it:

I got some disappointing news about Los Con, although I was first on the waitlist, and there had been two unclaimed tables, which I admit got my hopes up a little, apparently they got claimed and I'm still on the waitlist. At some point I will have to say "this is definitely not going to happen" and give up, but I'm not sure when I'll do that, yet.

I will assuage my grief by buying lots of jumprings and making Byzantine chains. And figuring out how to fix the glass jewels to my filigree work in progress. And practice using my new hammer and anvil. And adding the pretty faceted crystal drops to my filigree work in progress. Looks like I have plenty of distractions to keep me from moping about the lost opportunity.

LosCon Disappointment "All filled up, sorry..."

A lot of today's beading time went to going out to grab some stuff at Global Beads and Michael's then organizing what I bought. I did finish the garnet and amber piece I wrote about in this morning's untitled post.

(click for larger image)

It's 29" with 24k gold vermeil disks, 14k gold filled beads and donut spacers. I wasn't able to find large enough lobster claw clasps in gold filled or vermeil on my shopping trip, but I did find 1micron gold plate over copper clasps in a good size, so I've finished this and the other two pieces with those.

I heard back from the LosCon folk today, they say the dealer room is filled and asked if I'd like to be on the waitlist, I said ok, but I'm not going to get my hopes up again. I must say I'm pretty disappointed and it's harder having had to wait for nearly a month to get the bad news.

I'll just have to look for another convention to go to - not sure I'll find anything this year, though. It's been mostly a year of spending and not much return. I'll be better prepared for next year, though.

New Names for My Necklace Lanyards

For the most part I've been giving my pieces names descriptive of the stones or colors in them. I've lately seen a number of bead artists giving evocative names to their pieces, either from quotes or, perhaps, lovely sentiments they've created themselves. I am charmed by and enjoy the thought that goes into the naming.

My pieces sold pretty well at BayCon, so I'm (as mentioned on this blog) hoping to be approved as a dealer at LosCon and am going to look into other cons I can attend. Since most of the people at the cons are SF and Fantasy fans, using SF inspired naming seems like a fun idea, and it represents something I enjoy personally, not just a gimmick. So I was pondering where to get my inspiration for the names of my pieces.

Flash forward to a post about day lilies I clicked on yesterday. There are varieties of day lilies that have been given Star Trek names. I'm a fan, and I got a kick out of looking at the beautiful Borg Technology and Cloaking Device flowers. I've named my most recent pieces with a Star Trek theme, with many thanks to Memory Alpha Wiki to help me find information and quotes.

Here's Tears of Elaan, a short-ish piece at 24" in frosted Czech glass druk beads and iridescent glass seed beads with a larger iridescent Czech glass bead at the ends, best suited for an eyeglass leash. I'm going to also pick a quote from the episode that inspired the name, for each piece. This one comes with the quote from Spock to McCoy at the end of the episode:

"The Enterprise captured his heart long before the Dohlman did"

And almost finished (still need to attach the hardware) this morning, is a longer badge lanyard necklace - approx. 30 - 32", with two sizes of clear glass bicone (diamond) Czech pressed glass beads, separated by silver glass and iridescent glass seed beads. I've named it Treasure of Rigel XII, and the quote, from a conversation between Kirk and Harry Mudd:

"You either believe in yourself or you don't."

First commenter to tell me the name of the Star Trek episodes the necklace names come from, can claim these earrings (Enterprise-A not included), if they'd like:

Not Much Beading Today

Did matching earrings and a bracelet on a memory wire (which I think I'll re-do, not 100% happy with it) for the brown ceramic set I posted about last night. Used black glass beads instead of the onyx, wanted larger beads for these.

One of my pre-LosCon goals is to do more earrings and bracelets, whether stand alones or to match my necklace lanyards. I really don't enjoy making loops but maybe with enough practice, I'll get more fond.

I was busy elsewhere on the web tonight, doing a fun food meme, so I didn't do any other beading.