Woodland Winter Ornaments

Hello friends - it's a quiet Friday night at my house. We have been working our tails off this week getting all your orders out. Just a few left to send out tomorrow and then the rush is done. It's time to relax, to make gifts, to finish decorating, to enjoy a few treats and most importantly to spend time together.

I always feel like my Christmas celebration starts Christmas Eve and goes through the week after Christmas. That's when life slows down enough for me to catch my breath. When I let wonder wash over my weary soul. It's the time when I stop and listen instead of rushing. It's my time to reflect and dream of the year ahead. I let the weight of winter settle in and enjoy the call of ancient times that the winter solstice brings.

The busy, crazy days before Christmas fly by in a buzz and I enjoy the anticipation but the stress of preparing can be draining. So I eagerly look forward to the quiet and rest after the celebration is over.

But for now, I'm a whiz of an elf. Making things from morning until night with lots of fun side projects sneaking into my daily to-do list. One such project were these fun ornaments that I created for our tree.

The painted wooden pendants are from Summer Wind Arts, a little gift to myself last month. I paired them up with my tiny snowflake beads, which have been a favorite of mine this season. 

I brought in a little more color with waxed linen in green, English cut glass and brass electroplated hematite. They remind me of cozy, knitted sweaters for some reason. 

This little guy, in an action shot.

My beloved snowflake beads.

Being a Michigan girl, I've always loved snow and snowflake patterns. This year we are enjoying a green Christmas. After two very rough winters, I'm cool with this. I'm sure it will snow soon enough. A white Christmas does holds it's own kind of magic, but a late snow in the season is just as beautiful and inspiring. 

I'm off to create for the rest of the night, I have some special gifts to make for the girls on my list. How are your gift-making adventures going? Are you done yet? 

Have a great weekend!  

Pinning You a Merry Christmas

Do you sell jewelry online? Have you created a Christmas or holiday pin board featuring inspiring images and your your jewelry? You should. Like today! 

Here are a few different holiday pin board ideas

• Pin holiday images and your jewelry that fit your brand (like my goregous nature-inspired Humblebeads Christmas board.)

• Pin holiday outfits and your jewelry. You can find outfits on Pinterest or create some on Polyvore. You can name your board Holiday Style or Holiday Outfits. 

• Create different types of holiday gift guides and include your jewelry. Like a Stocking Stuffer Gift Guide or a Gift Guide for Nature Lovers or a Gift Guide for Sisters, etc. Include items that compliment your brand that would fit in the gift guide. These are fun to make! 

• Create an all handmade gift guide featuring your favorite makers and your jewelry. Or create a holiday gift group gift board with several different types of makers. 

• Niche holiday boards - have jewelry that fits a certain niche? Create a board just for it. I did this with my pet holiday ornaments and we created a cute board that mixes the ornaments with adorable holiday pets in the Paw-fect Holiday board (warning: cute overload!). 

Once you have your boards created, share them on Facebook, Twitter, and in your emails that go out to your customers. You can also create contests and encourage your social network to pin your images to win a gift certificate or prize. 

Keep a good ratio of other pins mixed in with your jewelry and try to capture a feeling or mood in your boards instead of just going to town pinning whatever - be a good curator and give your followers high quality images and content. 

Know your audience and get creative with your boards. This board is more crafty than ones that feature my jewelry because it's more geared towards makers and those who would be interested in my beads.

Increase Your Views: 
You can use #hashtags to help increase your chances of being picked up by Pinterest's search. Make sure they are relavenat and only use 2-3 hashtags. If you include the price on your items they will show up in the Pinterest Gift Category.

Best time of day to pin? 9pm -1am. We all must lay in bed and scroll through Pinterest trying to fall asleep. I thought that was just me!

Images that are vertical get repinned more often. As always, make sure your jewelry photos are top-notch and pin-worthy!

Giveaway:
So your assignment - create a holiday pin board with your jewelry. Go on, promote your work in clever and fun ways - it's good for you.

Black Friday Dilemma

Okay, so I have been thinking, pondering, mulling it over and I'm pretty sure I'm 100% anti-Black Friday. And super anti-Black Friday for those poor folks that have to work on Thanksgiving. I mean I like deals and bargains and a good hunt, but at what price is the deal costing other people?

I like to live in a world where stores are closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm an old-fashioned mid-west girl. I live in a town where the stores downtown close at 7 pm on weeknights and you have to drive to the next town to see a mall.

I want small events in artist's studios and shopping at local artists markets. I want to shop downtown and support all those hard-working mom-and-pop shops that make up the landscape of my beloved home town. I want to shop online with my friends and artists that I have been admiring all year.

But I'm also a business owner and have a family to take care of and know that everyone is getting ready to buy gifts and make gifts and start the whole shopping frenzy. I love that that my business helps those who want to buy handmade and honor small businesses. I love that I have a business that encourages creative folks to make gifts for the holidays. It's all great stuff and I'm a holiday nut and love celebrating the holiday season.

So my dilemma, I've decided to not offer a Black Friday-Cyber Monday sale. I've decided to offer my big holiday special early and have came up with a plan for December that makes me happy and ready to pull out a candy cane and hot cocoa!

Humblebeads Holiday Specials:

The Big Sale! 

My big pre-holiday sale is the return of the biggest deal I offer. This is super limited, only 8 are in stock. Like the image says, it's a 1/2 off voucher that you can use right away! Grab yours right here, right now!

Item of the Week:
Starting Monday every week until January, I will send out an Item of the Week email with a special item that will be on sale. There will limited quantities for the item of the week. Email subscribers may find exclusive bonus coupon codes throughout the holidays. Don't miss out!

Subscribe to the Humblebeads email list - the bead emails will include free projects, biz tips and all the good stuff I have always offered.

Subscribe to the Humblebeads Jewelry email list - look for gift guides, gift-wrapping ideas and fun ways to celebrate the season.

Rewards for Repeat Customers
If you are a repeat customer, you'll find little coupon codes to use for December included in your orders.

Events:
December 6th - Humblebeads Holiday Trunk Show - This will be a private invitation only event in South Haven. If you live near me, know me and want to attend, send me a quick email for details.

December 10th & 11th - Humblebeads Online Trunk Show - This will be a one-of-a-kind, sample and overstock sale in a private Facebook group. You'll find jewelry, bead grab bags and more during the event. Details will be posted later this weekend.

Giveaway!
I am going to pick a random email subscriber from both my bead and jewelry email lists for a $50 holiday shopping spree. You have until Sunday at midnight to subscribe.  You may subscribe to both lists to double your chances of winning. Winners may redeem their gift certificates at either my bead or jewelry website.

Okay - candy canes ready - let's enjoy a less crazed, much happier holiday season this year!!!

All is calm, all is bright...a humble holiday

Wishing you a celebration filled with peace, joy and love.

Crocheted Ribbon Gift Packaging

I've been a crocheting fool lately, making scarves and cowls for Christmas gifts.  Being a jewelry designer and a family of mostly girls and women, I give quite a few pieces of jewelry during the holidays too.  For my smaller gifts I've been crocheting 'ribbons' to embellish printed craft paper.  (The craft paper is a dollar store find!) 

 This is a simple single chain crochet using a sparkly silver cotton thread and a small hook.  (size b)

 The larger present I used a larger hook (size f)

The tags are stamped with a few of my favorite themes and a holiday messages.  A little sprig from our evergreen tree adds a festive touch.  (Wait the day of the gift-giving to add the greens.) 

My assistant Antoinette and I have been putting together the mother of all Holiday Pinterest Boards.  It's amazing and you should go check it out right now!!!  I will be posting round ups of my favorite holiday ideas all week. 

Gift Tags from the Graphics Fairy 

These are a beautiful alternative to stamped tags and ones I plan on using too.

Holiday Prep: Cookies, Pomergrantes and Crocheted Snowflakes

A few snap shots from Instagram.
Cookies made and ate - check.
Perfect tree found and imperfectly decorated - check
Enjoying the start of winter and the beauty of nature - check
Sampling the tastes of the season - check
More decorating and gifts to make this weekend - check and check

Those cookies on the bottom right are so yummy and not too bad for you! Prepare a Betty Crocker Gingerbread Cookie mix with a 1/2 cup of canned pumpkin instead of butter.  Add a little bit of frosting on top and a dried cranberry.  They were scarfed up in moments at my party last weekend!

Let's talk pomergrantes - they were a new to me food last weekend.  So with a little help from my Facebook friends and Pinterest I gave it a try.  Yum, you need to go pick one up today.

Here is an easy way to get the seeds from a pomagrante.

Three tasty pomegranate recipes to try:
Roasted Delicata Squash Salad with Pomegranate (I might skip the greens and eat this as a side dish)
Chocolate Pomegranate-Ginger Bark
Pink Swirl Meringues with Pomegranate Sauce

You are digging the crocheted snowflakes, right?  Me too! My mom showed me how to make them a few weeks ago.  I barely know how to crochet, so I can't offer much advice other than find someone to teach you! Looking for snowflake patterns - here you go. I'm going to make my collection into a garland to hang in our dining room windows.

This weekend I'm looking forward to decorating the rest of my home for the holidays.  Making jam and crocheting with my mom for the weekend.  We are going to watch Christmas movies, drink coffee and tea and find a little peace and joy from now until Monday. 

What's on your plate for the weekend?  Whatever it is, take time for you and just being with the ones you love. 

Ornament Blog Hop

Welcome today!  I'm hosting an Ornament Blog Hop on the Art Bead Scene and wishing you peace and joy during this holiday season. 
 
We love making ornaments in my house.  In fact, we make it a party every year!  My tree is decorated with treasures we've made through the years and I love giving ornaments as gifts.  I've been making ornaments every year since high school, although most of the early ones have disappeared.   When Jess and I first got married we would pick a theme for our tree every year and make crazy artsy ornaments together.  We still make ornaments although our tree has morphed into a hodge podge of anything woodland. 

Which brings me to my ornaments for the hop, these woodland inspired birds. At a local craft show this year I happened upon a talented Michigan ceramic artist who had these beautiful bird ornaments.  As soon as I saw them I know they would make amazing gifts this year with just a little extra work put into them.

I paired these up with lampwork and polymer disk beads.  Wire and seed beads were fashioned into a clever hoop for hanging on the tree. The lampwork is from Sue Beads and the polymer clay are Humblebeads, of course!

This is a great way to use up orphaned beads, embellish simple ornaments to create a treasured new piece to add to your collection!

I'd like to invite you to visit the other particpating creative artists who have made ornaments today.  Fix yourself a cup of cocoa, turn on some holiday music and enjoy:

 

Click here to see more ornaments!

Limited Edition Pet Ornaments

Deck the halls...

So after I was playing around with woodland ornaments the other day, I was struck by the genius idea of pet ornaments.  Because uh, hey that's a whole lot of cute and I'm on an all-cute-all-the-time kind of holiday diet at the moment!

Westie, Scotty and Schnauzers Dog Ornaments

I started out with a few pets that were part of our family and then I shared them on Instagram and Facebook and you all know how we love our pets!  So I had lots of ideas requests and ideas rolling around and photos being shared that inspired some of my collection.

 Pug, English Bulldog and Boston Terrier

 Pit Bull and Lab

 Yorkie, Beagle and Doxie (Dachshund)

 Kitties!

 There was a request for a lop eared bunny, how could I pass that up!

And then I thought, oh well why not have a few ways these can be customized, like a name or year or holiday saying.

 Or even one painted in the same colors as your furry friends.  This is my little Oliver. 

It's been interesting to learn about the different breeds. I have a German Shepherd and a few other cats coming soon.

This shows the size difference from the little woodland ornaments.  The pet ornaments are just ornaments where the other ones can also be pendants.

You can find all these sweet holiday goodies in my Etsy shop. They are made to order and you'll need to order before December 15th to get these before Christmas.  I can't accept any more requests for breeds or any customizing other than a name or coloring.