Team Tuesday - March 15 - teener1416 and AllThingsEclectic

One seller with two shops today - from the "Helping the Hectic" team (for Etsy sellers who work a day job or are students).

I wanted to get the teener1416 shop posted awhile before Easter because it's all about decorated eggs. Eggs etched with intricate and often traditional designs. They aren't just for Easter, of course, but would be gorgeous decor all year round. One thing I especially like is the description in many of the listings of how the etching is done, especially when a traditional European method is used. Here are just a few examples. Clicking on any photo will take you to that egg's description:

 

The other shop (AllThingsEclectic) is all about cards - but not just any cards. These are handmade and hand embellished "shabby chic" cards. The embellishments - especially the flowers - make them a three-dimensional experience. Here are some to get you thinking spring (the last two are close-up views):

Hope you enjoy these ready-for-spring shops as we shake off the last of winter.

Ash Wednesday Special - and Fasting

A number of members of the Etsy Prayersonawire team are offering Ash Wednesday specials today. In my shop, enter coupon code ASHWED2011 at checkout to receive 20% off your order. And as a special mention to those reading this blog, I won't be canceling the coupon code until I get up on Thursday morning, so the special doesn't stop at midnight.

 Reading a good book

Fasting is not my preferred form of penance. It just makes me tired and irritable and not particularly Christian. So I only engage in it on the two days per year that I have to and am looking forward to getting old enough to be able to ignore it entirely.


Yeah, I know, Catholic fasting is no big deal. No food between meals and two small meals that don't add up to the size of the main meal. It's a joke compared to Ramadan. But I'm a grazer. My usual eating pattern is one small item every couple of hours. Keeps my blood sugar level and keeps me from getting hungry and eating too much. I probably eat more on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday than I do on most other days. They're two of the rare occasions when I'll actually eat a meal.

Thank God I don't have to forgo coffee! And the people I work with probably think the same thing.

So what am I "giving up for Lent"? (Certainly not coffee!) I'm going to try a moratorium on watching DVDs (except ones I need to watch for a project I'm doing). I'm in the process of reading a really good book, and am reminded how much better that can be than watching a movie. Only problem is that I can't do something else while I'm reading as I can while I'm watching a DVD, but I've lately decided to cut back on the rosary making, anyway, so this is pretty good timing. 

I'm not promising to be perfect. And I'm not promising that everything I read will be profound. But I think this will be something positive.

Team Tuesday - March 8 - Gilliauna (Gilliauna's Bits n' Beads)

This week's feature is Gilliauna, from the Prayers on a Wire team, who calls her shop "Gilliauna's Bits n' Beads". She offers a variety of items made from beads: jewelry, rosaries, eyeglass chains, bookmarks, badge lanyards, and more. She loves color, but this week we're going to concentrate on green because Gilliauna has an entire section full of St. Patrick's Day deals. Here's a sampling - I tried to get a good variety of items. Clicking on either the caption or the photo will take you to the item description:

a unique charm bracelet - "Bound in Love"

 green leaf earrings - wire-wrapped

an eyeglass chain that I appreciate the name of: "Losing my Marbles"

a beaded Christian bookmark with a Celtic look

and, finally, an exquisite necklace of jade and pearls in silver

To close, since I met Gilliauna through our rosary makers' team, here are a couple of unique and stunning rosaries she has for sale. These are not in the St. Patrick's Day section:

Blue Ceramic and Pearls

Cherry Blossom in Pink

If you can't decide, or if you're buying a gift and don't know what to get, Gilliauna also offers gift certificates in several different amounts.

Anglican Rosary Technique - Such as It Is

You know how things sometimes sneak up on you? I just sold another Anglican rosary, which means I'm down to one in my Etsy shop. The one that's left is a star performer when it comes to people marking it as a favorite, but no one's bought it.

I have a number of bead combinations I've set aside for making Anglican rosaries, but when I go to start a new project I always find something else to do. Probably because, the way I make them, they're technically a little more difficult than other rosaries. If you look at the picture below, you can see why: there's a spot where three wires come together but they have to be joined without using a center.The bead that joins them has one hole with two openings, just like most beads.

When I started doing online research into Anglican rosaries (because I'd been asked to make one for someone) I found a couple of methods for making them. But I didn't like the way either of them looked, because the crimp bead came at a visually bad place. One method placed the crimp bead at the center of the rosary's body, which means the bead that should be centered is pushed off to the side. In the other method, the crimp bead ended up just to the side of the juncture, which also throws off the symmetry.

So I came up with my own technique, which is to make the rosary body in one piece, thread both ends through the bead that becomes the juncture, and put the crimp bead directly below it, holding the two wires together. The wire hanging below becomes the stem.

Sounds fairly simple, right? But it can take a lot of effort to get both wires feeding evenly through the juncture bead so that the stem is perfectly centered. Holding the rosary while I attach the crimp bead doesn't work, because I need both hands to hold the wires even. If I try to do it with the rosary lying flat, one end always creeps off when I adjust the other one. I've found it to be easier if I hold or hang the rosary in mid-air so I can adjust both wires as they feed through. But then I have to close the crimp bead when the wires are exactly right, with the crimp bead also hanging in mid-air. It feels a bit like hunting - waiting for the proper moment and then bang.

There may be an easier way of doing this, but I haven't found it yet.

Another reason I tend to put off making Anglican rosaries is that although one of them, as a whole, takes less time to make than a five-decade Catholic rosary, because of the way they're assembled I like to make one in one sitting, without a break. So I need to have a period of time when I'm pretty sure I won't be interrupted. A "regular" rosary can much more easily be set down and come back to later. 


Here's my one remaining Anglican rosary (I will be making more). It's made from three sizes of sodalite beads, with the large invitatory bead having a carved design:

Remember that if you enter coupon code BLOG2 at checkout, you receive a 20% discount from the listed price on anything in my Etsy shop.

Team Tuesday - March 1 - CoveyleeCreations

This week's feature is about a member of the Etsy Blog Team. This is one busy Etsian, with three shops and an active blog. Besides CoveyleeCreations, there's also CoveyleeDecor and CoveyleeLighting. But, in one way or another, they're all about repurposing and upcycling.

CoveyleeCreations has upcycled leather cuff bracelets, assemblage art, and some other goodies.

I had a hard time deciding on a cuff bracelet to feature, but finally decided on this one, because it's handpainted which I think is great, and is sized personally for the buyer so can fit any size. I'd love to have the pattern as wallpaper in my kitchen:

This cuff is a little more representative of those in the shop - although that's hard to say because each one is unique. It can also be made in any size:

Here's an assemblage shadow box titled "Best Friends". I love the watch on the wall:

CoveyleeDecor is full of repurposed and upcycled decor for those who like Shabby Chic and Cottage Chic.

Since we're still hoping for spring, here's a "Spring Fling" collection of frames in great colors:

And a collection of candlesticks for which you can choose your own colors:

I had to add this cake stand/dessert display because it's so creative. Can you guess what two items it's made from? There's also a bonus the buyer will receive:

Our last shop this week is CoveyleeLighting. Not surprisingly, a lot of what's available here is also made from upcycled/repurposed found objects. Here's an "industrial look" cage light as an example:

This scalloped light is all new except for the shade, so you can have vintage without worrying about aging electrical wiring:

There's also a reading lamp made from a repurposed book. Pretty amazing lamp, but since the book was written by a literary critic who doesn't like Tolkien, you won't see a picture of it in this blog (which just happens to be named in honor of Tolkien)... We do have our priorities, y'know.

Last but definitely not least, here's a link to the Coveylee Creations blog. There are projects here that you won't see in any of the shops - at least, not yet.

Whew! This post was a lot of work - but a lot of fun, too, looking at some fantastic items.

The next three days...

...are the last days for the pre-Lent special for Lutheran prayer beads in my Etsy shop. The offer of 20% off any set of Lutheran prayer beads ends at midnight on Wednesday, March 2. I'll be going by U.S. Central Time, but if you're a little late because of a time difference, I'll still give you the 20% off. (In fact, don't tell anyone, but I probably won't change the prices back until I get up Thursday morning.) I chose March 2 as the end of the special because it still gives a week before Ash Wednesday for shipping.

To show how the prayer beads work as a Lenten practice, here's a picture of a set that's spread out. (The blogging program, of course, picked this time to insert a picture sideways. The stem should be hanging down.) In order to see a "zoomable" version of the photo, click on this one:

The stem is used for the first partial week of Lent. The four small beads represent Ash Wednesday and the following Thursday through Saturday. The larger green bead is for the first Sunday of Lent.

After that, you continue down from the juncture (center) with six sets of six beads each, for the six full weeks of Lent. The larger green bead that follows each set is for the Sunday at the end of that week.

Between the four small beads on the stem and the six sets of six small beads on the body, there's a total of 40 small beads (traditionally, the Sundays aren't counted as part of the 40 days of Lent).

At the very end, just before you get back to the juncture, is the Easter bead. It's larger and/or lighter in color than the other beads used. In this case, it's larger; it's also transparent while the other beads are opaque. One of the things I enjoy about making sets of Lutheran prayer beads is choosing the Easter bead - it's one more way to be creative. Incidentally, the presence of the Easter bead makes the set asymmetrical; you can't hold a set of Lutheran prayer beads by the middle and have it hang down evenly on both sides as you can with a Catholic or Anglican rosary.

The meditations in the brochure that comes with the prayer beads are taken from Luther's Small Catechism.

In order to see a full description of the set of prayer beads shown here, click on the picture. To see all of the Lutheran prayer beads that I have listed in my Etsy shop, go to the Ecumenical Rosaries section of the shop. If you don't see the color or style you want there, let me know using the "Contact" link. I won't have time to make any new sets before the special's over, but I do have some in stock that aren't listed in my Etsy shop.
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Tomorrow's "Team Tuesday" entry is a three-for-one special: a member of the Etsy Blog Team who has three Etsy shops (as well as a great blog, for which I'll also give the link). Hope to see you then.

"Here Comes Everybody"

It's a bit ironic that the title of this post is a phrase James Joyce used to refer to Catholics - and I'm using it to refer to Lutherans. I've been selling more Lutheran prayer beads than rosaries lately. In fact, I just had my first contact from a Lutheran who actually knew about Lutheran prayer beads before she saw them in my shop. Maybe the word is getting out. They might be selling especially now because some people use them specifically for Lent - my 20%-off pre-Lent special is still running through March 2, leaving a week for shipping before Ash Wednesday.

The person who'd heard of them wanted to see all those I didn't have listed yet, so I took photos of two views of each of them: an overall shot and a close-up showing the stem and Easter bead. I wouldn't normally list an item with only two photos, but I may do so with these rather than wait until I have five photos of each. Thing is, if I list all of them I'll have more Lutheran prayer beads listed than anything except "other rosaries". They'll definitely overpower the Anglican rosaries in the ecumenical rosary section!

BTW, James Joyce didn't mean "Here comes everybody" to be a compliment. But I rather like it. It gives me the same sense of pride as Hitler's designation of Americans as "the great mongrel race" - positive pride, I think, that even people that others look down on are welcome (at least when things are working the way they should). I'm happy to be catholic with a small "c" - which, if you look at their creed, includes Lutherans.

Here are a few sets of Lutheran prayer beads that I already have listed:

You can see more in the ecumenical rosaries section of my Etsy shop.