The Penryn Creatures and Other Misc Stuff

I was looking at my “views” the other day in ArtFire and Etsy. My items get five times the views in Etsy than they get in ArtFire.

I don’t participate in forums on either site. I don’t advertise my Etsy or ArtFire stores. Fairly level playing field.

Do views always mean sales? No, but fewer views does seem to mean fewer sales.

My last ArtFire sale: May 2011
My last Etsy sale: August 2011

But I am the eternal optimist.

Do I like the new thing where one-third of your logo is covered up? No. I think making people redo their logos is ridiculous. Move the box that’s covering our logos; don’t tell us to change our logos.

My fave is still my real website where the majority of my sales take place.

Took the train on Tuesday, back into the Bay Area (had some errands to run). It was kind of neat.

Not sure it’s something I’d want to do daily, but it was a nice experience once. For some unknown reason, we stopped over this river for a few minutes:



Plenty of creatures here.






Went blackberry picking the other day. Didn’t pick this one (of course), but had to snag a photo of the pretty colors.



And thistle…



Oh, and here’s me and the back of my R2D2.



Here’s Mom’s Bougainvillea…




And a very tired kitty…




And my darling little Ten-Ten, who will never lose his scaredy-cat sensibilities (he’s behind the table post)…




I’m very excited about the next installment to Bracken Designs… I have a slew of “Stacker Bracelets” ready to be photographed and listed. Yay!

Talk soon!

Finally retired and moved... Check out my latest jewelry creations

Thank you faithful friends for returning to my blog after my long absence.

The move is over (pretty much).

For those who don’t know, I have retired from my day job and plan to spend more time working on my creative endeavors now.

I moved from a city with a population of 450,000 to a town (well, it’s not even a town… and the one next to it only became a town 20 years ago) of 2000.

It’s still going to be a while before I feel completely settled in.

Although I should now have more time to explore some of the other mediums I love (enamel, polymer clay, metal clay, lampwork, etc), I have come to the realization that I just plain old love beads and beading. I love the challenge of finding interesting high-quality components and putting them together in an appealing way.

That being said, here are a few items I made in the past few days (click a photo for more info):









After several requests, I finally got my dangle earring tutorial/kit finished:


Sorry this was such a brief entry, but I am enormously behind on listing, so that’s where I have to put some of my time now.

Talk soon!