Fairs, hoop earrings, lilikoi, etc,

I have finally updated the crystals page to show the new Swarovski crystals HiloBeads has in stock - and reformatted the layout -.

There are also now finally some hoop earrings on the earrings page, and I'm in the process of actually making more memory wire hoop earring wires.

I have some new memory wire come in, including gold plated, but I'm not entirely happy with the plating. It's the same manufacturer as the silver plated memory wire i have, but while the silver plating adheres well the gold plating flakes in the tight loops on the earring wires.
I also have a shipment of semi-precious gemstones on the way, some "mini-collars" that do well in necklaces as well as hoop earrings, and some mixed gemstone strands that will be really inexpensive (in local terms: reasonable).

I will be in the following fairs:
Artists' Fair at Hilo Art and Glass, Oct. 18 (which will include supplies+lampwork)
EHCC Art and Fine Crafts Fair, Nov. 28 (which may include lampwork)
Artists' Fair at Hilo Art and Glass, Dec. 20 (last minute gifts, and whatever else)

What held me up some, outside of my day-job, was rather large amounts of lilikoi

Some people may think I make up words like this, but it's the Hawaiian word for passion fruit, which are mostly yellow hereabouts, and I have been picking and selling those for a lot longer than I have had anything to do with beads (I think I put that into my first post, entitled "Ancient History"). What's there in the back of my truck is my largest weekly pick yet, 516 lb. My lilikoi customer would be happy if she'd get that every week, but things don't quite work that way for me, or for the lilikoi.

Starting to get ready for Christmas ...

For most people Christmas is still a long way away.

Not for jewelry makers. Some of my customers at the Hilo Farmers Market have been hinting at stocking up, and one has started. Most of the things I sell I just have in stock, but this is not so for things I make myself, and some have longer lead times than others. If anybody who reads my blog thinks they may need drilled seeds, be that Royal Poinciana seeds, double drilled or single drilled, or Mgambo / Velvet Seed / Weleweka / Hawaiian Pussy Willow / Maui mink (these go by more names than you can think), please let me know this soon. I still buy the Mgambo seeds from Oahu, so there is additional lead time when/if I run out. The Royal Poinciana seeds I pick myself, and I have several pounds of them.

I am also thinking about doing a craft fair again this year as I found one that's only one day and relatively inexpensive, and for that I will have to have more inventory in jewelry, which obviously will also leave me less time to drill seeds.

People who have seen them like my memory wire hoop earring findings. I have not made any for sale yet, but I'm thinking about it. If you're interested at a price of $2.- for 3 pairs (+ shipping, and excise tax if you're in Hawaii), just email me.

New Swarovski Crystals

HiloBeads has some new Swarovski Crystals in different colors, all bicones:

3mm: White Alabaster
3mm AB: Tanzanite, Montana, Jonquil, Emerald, Capri Blue

4mm: Chalk White
4mm AB: Morion, Indian Red, Lime, Caribbean Opal, Rosaline
4mm AB2X: Light Azore

Prices will be the same as on the website for the non-AB and A2XB colors, but only because
I got a good price break on these.
The prices for the AB colors are :

144: 15.-
100: 12.-
20: 3.-

Other than that, I'm back from my vacation and slowly getting back on track.
During my vacation I found the time to make this:

(It'll be for sale, but I didn't post it yet)

Memory wire hoop earrings

I may have invented these, so I want to put them on-line.

There are hoop earring designs on-line that use memory wire, but I have only seen ones that were hung from other earring hooks.
It's possible to make hoop earrings from memory wire without using other earring findings as you can see here. The lampwork is from my very first batch of home-made beads and they are not annealed, and the cages are craft wire. I never made bead cages before, but they worked out. The instructions I used for the wire cages are from wigjig (I don't have a wigjig and the wire cages have tool marks)

My first home made lampwork

Well, of sorts. Having been bitten by the lampwork bug since my visit with Kalera Stratton, I think that was 2005, I took a class from Eva Anderson-Terada (who was the one to tell me that "this town needs a bead store") this past January, then a (rather way too big for my purposes) used torch came up on the local Craigslist and I decided that this time I wasn't going to procrastinate like I usually do when it comes to spending money, I went last week and bought myself a hothead kit.

It took sleeping over it a few times, and getting to the weekend to put together something where I can make beads. I wouldn't exactly call it a studio, but it's rather well ventilated by being outside, yet out of the wind (no cracked beads in my first batch, even without a kiln). As I can't find didymium glasses that fit over my reading glasses I borrowed some welding goggles from work, those do fit, but as Eva told me, I didn't really need them for the soft glass. I got myself some clip-on sunglasses, and those will probably do for a while. The hardest thing to get going was to get the mandrels dry on that almost 100% relative humidity day - but if it hadn't been raining I probably would have been working in the yard -, of the first 14 mandrels the bead release cracked on 9 during drying. So, I used the others, had myself a break after washing the mandrels off and re-dipping, and started again, and a 3rd time, but after that my 14 mandrels were used up. One time the bead release cracked when I already had glass on the rod, so it went straight into the water bucket and turned into some greenish sand.

One thing happened that I found rather curious: when applying the glass for one beads the bead release released. Turning the mandrel the glass stayed in place. So I said, well, if this one doesn't want to be round I'm just going to leave it as it is.

The colors I used aren't exactly my colors. They came with the kit. As I didn't expect to get anything near viable out of this first attempt at home made beads I took the colors that I would least likely have bought.

The cloudiness in some of the beads is probably due to using propane, but I thought I'd give that a shot as we have it anyway and those little Coleman bottles are getting rather rusty. And at least for the time being I'm going to stick with propane. We have propane anyway and it gives me more time to get the glass where it's supposed to go. You can tell from the "accidental pendant" that it's not exactly going where and how it's supposed to go just yet.

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.