Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Give Away Scout

Give away scout is a good website to find out about different blogs and websites that are having a free give away! Who wouldn't want to know about that. Hope you take a look . Have a good week everyone. http://www.giveawayscout.com/

Monday, July 26, 2010

2nd Interview Featuring Hazel the Jewelry Designer




Here is the next interview with Hazel designer of My Gemstone Designs and Big and Beautiful Jewelry, enjoy.




Hello, my name is Hazel and I live in a small town in Wyoming with my husband, three dog's, Fay Fay, Katie and Alex and two fish Lovey and Dovey. I am retired from retail management and have the luxury of working at home doing what I love, designing jewelry. I also enjoy gardening and love growing roses.

Big and Beautiful is a new line of jewelry I started a few months ago for Plus Size women. I read an article about plus size women not being able to find jewelry to fit properly so I decided to create designs and open a shop catering to all those big and beautiful women out there. I hope to fulfill a need and bring some enjoyment to shopping for jewelry. I offer handmade one of a kind necklace's 18-24 inch, bracelet's 8-10 inch and earrings in a variety of styles and sizes. There will be lot's more to come as I have just opened this shop so check back to see new designs. Birthstone bracelet's are coming soon and special order's are alway's welcome.

In addition to Big and Beautiful I have a shop My Gemstone Designs that offer's handmade one of a kind gemstone, crystal and southwest design's. All my piece's are created using genuine gemstone's, swarovski crystal's, turquoise and coral, sterling silver and 14K gold filled bead's and finding's. I also have my design's featured in a local boutique here in town and am happy to say I do very well there.

The handmade jewelry business is a tough place to be these day's with all the competition so you need to work really hard to get yourself noticed. When I started two and a half year's ago I had no clue what I was doing so I learned along the way. One of the biggest thing's for me was learning about SEO. My advice is to read and learn, have quality product, good photo's, description's, tag's and promote, promote, promote to get your name out there. I promote through facebook and twitter and having sales doesn't hurt either. Having a blog is helpful also but I haven't done that yet. Maybe in the near future. Here are my link's if you would like to stop by.
http://www.zibbet.com/bigandbeautiful 15% off store wide thru July 31st.
http://www.zibbet.com/mygemstonedesigns 15% off store wide thru July 31st.
http://www.facebook.com/plussizedesigns
http://www.facebook.com/mygemstonedesigns
http://www.twitter.com/gemstonedesigns

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Coffee Cups






I just worked on some fun coffee cups I had so much fun working on them and they are also scented in chocolate so whats there not to like? I hope you enjoy these little guys as much as I did making them :)

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

First Interview Featuring Princess Chibi

So here is my first feature that I hope to work on once a week with different artist. So here is Princess Chibi enjoy!





Tell us a bit about yourself:

Hello! I'm Shorty Hoshino, head-owner of Imperfect Kawaii/Princess Chibi(etsy). ^_^ I'm a Cali girl who loves making somewhat cute stuff for other people and hope to bring a smile upon their face ^.^!

So what is your shop, all about what do you offer?

Our shop is based on imperfect creations and creatures and things with those "kawaii" like expressions on their faces ^_^ Besides being the head-owner of IK, I'm also the charm maker who makes any creature that comes to mind or take in any request from customers ^.^ I'm also into the Hime-Gyaru (princess) fashion and love to decoden! So we offer variety deco goodies like rings and custom phone cases.

So, describe the process of creating your items: how, when, materials, etc.?

For charms, I sculpt their bodies, baked them, paint their personalities, and glaze them to life. Polymer clay ftw~!

got other hobbies that you love?

O_O I LOVE SHOPPING AND EATING!!! And spending time with my friends and boyfriend ^__^ also enjoy singing in the car x3

In your opinion, do you think there's a lot of competition in miniature food jewelry/accessories?

Hmmm,I'd say so. But hey, I really do look up to other clay artist, A LOT. They're one of the reasons I started out because they gave me an impression that anyone can do it too. The competition doesn't discourage me since I don't produce a lot of items and I mostly take in commissions from people that have seen my work (thankies fans!). I believe everyone has their own style to their work, be it clay or re-ments ^_^

Any advice for people starting out?

It's tough at first, but don't give up! It's all about good photos and promoting your shop!

what are the ways your promote yourself?

I upload some pieces on DeviantArt where all fellow artist and art lovers can browse through them ^__^ and also Twitter. Twitter is very helpful I believe when it comes to selling stuff.

Do you have any promotions going on now?

Teehee, not right now, but very very soon! So here's my bloggy to keep a look out ;] http://imperfectkawaii.blogspot.com

Awesome! Now, other than your etsy shop, what other shops do you like/love?

HAHA, I like/love soooo many!!! Every Etsy shop I've come across, I have loved it. Just love how all these Etsians load up their handmade items and it makes me appreciate it even more like crochet and soap making and candle making and much more ^__^ Etsy has really made me appreciate and long for handmade items.

Okay, last question, where do you see yourself in ten years?

Well, I better be a kickbutt Registered Nurse by then and married to the co-owner of IK :P and hopefully away from my parents. Also, hope to already have created a cure for my puppy to live forever. He's not sick, but I just want him to be immortal and carry on my legacy when I pass away.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Sushi Night











So Last week my boyfriend and I made sushi for dinner, it was a lot of fun. They took a little while to make and to understand what we had to do. But... I think we made too much anyone wanna help us? Its all you can eat! Since you had too much sushi we just freezer till another night. I also showed my boy friend Chris what Chobits was all about what a good anime hehe

Friday, July 16, 2010

Christmas in July at The Candy Shoppe



Come stop by for a big sale event to clear out some older stock. Help me clear it out! :) I hope you enjoy the event its going on till aug. 8th so take advantage of the sale while its here. I also have a lot of supplies that I am clearing out so if you are looking for some odds and ends of miniatures please stop by thank you.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

New Jewelry Sneak Peek






Hi everyone, I hope you are having a really good week. I just wanted all my friends on blogger about a sneak peek of all of the new jewelry coming to my Etsy shop soon. Please enjoy and let me know what you think. There are a lot of resin work this time around too. Here is the link to my Flicker page.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Tips to work with Resin


I wanted to make a post about some tips I have found working with resin. As of late I have been having so much fun working with resin, but when I started I didn't have anyone to help me so I wanted to post some very helpful tips for people just starting.



First off resin is really messy so make sure you work on wax paper,this is the best to work on it wont stick to it. In this photo I'm just using some scrap box paper.

I have found that EasyCast is the best resin to work with it doesn't take too long to dry and doesn't smell so bad, but take a look at the bottles before you buy them, the harder likes to turn an ugly colour or yellow, I find that doesn't matter if you are adding pigment to your resin but if you want it to be as clear as you can get it, you want to take a look at the bottle.

Which brings me to adding pigments I have tried so many different things to add colour and I have found some things that work the best. If you don't want to spend any money and have some soft pastels around they work really well, all you have to do is flake off a little at a time into the resin NOT WITH THE HARDER! the colour wont take if you have the harder added already. Once you are happy with the colour then add your harder. The best pigments to use is the colours made for the resin you are useing, I really mean it you will not get as much bubbles trust me. You can also add other things to resin as well like sprinkles and sparkles or even candy just make sure you add enough to the resin till it is all full of the sprinkles or it will settle when it drys and you will have a gap of just the clear resin which looks a little silly. One other tip with adding lets say a round candy to your mold, add some clear resin to the mold first and let that dry, then add your candy and then the rest of the resin, if you don't and just add the candy then all the resin at once then the candy will sink and may stick out of the resin when it dry.

When mixing the resin always make sure you mix slow this will help with not having so many bubbles. once you have mixed it 2 times its time to pore it into a mold. The only thing that resin will not stick to is silicone so if you can get your hands on a silicone mold it will be really helpful. You can uses others and buy mold release, I don't find that this spray works for me so I just use a very thin layer of vaseline works just as well.

Again with poring you want to be slow so you don't get bubbles. If you do see some in your mold just use a tooth pick to pop them. Now time to set your resin aside.

Here you can see some of the molds I have made with silicone putty made by EasyCast.






I find that if your molds are too big like in the next picture you will always get bubbles no matter what you do.

















Here is also a picture of a cab I made using the soft pastels and you can see how well it turned out.




Now the next thing you want to do is sometimes if you don't pore enough resin in your mold there will be a little lip on the back of your object. The easy way to fix this is just pore a little bit of resin on the back to make everything flat, also a good tip is if you are going to add a ring base or any findings to it the best time would be now resin is the best glue to stick anything to it a lot better then glue out there.


Once the resin on the back is dry flip it over, if you are using a silicone mold the only down side is your object will not look clear like Wall.e here.











Once again the easy fix is more resin. just add a little all round the object like you see here.

I hope my till tip blog entry has been helpful. Please let me know what you think and if you would like me to post more tips working with different materials I would be more then happy to. Looking forward to your feedback.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Requesting candidates for new interview slots



Hi Everyone, I would love to wright an interview on anyone that has an Etsy store, is a crafter in any way or a blogger if you are willing to take part please leave a comment and I will get back to you as soon as I can

Sunday, July 4, 2010

July Giveaway!


This month you could win a new item I have just made! You could be the first to own a Candy Shoppe Ice Cream Necklace This little guy is also scented in chocolate. Good lucky to everyone!

I'm going to go with the simple random giveaway that other people usually host on their blogs. I will be using a random generator to pick the winner. It should be relatively painless ;)

Here's how you can enter:
  1. Visit The Candy Shoppe and comment here with your favorite item for your first post don't for get to leave your e mail so I can contact you if you win thank you.
  2. For 1 additional entry: be one of The Candy Shoppe's Facebook fan!
  3. For another 1 additional entry: be this blogs follower (click the "Follow Blog" button on the right column)
For every additional entry, please write a new comment to let me know what you've done. This way, the random generator will pick up your entries and your chances to win are increased! Does that sound fun or what? :D

This giveaway is open to anyone and everyone (yip yip hurray!) and will end at August 1 2010.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

The Candy Shoppes June Randon give away winner


Thank you to everyone that took part in Junes giveaway. Thank you for taking the time to look at my shoppe and finding what you love best. Junes winner is Edmontonjb.

I will post the new Giveaway on Sunday so you may win next months giveaway. Thank you again everyone.
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