The Birds and the Beads

With autumn around the corner, and my leaf beads recently featured in a project, I thought it might be prudent to create several different assortments of these colorful, seasonal beads to make it easier to try them out. And in the process of photographing them (and my project), I rediscovered an old gadget.

A few years ago, I bought one of the complete bead-photography sets from Table Top Studio, and it came with this lit flat panel that you put your beads or jewelry on top of for photographing, so that your pieces are lit from the sides, top and bottom. Long story short – I never could get a good picture from it with my old camera, and it has been collecting dust next to the fax machine for the past few years.

Armed with my new camera, I dug it out last week and gave it a try, and doesn’t it look great with glass? The last few pictures here on the blog (all with these leaves) look like they’re glowing. Which they are – because the beads are lit from the bottom! It won’t work with everything, of course, but I am loving the effect with glass.

Back to the beads – the new mixes can be found here:

• 11mm x 7mm Leaf Beads
• 14mm x 10mm Leaf Beads

Today I received my first lesson in DRUPAL from my live-in Drupal Ninja. Lest some (I’m looking at you dear Mona) think my hubby is some kind of black belt in the martial arts, a Drupal Ninja is a title that those with the most geek cred (skill) in the content management system Drupal may claim for themselves.

Okay – all that probably made very little sense unless you, yourself, or someone close to you works on content management and the web. So let me put it another way… Today was the first step towards a new Lytha Studios. Eric and I have great plans of upgrading the website to a much more flexible and dynamic system. Eric has the skill, but I need to understand how it will work, too. And I’m on the way! This has been planned for about two years now, so it was a great feeling to take that first step. With a site the size of Lytha Studios, it is going to be an intense project. I hope that we’ll be able to launch it early next spring.

Vintage look lovers – get ready for excitement this fall! I have had definite confirmation that TierraCast is going to be adding many of their most popular pieces in BOTH an antique brass finish and a gunmetal/black oxide finish. This has been on the drawing board for a while, but it has gone beyond the drawing board – inventory is in production! No release date yet other than “this fall”. I’m excited… how about you?

My Website is, of course, my primary focus, and my primary sales venue. But I’ve slowly building an Etsy store and customer base, and I couldn’t resist posting a screenie of, and a brief “hurrah” for tonight’s total sale count – exactly 999.

And so, HURRAH! And seriously – THANK YOU Etsy customers.

I found the coolest website tonight. I’d heard of it before, but never cared enough to go there. I should have – I’ve been missing out! The site is:

• #!etsyhacks

Etsy sellers – if you haven’t gone to this site – go there now. Seriously. It is full of wonderful tools to improve your Etsy selling experience I’m sitting pretty tonight with a customized printable Etsy invoice, and a vastly improved Etsy store management and navigation system. Love it!

Somebody got a new digital camera for her birthday this year (me!), and it is about darn time too. I’ve been using a 4 mega-pixel camera that I bought about five years ago, for, well, five years. Technology has been steadily improving, but yours truly has been living in the past. That is, until now.

My gorgeous new Sony Cybershot H20 arrived bright and early this morning, which was a real treat as UPS usually comes at the end of the day and I’ve been steadily working myself into an impatient froth since Sunday when I added up my birthday gift certificates and placed the order. I was a good girl, however, and filled all my orders before I did much more than drool over it, and have only now started to really play with it. I LOVE the results I’m getting. My crystal pictures are coming out so sharp they almost hurt to look at (it is a pain I can live with, though)!

I mean, just look at these 12mm Swarovski “graphic” beads — 12mm!

I’ve got an incredible backlog of inventory waiting to be photographed (this camera has been in the works for a few weeks, and has been a convenient reason to put off photography) so look for lots of new goodies, soon!

The last of the Sweet Potato casserole has been eaten, the left-overs containers are mostly empty, and our tummies are starting to return to normal – but it was a goooood Thanksgiving!

I’m back in the office today – getting geared up for the last big push of 2009. This month is always so exciting – between the crazy busy work schedule, and the fun of getting ready for Christmas – this month has no down time until we sit down for Christmas dinner! I joke about how much I dread the December rush for pretty much the other eleven months of the year, but the truth is – I love the non-stop excitement that this month holds.

But to get back to the point of the post… in lieu of “beast blogging” – I wanted to share instead a few gorgeous photos that Eric took this week of the setting sun over White House Creek (a little tributary off of the Rappahannock a few miles away from the shop). As a bead person, I love color, and the beautiful shades and hues of the sunset in these photos speaks to something deep in my heart. I hope you enjoy them, too!

More photos after the jump…

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One of my most favorite craft blogs is “Make It” – a blog I discovered seven or eight months ago after the author (who is also a customer) linked back to my web site. Since then – I haven’t missed a post!

Shannon, a print artist and budding soap maker, has been chronicling the building of her craft business in her open and insightful blog. Not only does she share her own experiences, but her blog is full of tips and suggestions, links to articles and stories, and is full of ideas on how to use new media, alternative venues, and social networking to create a customer base and community good-will.

I started Lytha Studios in 1996, and like an old dog trying to learn new tricks, I find it challenging sometimes to expand my frame of reference beyond the methods I used in the late 90’s to run an online business. “Make It” has been a wonderful resource for me as I have been working to expand the way I operate.

“Make It” is a fantastic blog – go have a look!

April was something of a monster month for us. I imagined myself writing this post on May 1st, as April’s bumps and bruises were put away, but then work, family, pets, play, and life got in the way and now it is two weeks later. So let me try again — Good Bye April. Hello May!!

So far May has been blissfully sweet – the calm after the storm. All three of us are healthy (and all at the same time no less!). There is a new tankless hot-water heater in the utility room, and various other plumbing updates have been made (don’t ask!). Indira is back home safe and sound (look for more about her adventures in an upcoming post). And currently I am spending my afternoons getting ready to launch the new TierraCast® summer 2009 line on the Web site (more about that coming soon too!).

I wanted to end this post with a charming story that came across my desk a few weeks ago, about a rescued Greyhound named Jasmine, who went on to become a foster mother of animals of all sorts at the wildlife shelter that rescued her.

Jasmine, the timid, abused, deserted waif, became the animal sanctuary’s resident surrogate mother, a role for which she might have been born. The list of orphaned and abandoned youngsters she has cared for comprises five fox cubs, four badger cubs, 15 chicks, eight guinea pigs, two stray puppies and 15 rabbits.

I highly suggest reading the whole of Jasmine’s story and looking at some photos that are too beautiful not to be seen.

Happy May!
– Erin

With the economic situation in the United States (and round the world), I’ve gotten many e-mails of late asking if I couldn’t add a first class option to the shipping menu. Well – I hear you, and I commiserate, and I’m ready to give it a go.

First Class shipping is now available on all domestic orders for a flat rate of $2.95. If you’d like to use First Class for your order, select it as your choice from the pull down menu on the shopping cart, and then click the CHANGE button. If you don’t click the change button, it will not update your choice.

Priority Mail remains a flat rate of $5.50 for domestic orders regardless of order size, with free Priority Mail shipping for all domestic orders totaling over $150.00.

My apologies to our international customers – these rates apply to USA bound packages only.

I’ve had a lazy January – I’ve kept up with filling orders, and e-mails, and done not much else. It has been heavenly – lots of reading by the fire, lots of playing with the animals, lots of Battlestar Galactica (had to catch up on the old episode before the series started up again last Friday), a cold (not so heavenly) and a birthday.

But laziness wears thin after a time, and I’ve been itching to get back into the swing of things – making jewelry and tutorials, working on new items for the website, and oh yes – getting back to the blog! So – I’m “back to work” with a new project up shortly, beast blogging in the next day or three, and the new Winter 2009 “Story Teller” collection from TierraCast debuting this weekend.

Hope everyone had a Happy New Year. Here’s to 2009!

We will be closed for Thanksgiving from Tuesday, November 25th through Thursday, November 27th. Our Friday hours will be very limited. Please order by noon (EST) Monday (at the very latest!!) if you need an order shipped before we close. We have no other scheduled closings before Christmas. (2008 Closing Schedule – but the recipe is still the best!)

Okay – it’s a little corny, but I’m going to post a recipe. It is my favorite Thanksgiving dish, and it far outclasses the classic sweet potatoes and marshmellows version. Seriously – you have to try it! Without further ado, (after the jump) I give you:

Theresa’s Sweet Potato Casserole

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I just finished unpacking our new lighting system – cubes for diffusing light (the 12″ one is pictured), three lighting units, and an underlight.

Erin is doing some photography right now. I cannot wait to see the results!

I’ll let her say more when she is finished playing!

The blog has been slow lately, and will be for the next week or so. Eric and I have been putting in LONG days working on a major website overhaul of the Celtic and Metaphysical portion of the website. The Celtic side of the website has, I say, a “Classic” look to it. Eric puts it differently – “1998 called – it wants its website back!”

So – we’re working on a big update to make it look more like 2008 instead of 1998. We’re never going to have a slick, corporate website (yuck!), but we’re going to have clean, stylish site that keeps the feel (and navigation) of the classic site, with a fresh new look. And style is important, because we have reason to expect an influx of visitors soon who are all about style……. More details on *that* coming soon.

We have been seeing a lot of interest in Marvy LePens lately, which I know makes Erin happy (she and Owen both LOVE their LePens). I don’t know if it is from a general renewed interest in these colorful pens, or if more people simply know we carry them. We were recently featured on the Domino Mag blog “Daily Dose”, so maybe thats part of the reason.

In any case, we’ve been ordering them in ever larger quantities. I thought the array of boxes waiting to be opened and turned into 18-color sets made sort of a fun picture.