Son, Daughter-in-Law, Grandchildren

My son is coming for a visit. Haven't seen him in 6 years. He is bringing his wife(have never met her), and 4 granchildren. I am so excited! I haven't seen my granddaughter for 6 years either, my grandson since he was 2, he is now 15. I get to meet my 2 new grandchildren as well. They will be staying for a week. Now to find things for 4 teenagers to do! Will be taking lots of photos, just in case it is a long time again before I see them.

Chainmaille

As you know I have been trying to teach myself the art of chainmaille. I finally learned a new weave that I have tried and tried to do, it finally clicked.

I found a local place here in our town to display and hopefully sell some of my chainmaille and a few of hubby's earrings he has made. She ended up liking the display stand hubby and I made and wants us to also make some for her shop and some to sell. We will be doing a craft fair that she puts on too.

We are excited about it, was tired of making so much for free! It gets your work out there though, now I have a place for people who are interested in purchasing a piece can go.

Mustang

We ended up having to give our daughter the mustang for her birthday instead of graduation. She got to drive it home. She loves it and is looking forward to helping restore it. She is used to power everything so it was quite a task to not have anything electric, especially the steering. She did great though! Of course mom was following right behind her!

First things we have to do is replace the radiator, then change the shifter due to the shifter in it isn't the original. It is hard to shift right now.

I guess it helps a lot when your husband is mechanical and also can do the electrical work too.

Mother's Day Diabetic Bracelet

Decided at 5am this morning today to make a friend another Diabetic chainmaille bracelet for Mother's Day. She has grown boys but I don't think they are in a position to be able to get her anything for her special day. She is one of those people like me who do for others, not ourselves.

This will be the 4th one I have made her. Didn't really care for the 2 of them that I had made out of split rings so they would hold up better.

"67" Mustang

From the time I was a teenager I always dreamed of owning a 65/67 Mustang, didn't matter what year it was, I just wanted one. Sad to say that was a dream that never came to light for me.

Fast forward 30+ years, I finally own one! Not for me though, for our daughter. Just being able to restore one to it's original beauty and being able to present it to our daughter for graduation next year fulfills my dream of actually owning one.

It actually needs a lot more work done to it then we originally thought it would but that will be the fun of restoring it.

We have been ordering parts books, internet surfing and finding the original reproduction parts we will need.

I will be blogging about it as we go, so stay tuned!

Not a very good photo, came from my cell!

Gift for a Friend

Just bought this tote bag from http://www.HautTotes.com. Can't wait to get it and to present it to my friend. She works in a casino so quite a few people will see it. Being diabetic she has to take sugar-free snacks with her to work and has been carrying them in a plastic sack so I thought a new tote would be a great Birthday present for her.

Update:

Received the tote bag, plus the cosmetic bag and they are beautiful. So if you are ever in need of a tote bag be sure to check out HautTotes shop on Etsy.

Another Etsy Supply Let Down

We have been ordering some of our jewelry supplies off of Etsy. I am beginning to think the sellers of supplies do no quality control when shipping out their items, if they were we wouldn't be receiving the crap that we have been. Take a look at the photo and see what we got for Vintaj charms, one isn't even antiqued, it is still in brass form. Now tell me, how are we suppose to make a beautiful pair of earrings out of mismatched metals! I sure wouldn't buy them if they looked like that!

We could understand if it was just 1 order that was messed up but it has been numerous orders that have been crap. Come on supply sellers, take pride in what you sell and do some much needed quality control.

Now we aren't saying every supply seller on Etsy sells crap, we just haven't found the ones that don't.

We have received some beautiful items and that tells me that, that seller takes pride in their items and wants their customers to get what they paid for without having to go through the hassle of having to send them back and wait for the returns.

Track Star

Relay


Long Jump

Our daughter decided to try out for track this year. So every weekend we are off to another town to watch her. It was rough the first few weeks as they got ready for their first meet. She wasn't doing very well at the beginning but now has really improved and I think by the time she gets to the end of the season she will be a track star!

Mistaggers on Etsy

The mistaggers on Etsy are really making it hard to even look for items on there. Put chainmaille in the search, half of the stuff isn't chainmaille just some item that has a chain! Suppliers that tag their items with every possible use. Tagging an item with the background color just to make it to the front page. Putting more than 1 tag in a line like blue, red, silver, not like sterling silver which is allowed, just so you can have more tags.

I just went and checked out a seller that was mistagging so bad it caused me to stop searching on Etsy for our supplies, well content team has finally made her clean up part of her tags but not all of them! Well that's a relieve, now maybe I can search and not have her items show up in every search I do!

Etsy needs to hire more employees for the content team and start cleaning up the mess with the tags or they are going to lose a lot of buyers due to they don't want to have to sort through all the items that have nothing to do with what they searched for.

I am sure like me, shoppers won't buy from somebody who does a lot of mistagging, so wouldn't you think it would be better to abide by the rules and in the long run sell more!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Chainmaille

Another post about the learning of the art of chainmaille! It's a lot harder than one would think when deciding to finally begin doing it! Like I said before I have learned Byzantine, Helm, Boxchain, Aura, and a few others. I still to this day can't figure out how to do half persian 3-1, I am unable to hold the rings the right way to get it started, very frustrating! I have however finally thanks to BeadandButton magazine figured out how to do Full Persian, still having a few problems getting my rings right but now atleast know the way it all goes together, so in other words practice, practice, practice.

I have been using colored copper wire to do all of my chainmaille but want to start making lighter weight items using anodized aluminum. Want to make a necklace for a diabetic friend but need it to be lighter for her, have already made her 3 different bracelets so she can change them out when she tires of one.

I have made a lot of bracelets, bookmarks for the employees of a casino here and they all just love them. Others are now wanting them, so looks like I will be busy!

Making my sister a boxchain in black and yellow for her favorite team, The Steelers.

Well back to figuring out what other weaves I can figure out!