AdornmentCraft

It’s that time of year again - Halstead Bead is preparing to accept entries for its business development grant competition for bridge jewelry. The winner will receive “$6,000 in cash and merchandise” and some nice free publicity.

Entrants are evaluated largely on their business skills, not their artistry alone. In addition to having a strong business plan, to participate you must:

• be a student or professional jewelry designer
• intend to pursue a full-time career in bridge jewelry design
• intend to develop a branded line of bridge jewelry for resale
• intent to sell your branded line at a regional or national level
• have started your bridge jewelry business after January 1, 2005
• not have ever been convicted of a felony, and
• be a United States citizen.

Applications must be postmarked between April 15, 2008, and June 17, 2008. The winner will be notified in August.

Click here to print out the full application and here to read the FAQs, which begin with a definition of bridge jewelry.

Cut Out & Keep, a nifty social-crafting site, has done a great job with this succinct tutorial on carving rubber to make stamps.

There’s a lot of room for experimentation with these. Start out using those soft little white erasers and see what you can come up with. Then you can upgrade to more professional stamp-making tools and materials, as described in the tutorial.

I’m beginning the new year by working on two follow-up titles to my book Teach Yourself Visually - Jewelry Making & Beading.

Scheduled for release in 2009, the new books will be part of the Visual Quick Tips series. Quick Tips are smaller, portable volumes that you can carry in your beading or jewelry making kit and use for quick reference anytime, anywhere.

Quick Tips Beading and Quick Tips Wire Jewelry Making will have tons of the same high-quality, close-up photos we used in the Teach Yourself Visually book, but with about 25% new material - so you’ll have access to more advanced beading techniques and stitches, and more elaborate wire working methods. And, I’m happy to report, each of these new books will be spiral bound, so you can easily lay them open while you work.

As we get things finalized, I’ll post again with a list of the techniques and reference charts included in each.

For an idea of what the books will be like, check out these recently-released Quick Tips titles: