Waste not Want not

Hope those who celebrate Easter had a meaningful weekend and lots of chocolate. To my fellow Jews and anyone else who celebrates Passover, this time next week we will be able to have out toasted sandwiches and pizza!

About six months ago I blogged about not spending anymore money on beads, as I have a huge collection going to waste, and I have stuck to this except for custom orders.

So here are some of the new bracelets I have made this week, using sparkly round cord ,some faux suede cord and large round glass beads. I have to admit that I did buy the magnetic closings for the bracelets.

The faux suede multi-strand was a little tricky as I could not get all the strands in at first. I do think they turned out well. I tried making necklaces in the lilac, black and white, however, they do not lie well, so I have taped them down straight in the hope of getting rid of the curve developed while it was rolled up.

Have a good week all, and thanks for reading.

Knock Knock

Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange ya glad to see me?

This week I look at the colour Orange.
Orange is energy and happiness. To me it represents sunrise and Halloween.  It is usually associated with joy and is representative of enthusiasm, fascination, creativity, determination, success and stimulation.

As orange is part of the red spectrum it can give you the sensation of heat, but because it is also part of the yellow spectrum it is a heat without aggression.
They say that orange increases the oxygen supply to the brain and therefore stimulates mental activity. It also stimulates the appetite similar to red.

It is a great accent colour in clothing and jewelry. It is a colour that represents autumn (fall).
In heraldry is a symbol of strength and endurance. There are 9 countries with the colour orange in their flag.

Dark orange can indicate deceit and distrust.
Red-Orange associates with desire, passion and pleasure, domination and a thirst for action

Here are some of the orange things in Adiesdesigns on Etsy.

Socializing the Modern Way

This year my aim is to move my shop forward, to actually start making money not pocket money.

Last year I started by cleaning up my work space, which went relatively well, the biggest problem I have encountered with that is, I don't always work at my work station, I work in the dinning room, I work in my bedroom, I work in the kitchen, but I don't seem to do much work in my beading area.

In this coming quarter I would like to try focusing on using Social Media to boost my business. The first step to this has been coming back to writing my blog.
Once again Etsy had some great ideas for me to use to boost interest and that was not only using my blog but also my Facebook page and Twitter account.
1. Post to my Adiesdesigns Facebook page at least once a week, not necessarily about the shop or my products, but occasionally something personal, like the fact that my two eldest girls went to the One Direction concert. I did this a while back and it did garner some attention.
2. Schedule your posts, so I found a site called 'around.io' and took up their 7 day trial. They schedule regular posts to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr throughout the day and you can schedule for the future. There cost after that are not bad if you are working in dollars which I am obviously not, but even then it is not terribly expensive. $10 per month or $100 per year and they post about 4-6 times per day. It is something to consider.

Something worked so far because I made more sales this month than I usually do at this time of year and with no new stock, in fact the items I sold have all been in the shop for sometime now. I also received more queries for custom items.

Even if the queries don't turn into sales immediately, the increased interest will help future sales.

I have also had positive feedback from joining nursing groups on Facebook and one such group "Scrubs Magazine" actually published a list of all nurse owned shops on Etsy and shops that feature Nursing orientated products.

The one thing that is certain is that word of mouth will always be the number one marketing tool for any business. If you want to move your business to the next level advertising is a must and social media is the cheapest way to do this.

This next week is definitely going to be a busy one, Passover (Pesach) starts on Friday so I would like to wish my Jewish readers "Chag Kosher L' Pesach" , happy passover every one

 and Happy Easter to those who celebrate.

Red Hot

1. Red - The color that is best associated with blood, fire, war, danger, strength, passion, desire and love.
2. This is an emotionally tense color, thought to enhance metabolism (restaurants are often decorated with red accents), to increase breathing rates and raise blood pressure.
3. Due to it's high visibility red is used in traffic signs and stoplights and on fire equipment. Red is often found in heraldry (coat of arms) as it is used to indicate courage. Approximately 77% of all countries have red in their flags.
4. Red is a good colour to use when you want to draw attention to something like Sale Now On! It can be used to great effect when promoting things like energy drinks, cars, sport and physical activity.
5. It is used when an advertiser want to evoke erotic feelings, red lipstick, red nail polish, red lingerie, valentines day) .
6. Light Red represents joy, sexuality, sensitivity and love
7. Pink is feminine qualities and passiveness also love, romance and friendship
8. Dark Red this is rage, anger, leadership, courage, malice, vigor
9. Reddish Brown is fall (Autumn) and the harvest.

1. Thanks to - www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html
2. Here are some red things you can find in Adiesdesigns.
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and this is just something nice in red!

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It's looming over me

A long time ago, (the beginning of the year) I wrote about the beading loom I ordered right before the postal strike (September 2014) here in South Africa, wondering if I would ever get it.
Well the parcel finally arrived in February 2015 minus the loom, the postal worker who took the loom, however kindly left the instruction booklet behind! They even took the invoice.
The response from the postal worker person behind the counter was, "If it is not insured there is nothing I can do about it".

While waiting for the loom to arrive I in the meantime made myself a small loom, which I promised to write about in my next blog. This is the next blog,

To make the loom I took an old box that had previously held bath salts and lotions and things, to either end I glued 2 cheap hair combs. The first attempt I stuck the combs with the teeth facing up.  This didn't work out too well as the thread kept slipping off.

The second time I turned the combs teeth down, which made a big difference.  I began to bead. I encountered some technical difficulty here as the beads I have are not all the same size and don't all go over the needle. I eventually changed to bigger beads and the loom worked well, then I had to get my work off the loom.  Another technical problem I forgot to watch the you tube video on tying off your work.

The work is better than expected but would definitely be better if I actually had a loom!

Hopefully I will be blogging more often as I have changed jobs and have a more normal life style these days.

Ending off 2014

Hello strangers it's been a while since we visited. 2014 has been a long year with lots of challenges both personal and professional. With the starting of my blog and trying to keep up with making of stock for my shop Adiesdesigns on Etsy.com to the very long and often destructive postal strike (I had to put my shop on vacation for over a month, as I couldn't mail any orders except via exorbitant courier prices), the light earthquake which damaged my house and then the ADSL line going out for a month and my laptop dying.

I have learnt a lot about myself and keeping an online business going, and I want share this with everyone, I would be grateful if you would share your learning with me.
I will be keeping up with my colour blog as this seems to be the most popular posts of all. The colours I have covered in the last few months are listed below along with the title of the blog.
Going back over my past colour blogs I seem not to have covered red or orange, both of which I remember doing, since I have no record of them anywhere on my blog history, I get to do two of my favorite colours again (YAY).
24/7/14 I can almost see the weekend - Yellow
31/7/14 Colour me
7/8/14 No Blues today - Blue
14/8/14 Is it an Indigo sky - Indigo
21/8/14 Purple Haze - Purple/violet
28/8/14 CUA16(PO4)4(OH)842HO what is this? - Turquoise
11/9/14 In colour - Pink
18/9/14 A brown Study - Brown
24/9/14 Shades of Grey - grey
3/10/14 Silver linings - Silver

There are still a few more colours coming, Also I want to explore how to mix colours to appeal to different people, how to speak with colour and what the different colours mean in cultures other than the Western world.
I will of course continue to share with you as I learn new techniques for jewelry making, successes and failures included. I especially would like to learn to make my own beads with clay, even using recycled goods like paper and buttons, wool, felt and old fabric.

There will be special discounts and gift vouchers during the year only for Blog readers (voucher codes will only appear in the blog once) look out for these, shop coupons will be published in the blog as well. Also  hopefully giveaways and competitions for you wonderful people who read my blog.

Just before the postal strike (in August 2014) I ordered a beading loom, which I unfortunately never received (maybe it will still get delivered), so I have decided to try make one. This will be the subject of my first "learning to" Blog for 2015.

Hope you all have a safe and happy ringing in of 2015. Thanks for reading.

Adiesdesigns on Etsy will re open on Jan 6 2015 for shopping.