Store stuff: Like Phoebe's Brother

I have rediscovered an old hobby... making candles.  The equipment has changed some in the past thirty years, but it's still as fun as ever.  I'm thinking about switching my shop focus (yes, again) to stained glass and candles.  Why?  Well, with the recession, my sales dropped off sharply.  There's a market for dyed wool, but it's nowhere near as big as the market for artistic glass items and candles.  I want to cast my net as widely as possible.

Now, if only there was some way to guard against my extreme oafishness.  :P

I made my first candle yesterday afternoon after the supplies arrived.  The plan was for a Cranberry-citrus scent and red color.  I'm working away happily, when my daughter came home from school and noticed that the scent I'd *actually* used was "Blueberry Muffin".  Yeah.

Determined to make the next candle "fancy" and see what I could do when improvising (sort of... I'd read about the technique online months ago and wanted to give it a go)  I used a small craft melting pot to make a small amount of orange wax, layering it in a foil-lined bread pan with a layer of white wax.  I let this cool halfway, until it was cool enough to handle, but not stiff yet.  I snipped this into strips with my workbench's kitchen shears, twisted them, let them cool and placed them in my shorter 3" pillar mold.  I then overpoured this with the (corrected) Cranberry Citrus in red.  I was hoping for an orange-cranberry scented candle that looked red with orange peels embedded in it.  It turned out really neat.  Unfortunately my picture of it did not.  The embedded chunks do not look like peels, but the color differences are still there.  Next time I will pour my overpour wax a little cooler to preserve the integrity of the chunks.  I will also take the time to set up my proper photography area.

My third candle is cooling now... a "MP requested" candle in a light blue with "Ocean" scent.  I think the scent is rather gross... it really *does* smell like the ocean.  And if you've ever spent any time walking a beach, with its tangles of seaweed and rotting fish carcasses, the appeal of the ocean is kind of lost on you.  But she finds the notion romantic, so that one's all for her.  I'll be doing the second pour on it sometime later today.

Dyeing and Store Stuff: Come on, it's the teens now.

I forgot to mention yesterday that the prototype for the "Sweetheart Nightie" is finished. Now, if only the Joann Fabrics website people would get off their heinies and MAIL my package that contains not only the zipper for my daughter's sweater (knitting of which was completed late last night) and the lingerie strap parts I need for the slip-dress/nightie, then I'd feel like I could move forward.

We're in the teens people... as in twenty-teens. 2010. We're supposed to have maniacal computers in space-stations ruining our lives. Apparently as a race we can't seem to give up doing that for ourselves. :P My point is though that what should have been two-day priority mail shipping has taken TWO WEEKS, and it doesn't even look like it left their warehouse yet. WTF?

Get with it people. It's well into the computer age, get with the program. My Grandmother handles technological change better than you.

Store Stuff Update: Bing!

Not much going on with the store stuff. Made a few sales, but mostly I've been waiting to do anything with Etsy since I figured out I'm going to try to put together some patterns. I have a rough draft of a sock pattern, and some sweater ideas, so here's hoping I don't procrastinate my way into oblivion.

The secret writing project is still forging ahead. Hubby read a rough draft of the first three chapters and was decently encouraging, to my surprise. He keeps saying the main character is me though, which is exactly the kind of thing I was afraid of, and will make it hard to write love scenes with the main male protagonist later, who is definitely NOTHING like my husband. We shall see.

I want to start putting together some cute jewelry and stitch markers for Valentine's day, but I keep looking for the money fairy to arrive and she's late as usual. Well, not late, just what she does bring has been spoken for through advertising and listing fees. I wonder if there are Bill Gates grants for struggling businesses who use Windows? Heh.

Anyhoo, a Happy New Year to all you folks, and I hope it brings you good things.

Store Stuff Update: Thoughts But No Action

While I've been inspired to do plenty of jewelry and other items in the metal areas of craftiness, I haven't acted on many of them. Mostly, a lot of planning... I can see cutting the metal, soldering it, rearranging pieces and making them fit, all in my head.

A jewelry hobby is an expensive mistress, though. Whether I need to buy materials, or already have the materials, it still makes you want to wince when you cut into a tiny piece of silver sheet that costs over $20 at today's prices. Even materials that can be rescued if it gets screwed up, like crystal beads, are not cheap at initial purchase.

A recent issue of "Jewelry Artist" arrived in the mail, and it has some wonderful articles about soldering and other types of joins. While I didn't care for the endless articles about Jasper (it's not my favorite stone), the construction of the pieces were interesting and informative. It made me think about cutting apart some soda cans just to play with the techniques.

Store Stuff Update: Zilch

Not a lot going on with the store at present, so no real post today. Halloween is just around the corner, but other than running a really LAME ad on Ravelry (I am NOT suited for writing ad copy. I'm really not.) there's nothing exciting happening.

Store Stuff Update: It's Aliiiiiive

As you can see if you're reading this straight from the website, the store is back up. Thanks to everyone who sent notes of sympathy and concern!

For right now, I'm relisting products that expired, and colorways that I've reprised. Home life has been too intense (and my kitchen too filled with food!) for me to enter into any serious R&D at the present time. Nobody wants dye in their meatballs.

I'm still trying to graph price trends in undyed wool. Maybe it's the supplier I use, but they don't seem to have seasonal trends. You would think there'd be a sharp drop in prices right before spring to clear space for new supplies at shearing time, but such is not the case.

In any case, if the US Postal service decides to hike their prices again this coming spring, my prices will also have to climb, since I get slammed at both ends... both buying and selling. Selling is not so big a deal, as people expect me to charge the amount of postage for their item to get to them. The problem comes when I have to pay more to get the raw materials to myself in the first place. It ALL has to be figured in.

Store Stuff Update: Damn Hackers

So my Etsy shop has been shut down for a week or so... this is because at some point my bank account was compromised. From what the support people could tell us, it was unclear whether it was my debit card, my husband's debit card, or my PayPal card that was compromised. So we ended up cancelling them all.

And, without means to pay for shipping postage, I had to shut it down until my new card arrives and gets activated. You can tell the economy is bad when identity theft stoops to people with a credit score as low as mine.

The good news is all the charges were reversed, and the Yahoo account the slime bag used to siphon funds from me is under investigation. I have no idea if they were successful in getting them, but I hope so.