More velvet seeds, and some other stuff

Monday I got more weleweka/velvet/Hawaiian pussy willow/mgambo/ Maui mink/or whatever other names these go by/ seeds. I currently get those from Oahu. While they're not from the Big Island until my own trees are big enough, at least they're from Hawaii, and my supplier's last name is a Hawaiian name.

One of my co-workers asked me about hoop earrings. I used to wear hoop earrings a lot, and "had a think" about them. I don't like to wear hoop earrings that dangle from e.g. French ear wires unless they're strung on SoftFlex (or some other soft material - I have SoftFlex at HiloBeads), but I wanted to make real hoop earrings. Given that I don't like to wear 20 gauge wire in my ear holes, I made them from memory wire, and that works rather well. I'll need some mini crimps to secure the beads on the wire (I hate using glue), but I think I'll be making more of those (I'll get a picture in here when I get one. My outdoors 'light tent' only works in reasonably good weather, and I'm not saying that I've been home during daylight since Kamehameha Day, and before that the weekend).

I put the 30" 4 strand royal poinciana seed and seed bead necklace on Craigslist today. It's a good necklace and I don't insist on keeping it. The price it is listed at, both at my website and on Craigslist, reflects the amount of hand work and materials in it more than any design thinking or other creativity. (So if you like it, grab it before I change my mind. And there are no kinks or twists in it.)

Emails (loss thereof), and other updates

Today somebody at my work place found that some emails had gotten lost. If anybody has sent me email to my .edu account and never got a reply, I'm afraid I have to tell you that I never got your email. I replied to all emails that I received. We know that some Google mail was never received (at work), as well as email from a rather large .edu place, so this looks rather indistinguishable from the outside as to what kind of places may be affected. Please email me again to hilobeads@gmail.com, I don't know of any emails to that having gotten lost yet, and I do check my spam folder on a regular basis, just in case - so far all I found in it was spam.

My second batch of jewelry got sent off to Trudy's Island Art today. I don't think she'll put it on her website (just yet?), but if you're in Kona, you can find some of my jewelry there in the International Market as well as at Showcase Gallery in the Keauhou Shopping Center. Kona Beads have a Royal Poinciana seed bracelet as well as some of my Royal Poinciana seed spacer bars. The latter, as well as some of my mgambo seed/weleweka/velvet seed/Maui mink/Hawaiian pussy willow (these go be several names), are also available at Island Edges in downtown Hilo.

Updates - as I have some time

Being on vacation (which unfortunately is almost over) gave me some time to update the web pages, so the seed beads are now actually on a seed bead page, the "side bars" are updated to reflect that, and I put some new pictures up, of new things I had time to make, a 30" 4 strand royal poinciana seed and seed bead necklace, as well as my first mgambo/weleweka/Hawaiian pussy willow/velvet seed and Swarovski crystal set that contains a necklace in addition to the earrings and bracelet like I made in the past - I'll put crimp covers on the necklace as I had to use crimp tubes rather than crimp beads. - There's a bigger picture at HiloBeads.

My own royal poinciana seed earring and bracelet set became bracelet-less again, it found a new home at Kona Beads as Mark wanted an example for what to do with the royal poinciana seeds that he bought from me in March - and I needed some things from his store anyway. Of course I don't have enough of the olivine AB2X Swarovski crystals with me to make a new one, so that will have to wait until I get home.

Yesterday I went to the Kona International Market and found that after Katrina's (of Katrina's Kona Pono Art) passing her former business manager Trudy continued the store as Trudy's Island Art. As I much rather have my jewelry on consignment in a store that sells jewelry that I like and real art than at a store in the same area that mostly sells things that look mass produced I'm hoping to leave some with her (without descriptions yet, as I don't have a printer here), consignment or not. Noticing that she'd like them in boxes tells me that I progressed into a different category. She also remarked that $90 was about right for my copper wire, aventurine, mgambo and Swarovski crystal necklace. Not something I would have dreamed of when I started making jewelry.

Update after getting back: There are 8 sets or single pieces of mine at Trudy's Island Art now. I'm currently sold out of simple mgambo/weleweka seed jewelry as well as all royal poinciana seed bracelets. One of the necklaces I didn't get a picture of. The rest can now be found on the gallery page. I guess I'll make some more ...

More new things

Got the next order in yesterday, after not being able to find the bracelet memory wire I thought I still had, so I now have bracelet memory wire again in 2 sizes, 2 1/4" and 1 3/4", silver plated in 1oz packages, as well as some eyeglass leash ends and 6mm split rings in gold and silver plated as well as antiqued copper. - And some more sterling silver earring hooks and 1 1/2x2" ziplock bags. - The web pages are only very partially updated to reflect that so far.

Softflex, wire, and more beads

Yesterday my SoftFlex came in. It's only the original color and some bronze/golden color, I decided to start with that as I don't have a lot of use for different color beading cable at this time. It's all three thicknesses of 49 strand wire. I could say "SoftFlex has come back to East Hawaii" - it has. I got mine from Ben Franklin before, but they don't have it anymore.

My wire order came in some time last week, sterling silver in 20-24 gauges, some soft and some half hard, and 24 gauge full hard.

The beads came in long before that. It is mostly 4mm beads, some aventurine, and larger donuts (20-25mm) than are otherwise locally available, aventurine, turquoise howlite and tigereye. In fact, I sold the 6mm onyx rounds already, to somebody who questioned my pricing, bought them anyway and then found out that they weren't glass druks but onyx.


Given the rest of what's going on in life, I didn't make much jewelry other than some seed bead eyeglass retainers (you can find them on Craigslist (Hawaii, obviously))

Wire wrapping, more new things, Glass Artists Fair

Lots of things happened, enough that I didn't get around to updating the blog.

During spring break we went to Kona for a few days and some of the mgambo seed earring and bracelet sets are now available at Showcase Gallery in the Keauhou Shopping Center.


Last weekend I took a wire wrapping class from Sharon Turner who owns the Island Edges bead store (Eva (Anderson) Terada is right: Sharon is a wonderful teacher - and yeah, Eva got married.) In that class I made a bracelet and earrings set, Czech glass with sterling silver. I don't usually wear link bracelets, so I'm hoping to sell this one.
Sharon says $45.-, so I'll go with that.



I started experimenting with wire again before I even took that class and will do more of that, especially after the encouragement I got from Georgia after I posted link to the 'weave' bracelet. That's craft wire and African Trade Beads. After I finished it I went to Sharon's store and bought some other beads with large holes in different colors, but I didn't get around to doing anything with them yet.

Couple days ago another order of semi precious gemstones arrived, mostly small beads, medium size to large donuts and some onyx. But the aventurine teardrops look artificial. Those I haven't even put price tags on yet, let alone started to work with them. - To quote Bob Dylan "I got a head full of ideas and they're all driving me insane" (that's from "Maggie's Farm" - yes, I am that old). -

This coming Saturday I'll be at the Glass Artists Fair at Hilo Art & Glass Supply, so for one day I'll actually be a store and that of course requires price tags, packaging, supplies to be already there when people want to buy them (not: I can drill those mgambo seeds by tomorrow), findings in packages in the quantities on the website,
order forms for things that I'm planning on ordering anyway like soft sterling silver wire, softflex and small (tiny) ziplock bags, and all kinds of stuff that I probably haven't even thought of yet. - That's Saturday April 19, 2008, at Hilo Art & Glass Supply, 318 Kino'ole Street (where Farmer's Exchange used to be), starting 10 a.m. -

Seed beads

Well, I wasn't originally planning on carrying seed beads, but things happen. One of my customers doesn't want to order form Firemountain, but she wants Ornela seed beads. I have a wholesale supplier, and I have some now. For now they're on the 'other' web page.
Other than that, I have some mgambo seeds now but need some notice if you want them drilled as I sell about as many as seeds as as beads, and the same is true for the Royal Poinciana seeds, which make fabulous spacer bars. As I drill by hand the Royal Poinciana seed spacer bars are "best efforts" 8mm hole separation as I usually drill them. If you want some with a different separation or with just one hole, please send me email. I haven't tried drilling them lengthwise yet, but I expect that to be difficult.