Front Page Excitement

Hello lovely readers.

I have some excellent news. I was on the Etsy front page this morning!! Lovely Becci (from Momentsbymartha) took a screenshot for me (as did posh_doodles from flickr - thanks guys!) and here it is:

Can you spot me? I'm the centre of the bottom row, with my fab splodgy rings. You can purchase yours here. I'm so pleased! Seriously, I was jumping out of seat. The rings have received 20 new hearts and my shop has got 13 new admirers. Being on the front page has certainly boosted my creative flow, as a whole bunch of ideas came to me today sitting at my desk at work that I can't wait to get working on! I got paid today from my regular job, so I'm probably going to buy a printer so that I can print my own packaging. I love the idea of packaging and have been having some ideas for it recently, so I'll show you what I come up with!

Had some Etsy people round to my HOUSE believe it or not! Snapdragonbeads, momentsbymartha & lovealittle from the Handmade Oxford team came round to stuff the goody bags. I've been begging, stealing and generally hassling crafters across the world for their promotional items, samples, business cards and general stuff for weeks now, and had a huge pile of it in my living room. The girls came over and we filled the goody bags, they really are going to be a highlight of the day. Each has a bunch of business cards, notecards, earrings, phone charms, magnets, bookmarks. I want one myself, and I've been looking at the stuff for weeks! We'll be giving them out free to the first 200 people through the door to the fair, so you should most definitely make the trip and come along on the day, stop by my stall and say hi if you do! You can check out photos from the bag-stuffing day here, and don't forget we are still accepting promotional items, cards and anything you would like to be included. These bags are going directly into the hands of people who buy handmade, so don't miss out. We'll also be sending a number of bags with the best bits in to buyers for a number of high-end retailers, so it really is a great opportunity. Leave me a comment if you want more information, or you can email me at cakeadaykatie@hotmail.co.uk.

Internet Outage & New Designs

Uurgg! My bloody internet connection has been crap this week so although I have been taking photos and creating gorgeous new pieces, as well as working on a huge wholesale order, I haven't been able to upload anything to Flickr or Etsy :(

So, this is a bit of a meaty update.

Firstly, I made a whole batch of 'Meadow' bracelets.

Here are a bunch of the charms I have made for each of the bracelets. Each bracelet takes 15 flowery charms to create, so I had to do over a 100 of these to create the amount of bracelets that I was trying to!

And here is a snap of some of the completed bracelets! I ended up making 8 of them, because I ran out of the flower beads, which are from Hong Kong, so I'll need to order some more pretty soon (I hope!)

You can read more about how I made these bracelet on my Flickr photostream, plus see some more lovely colourful snaps of them! You can purchase one in my Etsy shop for a reduced price right now, as I really need to see how popular they are before the launch of my website on September 1st. Click here to purchase yours!

So after all that, I had a bunch of these left:

Which are the pieces I cut off the end of the headpins that wasn't needed. So I wracked my brains for something I could do with these bits. I added a couple of beads to each, and curled the end: And basically, I made this cute, nu-rave coloured set!

I was really happy with how this turned out, and although this colour combo will be a one-off, I might do it again in a different colourway!

So, I think that is probably about it. I'm off to the Harvester now, I just adore their lovely Salad Cart and Lemon and Herb chicken - yum, my belly is totally rumbling right now. I'd love to know what you think of my newest jewellery, it's always nice to receive comments on posts. I know people are reading because I can see on my stats, so make yourself heard!

EDIT:

Stupid Harvester have changed their menu! They no longer do the bloody chicken that I love so, I had to make do with some yucky pasta, it was rank and bland. Down with menu changes!

Digging Out

I was hunting for something under my bed yesterday, and I found some drawings that I did a while ago when I worked in a very boring job.

I took a photograph of each of them, then fiddled with the Threshold on photoshop, and they have come up looking quite snazzy. I might use one of them for a new project I have got involved in;

http://www.fantazya.ca/diary2009.html

It's basically, you design a page for a diary, you can advertise your shop, or simply make it super-original. I love being part of something like this, and I'm quite excited about designing my page. I nabbed my birthday, I think some dates are still available, if you fancy giving it a shot.

You can view more of my found designs on my Flickr account. Feel free to add me as a Flickr friend too!

I also made a new bracelet today for my boyfriends sister. She wanted something pink and blue so I made her this;

I hope she likes it! It's very girly, lots of hearts and spangly stars, and her initials right in the centre. I'm not sure whether to list this as a custom item, I could do pretty much any colour combination and any initials, although I have only one 'M' which is a little bit weird, but serves me right for buying a mixed bag of random letters!

Loads of stash pics and work-in-progress snaps coming over the weekend!

Bead Porn!

I'm in a great group on Flickr called Born Porn, isn't that the cutest name? Well, I guess it's not really cute, but still. I liked it! I'm trying to expand my Flickrizing to spread the twinklyspangle gospel, so if you have a cute beady or jewellery group to invite me to, I would love to hear about it, even if it only has one member! Let me know in the comments :)

My grandmother has been to stay the last few days, and I have sent her on her way with a huge package of beads and fandangles to show my Dad, who is facilitating the designing of the website and all the accounting stuff. He wants to see the items and start trying to take some professional looking photos. We are thinking of going with a lightbox but I'm not sure exactly how that would work. They need to have a pure white background. I'm excited about seeing what comes of it, m photo's are getting better but they are not spot on yet.

My boyfriend has his horrible tarantula out. I want to squash the nasty clambering thing. I want to hear her go POP under my shoe. I hate her so much.

Gorgeous New Designs

In the process of setting up my new website, I have the task of creating 20 lines for the site. It's hard work, creating things that I think will sell and also that it is possible to create and sell in a profitable way. But, I think I have struck gold with this:

Isn't it cute? It's great because it's totally designed by me, I even made the flowers using three different types of beads, petals, leaves and tiny contrasting faceted round beads. It's so colourful and cute, I have put it up for sale on Etsy for a super-cheap £8, but it will be £10 when my website launches, and this is the ONLY one I will be selling at this price (my beautiful prototype - ooohh I'm so proud!) so snap it up!

I have been working on my packaging this week too, here is an order ready to send out:

I would love to know what you think of the stickers being used like this, and how I have tagged the jewellery. I want to make it look funky and original, I'm not really sure about this lime green. A couple of people have suggested black, which might look better, what do you reckon?

On a totally unrelated note, here is a picture of me with my little boy in Brighton over the bank holiday. It was such a beautiful day, I got a great tan, and the tiny fellow had his very first dip in the sea.

You can see more photos of us beaching it up on my flickr account - including the little one's first dip in the sea and my boyfriends mad hair - fun!