Good news:

So, my camera cord is safe and sound and in the wrong state, but it's hopefully already in the mail to me as I type (or not, cause it's Sunday). Since being at school I've repaired two bracelets, made an adorable buton-covered lightswitch, and made myself a charm bracelet. Plus, I decorated notebooks for all of my classes, and they look SO cool. Especially since patterned notebooks were like 2-3 dollars at Target, and I got these for ten cents.

I also did some "salvaging"-- basically going through my bag of brokendown jewelry and seeing what's useable. I have some awesome elephant charms that are just begging to be made into earrings of some sort.

I'm also working on making my sister a little jewelry/makeup box out of a candy tin. It's been kind of hard to paint it, since the metal doesn't take paint very well, but I only need to do one more coat and then cover it with mod-podge to seal it, and it should be mostly done.

Still haven't really set up my Etsy shop--I took some pictures and everything, I just need to upload my new ones when I get my cord. But it should be exciting. I also have to figure out PayPal--I think it's a little too complicated for me, which is embarassing. I need to find some super-glue this week too. I have to glue metal stuff to other metal stuff, and that's hard to do with Elmer's.

In the "plus sides to being at school" category (aside from being able to access my craft supplies), I have a whole new room to decorate. It's already cute, but I need to put something over my bed. I kind of want to make a paper crane mobile with beads and stuff. Maybe I'll even make pigasuses instead of cranes.

Hooray!

So, I'm finally back at school for good (and I'm still slightly in denial about this being senior year). But, this also means that I have access to all of my supplies, yay! Plus I can finally start my Etsy shop up, and I'm super excited about that.

Of course, now I seem to have misplaced my camera cord. It's always something with me, isn't it.

Etsy.

So, one of the main reasons I created this blog was to organize and showcase my items before putting them on Etsy.

This far, I've posted everything I have pictures of, created an account on Etsy, and organized what I still have left to make before I really get started.

Unfortunately, all of my supplies are down at school, so I'm going to have to wait until at least next Wednesday to start listing things, which stinks. But I'm still very excited about all this. Potentially making money doing something I enjoy? Why didn't I do this years ago?

Jellybeans!

I absolutely love this bracelet. The big pink beads remind me of jellybeans, and it's so cute and cheerful. The smaller beads are in a complimentary pink color (and are the same ones I used in my anchor bracelet).

Springtime!

This bracelet is made from UFO-shaped small beads, and these big clear beads that almost seem to have paint dripped on them. It's made with wire, and it's very sturdy.

It reminds me of springtime, and I love the green color.

Vintage bead earrings

Here's another repurposed vintage piece. These earrings were originally part of an old necklace--the type that had multiple strands of beads, some of which were not exactly my style. Fortunately, the multiple strands gave me a lot of beads to work with.
I lent this pair to my roommate for a night out, and she promptly lost one. So, at least one of these is a replacement--I've probably made about five or six of these in the past year.

I also originally had made a matching necklace for this set--it was just the larger beads in a slightly larger size, and it looked great. Unfortunately it went missing about six months ago. (If I had a dollar for every piece I've made that goes missing, I wouldn't be looking into setting up an Etsy account!).

These were simple to make, and they're understated enough to not look too showy, but they're classy enough to wear for a night out.

All in all, I've probably made about a dozen of these earrings, including ones I plan to sell.

Vintage Beads!

Vintage beads are one of my favorite things to work with. They're usually good quality (they'd have to be, to survive this long), they're pretty, and generally give a classy look.
I have a lot of older female relatives who know my obsession with crafts, so I always have a lot of old jewelry items that have either broken strings, or just aren't in style right now. So, I get to repurpose the beads into awesome things like this bracelet.

The black and golden beads used to be part of a necklace that broke a long time ago. Of course, some of the beads had gone missing, but there were enough left to make an awesome bracelet. The beads are strung on wire, because I wanted it to be sturdy--the original necklace was on string, which broke, and I find that the clear rubbery string always stretches out unpleasantly.