Christmas Gift Ideas - Handmade Jewelry - Upcycled Scrabble Tiles

As we move into the Christmas buying season, the Etsy shop has picked up some.  We are excited to have some great Christmas gift ideas for all different interests.  That's one of the reasons we enjoy making the Scrabble bracelets so much.  We have something for gardeners, animal lovers, foodies, dog lovers (of course - our "original" line), music, Christmas jewelry and so much more.  We keep thinking of fun ideas.  Rarely, do we not have an idea for a new bracelet or two.

Gardener Scrabble Bracelet

Bird Lover Scrabble Bracelet

Degas Ballet Scrabble Bracelet

Italian Greyhound Scrabble Bracelet

Australian Cattle Dog Scrabble Bracelet

Then, we have our vintage art dog picture frames.  Now, those truly were the original of our items.  That's where it all began.  I still love making them, and now after making hundreds of bracelets, it's comforting and calming to take a day or two to make frames.  We don't have many for this season, but we'll get inventory back up in the New Year.

Boston Terrier Picture Frame

Sheltie / Shetland Sheepdog Picture Frame

When it comes to Christmas gift ideas, one of the best places we have found for ideas and to share our products is on Pinterest.  I have a personal Pinterest page where I have garden, home and other personal interests, as well as a Christmas gift idea board that my family and friends can check out if they need ideas for me, and they can order most of them right online if they want!  There are so many cool things on Pinterest.  Definitely something to look through if you haven't already.  We have just started to pin our products on our business page.  It can be checked out by clicking here.  It's really great when we run across our products from other people pinning them.  That makes us happy to see.

At any rate, things are doing better for the holiday season.  People seem to be turning to us for some of their Christmas gift ideas.  We'll hope the trend continues on like it did last year and the year before.  Hopefully, everyone remains calm and pleasant, and doesn't get the holiday crankies.  

'Til next time...

Come visit our shop for some cool and original Christmas Gift Ideas!

Slow Start to Holiday Buying Season

It's been a slow start to the buying season.  We've kept track of each week's sales for the past few years, and this year is by far the slowest start.  However, it has picked up the last few days.  We've had more views of our Scrabble jewelry and vintage art dog frames.  Even views had been slow up until then.  It's been an odd season on Etsy.  We were cruising along, but when we were used to sales picking up, they didn't. Scary...to say the least.

At any rate, these things do happen when you have your own business, but it's always disconcerting because we count on holiday traffic to make it through the year and to catch-up on things.  We are confident that sales will continue as they did this past week, but there is always that little worry-bug.

Thought we'd share some of the favorite Scrabble bracelets that people seem to be liking this year:

Anne of Green Gables Quote Bracelet

Thanksgiving Jewelry - Scrabble Bracelet

Greyhound Dog Scrabble Bracelet

Cook's Gift!  Foodie Scrabble Bracelet

Our quote pendants always seem to be popular.  They are so fun to make!  The beads add a little pizazz to them.  We have plain bail pendants as well, but we enjoy embellishing them with the beads.

Jane Austen Quote Pendant - "You Pierce My Soul."

Ralph Waldo Emerson Quote Pendant - "Scatter Joy!"

Our dog items generally do well. 

Dachshund Pendant

Well, that's it for now.  Maybe we'll get so busy that there will be no time to write until after Christmas! 

Christmas Jewelry with Vintage Sheet Music

As a handcrafted business, we are always experimenting with new ideas.  One of the things we're working on this year are bookmarks...for good old fashioned hard copy books.  We read a lot that people think paper books are on the way out, and it makes sense environmentally to produce less in the way of material objects like books.  However, we believe there will always be people who want to hold a book in their hands to read, like to wander through actual bookstores, and there will always be the books already printed.  So, we have enjoyed experimenting with fun Scrabble tile bookmarks.  Next time, we will show you what we have come up with.

For this post, we wanted to share an idea that we worked on the last couple of years and with the Christmas holidays right around the corner, it seemed like a good time to share these.

We use vintage sheet music that is no longer useable due to missing pages, torn, etc. and create Scrabble bracelets out of them.  Sometimes, we make inspirational bracelets that are faith-based, others are just inspirational with words like smile, dance, and play.

The ones were going to focus on today are Christmas song bracelets.  They are so fun!

We use vintage songs that are Christmas carols.  So far for this year we've made three.  We hope to make more, but they are a little more time-consuming because we have to look through all our old music books.


Here are the three we've made so far:

Jingle Bells Christmas Bracelet

This is a Jingle Bells bracelet.  The tiles on the inside spell: WHAT FUN

Santa's Reindeer Christmas Bracelet

 This is a Santa Claus Reindeer Scrabble Bracelet.  It has all the reindeer on the music (except Rudolph).  The inside spells:  DASH AWAY

Christmas Carol Lyric Bracelet

This is the classic Christmas carol lyrics that read, "Peace on Earth.  Good will to men."  This one spells: REJOICE

Just a fun idea for that old sheet music!

Bookmarks next time...

Summer's End

Labor Day is upon us.  It's been a busy summer.  We try to get ahead so we will be prepared for the holiday season.  It's right about now that I start feeling the pressure to have more inventory of Scrabble jewelry and Vintage Art Frames completed for the holiday buying season.  As anyone who has a crafting business knows, it takes a long time to create products.  We hate to lose out on the sales during that time of the year, but we can only do so much, and quite honestly we sometimes need a break from the long hours it takes to get everything made.

At any rate, we had a couple of big orders come in the last couple of weeks.  That was good because with the end of summer and the transition to starting school, it always slows down for a few weeks.  Always scary to see those revenue dollars drop, but at least it is somewhat expected.

I made a set of frames that last few days.  Our frame inventory is quite low and will be limited this holiday season.  I did enjoy making them.  They were a nice break from the Scrabble bracelets.  Even though I love how the Scrabble bracelets turn out, they do get tiring to make at times with the precision that is needed.

Well, the next time I write, it will be September and fall will almost be here.  I do like that our summers here in Washington tend to run into September and even part of October at times with warmer weather and little rain, but the leaves will still drop and the daylight hours will still get shorter.  By October and November the rains will be back and cooler temps will move in.  That's okay though.  I love fall and the start of the holidays season!

Here are a few of the frames that I made last week:

Brittany Dog Photo Frame

Border Collie Picture Frame

French Bulldog Frame

Looking towards the fall, here are a couple of bracelets just for the season!

Fall Leaf / Autumn Scrabble Bracelet

Halloween Scrabble Bracelet

Till next time, we hope you have a safe and fun Labor Day!

Graduation Gift - SCRABBLE Jewelry

Graduation time is upon us!  High school, college, kindergarten...whatever the stepping stone...always a celebration.

My nephew is graduating from college in two weeks.  Hard to believe.  We are looking forward to attending the ceremony.  My two nieces are continuing their college education with a couple more years to go.  I'm always so proud of their hard work.  It has not been an easy journey for all of them, but they stuck with it.  Hats off to them.

In honor of this special time of year, we have created a unique graduation gift - actually a few different styles.  One can even be a personalized graduation gift if desired.

Here they are:

Graduation Scrabble Bracelet

Personalized Graduation Gift Necklace

Graduation Scrabble Bracelet

Graduation Scrabble Bracelet

Congratulations to all 2014 Graduates!

Quarterly Taxes

Wonderful news!  Taxes are all paid!  Done...finished...and off they go.

This is the first year that we paid quarterly taxes.  I checked last year to see if we needed to and, surprise, surprise, it was a bit confusing and we were supposed to pay quarterly taxes last year.  So, unfortunately we got a penalty this year.  Bummer.

At any rate, we have paid our 2013 yearly taxes and our 2014 first quarter taxes.  I feel like a "real" business now.  I've been working at keeping good records.  I have spreadsheets that I enter information into and we use an online bookkeeping service for our Etsy business.  That helps a lot and saves so much time.

Business has been good the last few weeks.  Thankfully, since we needed the money for our taxes.

I do really need to work on our vintage art picture frames now.  Our inventory is down.  That is on my schedule for next week.  I've been trying to work on bracelets about three - four days a week and then one or two days on either the frames, Scrabble pendants or our vintage shop.  It definitely keeps me busy.


We've listed a few new bracelets.  That's always exciting.  We created a Sea Turtle bracelet, a couple of Mother's Day bracelets, and a Wizard of Oz bracelet.

Here is the new Mother's Day bracelet...

Mother's Day Bracelet with Victorian Art

Mother's Day Bracelet with Victorian Art

It was so much fun because we found oodles of Victorian heart postcards and art to use!

Here is the Sea Turtle bracelet...

Sea Turtle Bracelet

Love the blue colors in this bracelet!

Finally, a Wizard of Oz bracelet...

Wizard of Oz Bracelet

Wizard of Oz Bracelet

Until next time...we're off to see the wizard!!

Shakespeare Quotes, Wassily Kandinsky and Beach Bracelets!

It's been a great couple of weeks!  Even though business has picked up again, I was still able to create quite a few new Scrabble bracelets!  That always makes a good week!


Here are four of our new Scrabble bracelets...

Shakespeare Quote Bracelet.  Quote bracelets are always popular and I enjoy making them.  They take more time because the tiles are made differently from our normal image files, but they generally turn out well and people seem to like them.

SHAKESPEARE QUOTE BRACELET

Shakespeare Quotes

Shakespeare Quotes

Shakespeare Quotes

Wassily Kandinsky Bracelet.  Considered the father of abstract art and a modernist.  He was originally from Russia, but spent the latter part of his life in France.  His art makes fabulous bracelets, but I found it was more challenging than some of the bracelets to figure out which beads to use.  You wouldn't think it would be an issue with all the colors he used, but with the nature of the art, it was really east to overwhelm the bracelet with the beads.  In the end, I opted for a nice smooth round black bead with silver spacers.  Nice!

WASSILY KANDINSKY BRACELET

Wassily Kandinsky Bracelet

Wassily Kandinsky Bracelet

Wassily Kandinsky Bracelet

Two Beach Bracelets.  We had fun creating these two beach bracelets.  One with vintage art of different beach scenes the other of seashells from the seashore!  So many fond memories of the ocean beaches!

SHELL BEACH BRACELET

Shell Bracelet

Shell Bracelet

VINTAGE BEACH SCENES BRACELET

Beach Bracelet

Beach Bracelet

More next time....

Anne of Green Gables

Because I love Anne of Green Gables and all her wonderful words (written of course by Lucy Maud Montgomery), we have created several Anne of Green Gables Scrabble items.

I was fortunate to be able to visit Lucy Maud Montgomery's home site and the Anne of Green Gables Museum on Prince Edward Island a few years back.  My mother was out visiting me when I lived in Ohio, and we took a magical trip up through Concord, Massachusetts visiting Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House and Ralph Waldo Emerson's House, as well as others.  Then, we headed north into Canada and up to P.E.I. - a dream come true for me.

Following are links to the Anne of Green Gables Museum on Prince Edward Island, as well as the home site where Lucy Maud Montgomery lived with her grandparents from 1876 - 1911.  There isn't much left at the home site, but it is still worth the visit!  There are placards that describe places around the property and a little gift shop.  Anyone familiar with Anne of Green Gables, will be able to walk around the property getting goosebumps seeing what she saw.

Museum link: http://www.annemuseum.com/index.php

This is a photo I took on our visit to Green Gable Museum on Prince Edward Island

Lucy Maud Montgomery Home Site Cavendish: http://www.peisland.com/lmm/index.shtml

Lucy Maud Montgomery Home Site

Here are some of the Anne of Green Gables Jewelry items we have created:

Anne of Green Gables "Kindred" Scrabble Bracelet

Anne of Green Gables - Prince Edward Island Scrabble Bracelet

Anne of Green Gables Scrabble Bracelet

Anne of Green Gables Scrabble Pendant

Anne of Green Gables Scrabble Pendant

For those who haven't had the opportunity to read the Anne of Green Gables books or watch the movies, here are a couple of links to them if you'd like to check them out.

Next time...some of our new bracelets!