AdornmentCraft

This morning’s discovery:

According to the site:

metalchasers is a site that promotes and supports the field of jewelry and metal arts.

Here Jewelry and Metal Artists come to network, find inspiration and are free to express their creativity. . . .

This site is for beginners to advanced artists with absolutely no membership fees or restrictions. Feel free to browse around, or sign up and start meeting others who share the same interests.

The young site is very well put together and has quite a few members already. I decided to join.

The registration went smoothly, but I hit a snag when my confirmation email failed to arrive. (You must receive the confirmation email in order to activate your account.) You do need to check your spam filter for such emails, of course, but for some reason mine didn’t show up there either. I’ve had the same issue before when using my beadjewelry.net email account . . . so I’m beginning to suspect that the hosting company has some additional spam filter that I’m not aware of. (If so, it’s only blocking things I sign up for, and not ads for “E.D.” medications or body-part enlargement, unfortunately.)

Anyway, I submitted the Metalchasers contact form to report my challenge, and site admin Marcy emailed me back almost immediately. She had manually confirmed my registration, and her email was very courteous.

The Metalchasers site is set up as a social networking site (like MySpace). You can create your own profile and your own customizable page. (Mine is still boring because I haven’t modified it yet.)

You begin with one default “friend” (just like with MySpace), and of course you can add friends over time whose avatars will appear in the friends box.

In addition to a profile page, you also have:

• a gallery where you can upload images of your designs
• a blog, and the ability to add other blogs to your favorites list or browse recent blog entries
• a place to view streaming video related to jewelry making, and to add your own video stream (from a source like YouTube)
• access to the forum and chat
• a place to post ads to sell your wares
• groups you can join or create
• a collection of jewelry-making polls to participate in - or create your own
• and several other interesting things, including a planned “MCtv” page where you’ll be able to view video channels devoted to jewelry making and metal arts.

As you can see, there is a lot there already, and more unique services are planned. If you’d like to give it a try, and find out what the Metalchasers future holds, click here to sign up!

Ellia of greenbean baby art has taken the time to write up her recommendations for finding success with an Etsy shop - and they’re very informative (thanks Ellia!). I posted briefly on this topic not long ago, but from the perspective of someone who has no experience, yet, selling there. I plan to open an Etsy shop once I get most of the work for my new books completed, which should be within a few months.

I still have my own stand-alone e-commerce site, which I will keep - but with Etsy’s seemingly reasonable fee structure, and its hightened degree of popularity over the past couple of years, I think it makes sense to open up there.

I’ll keep a log of my experiences, and we’ll see how it goes!

I recently wrote up a review of The Bead Spinner, a tool I find to be a little challenging to master, but otherwise helpful. One of its limitations is that it requires use of a needle for stringing beads. So, if you normally string with beading wire like SoftFlex or Beadalon, you’re out of luck.

But wait . . . The Beading Gem’s Journal has alerted me to the existence of a needle accessory offered by SoftFlex called Speeder Beader. Apparently, it’s a sort of “slip on” needle for SoftFlex wire.

According to Soft Flex:

The Soft Flex Speeder Beader makes threading Soft Flex or Soft Touch beading wire fast and simple. Push Soft Flex or Soft Touch beading wire into the pan at a 30-45 degree angle. The pan will guide the wire into the hollow part of the Speeder Beader. Beads slip over the Speeder Beader and onto your wire quickly and easily.

Now, this is a straight needle, so if you prefer to use a curved needle with your bead spinner, you may not care for it. But if you’re O.K. spinning with a straight needle, it might be worth a try.

You’ll need to purchase the correct size Speeder Beader needle to match the size of Soft Flex you use - and if you purchase more than one size, be sure to keep them organized so that you’ll know which needle is which.

I’m going to pick some up for a review and see how they “play.” (Stay tuned.)

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.