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!

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...

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS GALORE

We have continued to work hard to build our inventory in order to provide a plentiful selection of Christmas presents.  I know as the holiday season starts to rev-up, the Scrabble bracelets and frames on our shelves will quickly diminish.  That's good.  We want them to sell - of course, but then comes the pressure to try to keep up with replacing items that are sold out.  I need to just take a deep breath and do the best I can.  Get the most popular back on as soon as I can and go from there.  We still don't have as many items as I had hoped for this year, but...

..this has been such a crazy year!  It has been difficult to keep everything in order with moving, fixing the house and keeping the business up and running and running well.  Additionally, I have wanted to live a more balanced life, but I also know that the holiday season is probably not a good time to try to read and walk several times a day, keep up with household chores, call friends and family to chat, and start a new exercise program.  Might be a bit much.  

However, I am still trying to find a little balance.  My non-handcrafted business time is basically spent on household chores.  That's okay for now.  We try to watch some funny shows and movies in the evening to alleviate some of the stress and intense focus we experience during the day.  The Big Bang Theory is one of our favorites.  Here is a short clip from the show.  If you haven't had a chance to watch the show, it's hilarious.   

The new year will allow us to take stock, plan for the upcoming year and thankfully, we won't be moving next year!!  Yippee!!

A quick note about the supplier issue I talked about last time.  (Do other people have these same issues?  Sometimes, when things go awry, I wonder if this is the right thing for me to be doing.  I love making the jewelry and frames, but sometimes it is sooooooo frustrating.)  At any rate, I have now ordered from several different suppliers to see how their seal works.  Meanwhile, our good seal is quickly running out.  Not a great time of year for that to happen, but I will just take a deep breath and do the best I can (my current phrase of choice).

So, I thought I'd share some of our Christmas jewelry and I just finished a couple of our Santa art frames.  We put the frames up each year around our house with family pictures and pet photos.  Fun and colorful.  

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Bracelet

Hark the Herald Angels Sing Music Scrabble Bracelet

Vintage Santa Art Bracelet

Nativity Scrabble Bracelet

Snowman Pendant

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Pendant Set

Vintage Santa Art Frame

  

UPCYCLED JEWELRY / Boston Terrier Domino Bracelet

We started to make a new type of upcycled jewelry.  It's always something to go through an initial development phase.  Creating and trying different things.  We tried different seals, different adhesives and in the end we went with the one that takes longer to make, but the final result is so much better.

So...what is this new piece that we have created?  It's a fabulous chunky bracelet made out of upcycled dominoes!  The bracelet we just released is a Boston Terrier bracelet.  It has different Boston Terrier vintage images on it - six to be exact.  The color is bright and vivid.  We are pleased.

We have only the one at this time, but now that this one turned out so well, we plan on making more.  Let's see...what should be next?  We'll have to think about that.  Maybe we could make a couple.  We'll see how it goes.

For now, here is the new Boston Terrier upcycled domino bracelet!

Boston Terrier Upcycled Domino Bracelet

Boston Terrier Bracelet

Boston Terrier Bracelet

Anne of Green Gables / Poetry / Book Lovers / Quotes Bracelets

We have been so busy!  We got through the taxes and they will be filed shortly.   We continue to try to catch-up from the holiday season.  We have almost all of our upcycled Scrabble bracelets made.  We still have to work on our vintage frames.

We have created a couple of new Scrabble bracelets for book lovers!  That's always so fun.  Two are Anne of Green Gables quote bracelets!  I just love that character by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Anne of Green Gables Quotes Bracelet

Anne of Green Gables Quotes Bracelet

  I also love poetry, so we have created a poetry Scrabble bracelet with images of famous poets:

Emily Dickinson

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Bronte Sisters - Emily, Anne, Charlotte

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

John Keats

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Famous Poets Bracelet

And for people who love Jane Austen...a quotes Scrabble bracelet just focused on her, as well as several pendants. 

Jane Austen Quotes

And there are always our popular Banned Books Scrabble bracelets based on our freedom to read.  It is so much fun to come up with this Scrabble jewelry that will hopefully please the book lovers out there!

Banned Books Bracelet

 Well, spring is on the way!  Flowers are starting to bloom, birds are singing and we're creating.  What could be better.  

New Year Organizing

It’s the New Year!  We got through the holiday season – as busy as busy can be!  We now know what is possible during the holiday buying season and look forward to upping our inventory for next year.

But…for the past few weeks, we have been catching our breath, organizing and doing some listing on our other site Vintage Antique Lane.  We love Paws In Time and creating upcycled art, Scrabble jewelry and our vintage art dog frames, but we needed a little break and we also love searching for vintage and antique treasures, so between those two passions, we are always creating, learning, searching.  It’s great exercise for the brain!

With regards to our organizing, we have created an Excel sheet on the computer that tells us how many Scrabble bracelets, Scrabble pendants and dog frames we need to make a week in order to have the inventory we’d like to have by the next holiday season.  As we record sales and production each week, we can see if we are on track, if we need to make extra the following week or if we need to adjust our projections because it’s just not humanly possible keep up with the production schedule we’ve set.

That’s the logical, time management part of the business - knowing that we have to have a production schedule.  We have to have a plan.  Hmm…what about creativity?  What about not making this so much “work” that we don’t enjoy our handcrafted business.  That’s where we had to (have to) find balance.  We’ve also created a daily schedule that allows us to have time to do our Tai Chi and walk the dogs in the morning, time to list some vintage treasures on our vintage site,  a little bit of down time to just “be” and on the Paws In Time handcrafted business side the schedule we need to make this little handcrafted business of ours our livelihood. We’ll see how it goes.

Next week is our first real week of trying the schedule out.  We know we'll still need flexibility because, after all, life does happen.  That’s why we’ve left some room in our production schedule.

I admit that what really gets me excited is creating!!  Now that the planning is somewhat in place, I'm looking forward to getting back to that.  We’ve already released Marilyn Monroe and John Keats Scrabble bracelets,

as well as replacing some of our most popular like our newer Star Trek Bracelet that says, “BEAM ME UP” on the inside, our French Bulldog Bracelet and Banned Books.

We’re off and running in the New Year, we just don’t want to run so fast that we miss all the scenery along the way.

Happy New Year everyone! 

This Handcrafted Life

Our handcrafted journey continues into the holiday season.  We are so grateful that our SCRABBLE JEWELRY is so well received, as well as our DOG FRAMES.  It definitely keeps us hopping in order to create what we hope are some cool Christmas gifts! 

Louisa May Alcott / Little Women Bracelet

Boston Terrier Dog Frame

 In our last blog, we wrote how we hoped to keep some balance in our lives this Christmas season.  Have we?  Well…it’s Sunday and we got our shipping ready to go, figured out what Scrabble bracelets to work on the next couple of days, and I’m writing this blog.  Hmm…doesn’t sound very balanced. 

However, we did go get our Christmas tree at a local tree farm.  Love the smell of a Christmas tree in our house.  We also got some Christmas decorations out, so we did take some time for ourselves, and our handcrafted work will continue tomorrow.

This was our first year really working at this handcrafted business and actually it was only a partial year.  It will help us to figure out next year’s holiday season, as well as the rhythm of the year’s work.  We’re keeping track of how many Scrabble bracelets and frames we’ve been selling  to give us an idea about next year (as long as what is popular now is popular next year -another variable to consider).  We created our own computer worksheet to keep track of our inventory and sales because we didn’t find anything online that really did what I wanted it to do.

I have to say though that I’m looking forward to sitting after the holiday season is over, so we can look at those records and plan for next year.  I’m big into plans and this past year has given us a good foundation to work with, so we will plan, and hopefully next year will be even better.  But, I am also looking forward to taking a week or so off at the end of December…to relax…and sleep…and read…and relax…and sleep.

But for now, as Thanksgiving has just past, we are reminded how very thankful we are for our family, friends, customers and this handcrafted business that we have built up and all the creative ideas we've been blessed with.

Now, it’s off to sleep to be well-rested for another whirlwind week.

Ballet Scrabble Bracelet