Bead on a Wire Blog

First, I finished and shipped the Elizabeth bridal set this week. I really hope the bride is pleased with her custom bridal jewelry. Here’s the finished necklace.

Second, remember the key fob bracelet that I made for my sister a few weeks ago? She likes it so much that she sent an email to all of the ladies that she works with and generated four orders for me. One has since canceled her order (no reason given - no worries, that’s her prerogative), but three custom orders is still pretty good! I am waiting for supplies to arrive and then I will make and ship them to my sister to hand deliver at her office.

Third, my mother and I are working on a cross-promotional package to be listed in both of our shops. I have made a beaded tea infuser for breast cancer awareness (I have one made, still need to photograph it. And I need to get more of the pink ribbon charms to make more so that we each have one in stock for our individual listings). She has a tea for the same. So we’re going to each create a listing for a combo of the tea and infuser and we will donate 10% of the profits to the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute. We think it will make a great gift for a woman who is dealing with yucky treatments for breast cancer.

My dear husband bought some regular Dawn dish soap the other day. He was hilarious in the retelling of the search for it because apparently there are so many super powered versions of Dawn now that he despaired of finding the good old regular kind.

And so, with Dawn in hand, I set the tumbler to tumbling last night with nothing in it except for the mixed stainless steel shot, water, and a squirt of the Dawn. I had read that it was best to clean the tumbler before using it to actually clean your stuff. Funny.

The tumbler swirled around for about 90 minutes last night while we watched Survivor and I did other things. When I went to bed, I turned it off for fear of the machine “walking” off of the ledge that I have it sitting on (it is quite deep) or leaking of the soapy water onto my craft table. When I emptied out the sudsy water this morning it was the color of urine. Interesting. Yellow was not what I was expecting.

I refilled it with the shot, water, and soap and set it to tumble again before I attempted to tumble anything. A couple of hours later, more yellow water and suds came out. The next refill included my wedding rings - a couple of hours later they came out with less yellow water and suds and super sparkly.

I like this.

Hub said, “I don’t think that’s how they clean it at the jewelers.” To which I replied, “But it’s cheaper than the jewelers.” No further argument.

While the rings tumbled themselves clean, I worked on my sister’s bracelet-key fob. Here is the finished item with which she seemed pleased when she saw the pictures and has already purchased!

If you’re a reader like me, then you also like interesting bookmarks. There’s no need to dog-ear those beloved pages when you can adorn your book (even a ratty paperback) with something pretty.

You can find bookmarks of all kinds in my Etsy shop. Below are a few examples of what is available: