Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Not enough Time

So Sorry I haven't been keeping up, I am working way too much and just not getting anything accomplished other than sleeping, washing the dishes and going back and forth to work. But tonight I got a bit of a break, only had to work until 2 because I did a double shift yesterday so I was able to get some pictures done, Posted this red Lip balm bag and a few other things in my Zibbet shop, after my visit here I am going to try to get a few items listed on my Etsy shop.
My butterfly bag is still sitting on my work space because I still haven't had time to go buy the accent beads I need to finish it, that's aggravating because I really want to finish it up. The good news is my camera has brand new batteries and if the sun will come out just a little bit tomorrow I want to get a picture of my daughters halloween decorating before I go to work. I have a lot I want to do, how much will actually get done? I'm not making any promises.
I want to spend some time while I am in Etsy tonight to shop surf, I have been doing that when ever I can , hearting shops that I find gifts I can buy for Christmas, I have a problem though, When I look at all the shops I find I have an awful lot of handmade soap shops. I love soap!
Problem is there only a few people on my list that I can get it for. I guess I just have to start making more tips at work so I can start buying all kinds of it for me :)
Have a wonderful week and happy creating!

Friday, October 23, 2009

Friday Night

Hey everyone, hope you have all had a great week. I haven't got any pictures to put up tonight, my camera batteries died. Thats to bad cause I could have had some fun. My daughter created a witch crashing into one of the posts on my front porch for a Halloween decorations. It's really cute, hopefully I will get a picture of that before the weather ruins it.
Tonight, well I am still laughing. We needed a snack and my daughter decided to bake. I do not have an electric mixer and manage just fine without it. Well she did not want to stir batter by hand. Let me back up a minute, earlier, she had said to me, mom, I have an idea and it doesn't involve power tools. ( My daughter is always coming up with a project for around the house and has her own set of tools) I want to bake.
Any way she found some recipes that we had all the ingrediants for and started making apple muffins. All of the sudden I hear something electric going in the kitchen so I have to go downstairs to investigate. I kid you not, she hooked a kitchen whisk to her power drill and was mixing muffin batter. I laughed so hard, I would have given my right arm to get that picture and there isn't a usable battery in the house.

On to other things, I am pretty tired tonight, my work schedule has been flipping all over the place because we had someone quit and walk out this week so my boss is trying to cover that gape in the schedule. I have to admit I find it really difficult to always having my schedule flip from dayshift one day to night shift the next then back to days. I can't get into any kind of routine because of the daily schedule changes so it kind of interferes with everything else I am trying to do. My butterfly bag is at a standstill until I can buy the beads I need for my fringing but I am almost done with a red lip balm bag, maybe tomorrow night I will finish it. Have an idea in my head for a choker I am going to try to use one of the black clay roses I made a while back. I am hoping as soon as Halloween is over I can start posting new items especially in my Etsy shop at least every other day, I would love to see some sales start soon.
I think that's about it, I really need to get to bed but wanted to post here before I get into the weekend schedule. Maybe I will make enough tips tomorrow to get batteries. In the mean time have a great weekend!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

More progress


I had the day off today and was still feeling a bit out of sorts. When I have these day's I find the best thing to do is throw myself into what ever beading project I am doing so I got tons of stuff done on this today. They don't call me debsparkles for nothing, I love sparkle and bling and now my butterfly is full of it. I always have just little ends of left overs from one project or another so I use them up by decorating my main projects to get that necessary sparkle. This butterfly is now full of fire polish czech glass beads, a little handful of 3 mm swarovski crystals, some rose quartz and some plain faceted glass not to mention 2 green beads, origin unknown in my wings. Now I really need to get to a bead store because I need more pink and green to incorporate in my fringe and neckchain.
Working tomorrow and Thursday so probably won't get far until Friday with more work.
As a side note, I follow hundreds of blogs just because I enjoy them. If you are following me and I am not following you please send a comment here. I haven't quite figured out how to see if I am following all my followers. Whew say that 3 times fast!

Monday, October 19, 2009

Let's talk Holiday's

Bet your wondering what this butterfly has to do with Holiday's.....Not a darn thing, just wanted to show you what I am working on right now. This bag has a long way to go because it is on the big side, has alot of detail work and need to go shopping to find fringe accent beads to knock your socks off.
Now, I have been spending some time thinking about what I want to do to keep my shops alive on my limited time and make some holiday sales. I know that I recently said that I just really wanted to concentrate on what I like to I think that come the holiday season we have to stock lots of affordable , easy gifting idea type items. I especially think this is true this year. While people are tightening their belts alot, have been for a while, they will still shop for Christmas. They will just be a little choosier on what they are buying at what prices. So for myself, while I will alway's have an amulet bag or intricite cuff or choker in the works, I will try to really put alot of the little items, bookmarks, keyrings, ornaments, in my shops through the next two months.
What are your thoughts on making your shop super appealing for the holiday season?

Friday, October 16, 2009

My house is coooold!


In one weeks time my house has gone from being a little cool but comfortable at night to needing to turn on the furnace and all the critters are protesting. This Milo our cat. My grandaughter went away this weekend and when she packs for a weekend she has to empty her closet and drawers and throw everything on the bed.. Milo appreciated it alot, got in the middle and cuddled down. He usually prefers to be outside prowling at night. Guess he has decided to come in and stay warm and do his prowling during the day.


My bed was made this morning, tonight Morgan climbed up and walked around in circles and with his nose pushed all my blankets, sheets and pillows into a mound then crawled into the middle of it to nap. Now I have to fight to get her off of it so I can remake my bed so I can get in it.


Bailey was curled up in a blanket on the couch until I came out with the camera. He is a really , really smart dog and when he see's the camera he has to pose. This is one of his "aren't I sexy" poses just for the camera!


Alex can't find a way to keep himself warm unless he curls up with Morgan. Usually he is at my feet just the way he is now barking for me to put him in my lap. I find it difficult to work with him in my lap all the time. When I go to bed he will curl right up against me as tight as he can and stay there til my alarm goes off in the morning.

My granddaughters mouse is named cream. Don't ask me why but Cream seems to be having no problems with the colder temps. His house is very comfy with lots of ways to make blankets.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Bye Bye Twitter

I have had a really crappy few day's. I have lost alot of time from work because I have been really sick and medicated to the hilt. My paycheck this week was really short when I really needed a full weeks pay but went to cash it , on the way home, took a hell of a fall. I do have problems with my balance from my disabilities and was not being careful, hit a patch of uneven sidewalk and went crashing down on my knees and a wrist that I used to protect my head from hitting so now I look like I have been totally worked over with a 2x4. Fortunately I am on a 2 day off schedule to stay quiet and work at reducing the swelling in the knees and wrist before work tomorrow. But today was one of those days that I felt no choice but to do something I did not want to do and plain and simple It pissed me off.
I love twitter. I use it daily, I promote, I show pictures of my work and I just like to sit and read other peoples stuff and interact. I will never say it is something I needed for my business because it has been worthless as far as that goes. It was just fun. Anyway....... I stupidly clicked on a dm this morning. It looked legit because the sender was someone I have interacted with many times. It brought up a twitter page telling me I wasn't signed in. I knew I was because I was there checking my messages but thought I had been kicked off somehow and resigned in.
Bottom line it was a phishing attempt in I fell right into the trap. Well I know enough now, when something like that happens to go in and change my passwords, so I did. Then signed out to go on to other things. Later, I went to sign in to Twitter and It told me I was using the wrong password, now mind you I used the new one that I changed to so I went back in and signed in with my old password and it let me in. So at this point I am thinking for some reason it did not go through when I made the change even though it told me it did so I went and tried to change it again . It told me I was using the wrong one. So I went back and forth for a while between passwords trying to see which one they would accept and no matter what I did it told me I was using the wrong thing. So I gave up and thought about it for a while. Since I could not find a way to get help, I don't feel like it was worth being involved in any kind of phishing scam or spam or having anyone trying to get into any of my other stuff, I ended up deleting my account. Not happy about it but felt like I had no choice so just really mad tonight!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A Project!


Good morning everyone, I am super excited about a new project. Last night after I got home from work, I was just relaxing and drinking a cup of coffee while I surfed around a bit. I ran into some information that truly got me going. The Holocaust Museum in Houston is working on an Exhibit to be unveiled in the Spring of 2012. They are creating an exhibit of over 1.5 million hand made butterflies to represent the children lost in the holocaust.
Can you imagine? They are looking for donations of hand crafted butterflies in just about any medium , preferably 2 dimensional. You have to know, to someone like me who loves a reason to make butterflies that is all it takes to get the creative juices flowing!
I know it may sound crazy for me to want to do this what with me being so over loaded right now between work and my shops and Avon and home but this is a challenge I must be involved in. So, the deadline to turn in your donation is November of 2011 , I am going to put my odd seedbeads and rainbow of sequins to great use. I don't know how many I can do but having a full year to do it, I should be able to ship off a nice sized box of butterflies. Sorry, I am truly excited by this challenge. If you would like to read about the museum the website is:
http://www.hmh.org/

Saturday, October 10, 2009

A tour of my Studio


I have been really sick this past week. I have only been to work 3 times in the last seven day's and as lousy as I feel I am pushing myself to get some work done in the studio. I spent some time today trying to think of a subject to blog about because I have neglected it badly this week. While I was thinking I was browsing, I love looking at the pictures of people's studio's. So I decided to be very very brave and give you a tour of mine except for the corner where my bed is because my dogs make it a horrible mess every day! This first picture is at my desk directly in front of me, of course you can see I am starting my own Drugstore trying to beat this mess and right in front is the project I am working on today. I wanted to make a large bag. I am using a large paper towel tube from work to bead on to give the work some support. I like bringing them home from work because they are much thicker and stronger than what we get at home. I don't have this bag completely thought out yet, just know I wanted to make it large so need to spend some time thinking about how I want to decorate it. So lets move around the room a bit, although I keep trying to re arrange it to make it easier to access the things I use the most keep in mind this is the attic in my house with sloping ceilings and decorating possibilities are very limited as is floor space.


The left half of my desk with a container with brown beads and a half done amulet bag, behind that a container of sequins and some half done ornaments.


This is the corner I sit in and make magic, of course I had just pulled the pillow case off of my old back pillow before I decided to take these pictures so just ignore that please!



This corner holds my beads, sequins and beading equipment both the same picture, one with flash and one without.
The corner that holds all the odds and ends I don't know what to do with!

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Who knew

Just getting ready to go to bed when I got this and had to share adding to the Debbie's family saga. This is my brother in law James. Married to my sister who swims with camels'. I know Halloween can be great fun but........Do they have Halloween in DuBai? At least he won't get cold in his out fit.

Their Back

Hi everyone. Today's post is just a kind of catch up the week visit. First of all, the cold weather is starting to hit here in Upstate New York. That means it is time to start adding my sequined ornaments back into my shop. I chose this picture since it is Breast Cancer awareness month but little by little I will add all my different designs in because the Holiday season is the time that I truly sell these. I probably should devote a bit more time to creating some new patterns and stuff, jewelry sales have gotten slower and slower. Any way make sure and take a peak every once in a while into my Etsy shop. I don't think I will bother adding them to Zibbet. Course, I have been slowly adding to my Zibbet shop for a few months now and not had any sales. With my time more limited now I am wondering if the Zibbet shop is worth it but it costs me nothing but time unless I make a sale so we shall see.

This week my grandson brought me home my first school year cold. I woke up yesterday with my throat so sore I could not talk, swollen glands, both my ears hurt. I went to work any way since I was not coughing and my nose wasn't running. Just made it through my shift. Today my nose is running, terrible pain through my face in my sinuses and the cough is starting. My boss actually called me this morning and told me to take the day off today to get some rest because she knew I was struggling yesterday and really needed me tomorrow. That was super nice. I don't think I have ever had a boss who cared that I didn't feel good. They all wanted me there working even if I was dying so this was a pleasant surprise so I did stay home from work and trying to get some extra rest. I hope I can get the runny nose under control before work tomorrow, it is difficult because I have severe high blood pressure and the the medication I take to control it does not deal with cold medications even the ones that are supposed to be ok to take with HB meds.

My job: I still love it. I will be very honest. Physically it has turned into quite a challenge, I am able to stay strong while I am working and I am slowly but steadily getting better at my job, but once I am home I am just wiped out and in a lot of pain. It is interfering with all my other activities. I am making very slow progress with my shops, getting little jewelry made, just to tired and not motivated. I still have hope that this will get easier as I go along, it has only been a month since I started working after being home for 5 years. Emotionally this job is doing wonders for me. I feel confident that after a while I will be able to get my household expenses under control again and if nothing else know I won't be homeless at any given time. I enjoy being out in public again, learning a new skill and I work with some very awesome people. The whole crew is a lot younger than I am but that's okay with me!

So, now that we are caught up again, it is getting dark out, I have a few dishes to do then going to just sit and work quitely in my studio just a little bit then try to lay back down with a little prayer that my nose gives me a break tonight and tomorrow. Hope you have all had a great weekend.