Free! Eternal Summer Inspired Earrings

With Summer officially coming to a close and only a few weeks or months (if you live in the south like me) left to go swimming I thought I would bring you some fun swimming earrings. 

Admittedly this is not obvious, unless your a complete Otaku (look left, look right, look in mirror, oh there's one).   But they are perfect for your last great hurrah at the pool.  These earrings are inspired by the Anime "Free! - Iwatobi Swim Club"  (the manga has a different name) or as one of my friends calls it "That swimming manga".   It's all about a group of boys that are completely obsessed with swimming.  I watched the anime because my Father went to collage on a swimming diving scholarship (go Dad) so I was moved to watch it and I enjoyed it quite a bit, because I like a nice and sweet story. 

The Free! stands for Freestyle a type of swimming and the aqua blue bead at top is to represent the water simple, blue, different. 

Ok now it's time for a bad joke...

What Dose Haruka order at McDonald's?

Water,   because it's free.

Your welcome.

Getting Angry, Anime Style

There is a lot to like about anime and one of the things that tickles my funny bone the most is always being able to tell when someone is truly ticked off, the more angry marks there are on them or around them the more unhappy they are (yes I know I'm not right in the head).  But really wouldn't be great if you could express that in real life?  Even if you are not into anime some days you just want the world to know to go away I'm not in a happy mood. Because of that I just had to make these earrings, If your equally wrong in the head you will just love them.  I will say that most jobs and schools would not let you ware these earrings (because they are boring), but who cares about them they don't have to rule your every waking moment. 

What I'm saying is Buy these earrings I know you want to.

Welcome to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

New this week is a fun Harry Potter Inspired Bracelet in honer of the School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. 

Instead of choosing a house how about celebrating the whole school?  I did this bracelet up all in purples and black because thous are the colors that come to my mind when I think about magic (and because purple is not a house color).  The charms are meant to represent the things that all houses and wizards can get behind.

Green Dragon, Button

I have to admit that I love dragons, I just think the are to cool.  So of course I had to make a dragon button, well actually I have made several of them, but so far this is the only one that I have added to my website.  To create the background I used a shimmery green paint for the bottom layer then dropped several successive layers of varying shades of green pant on top to create this spotted dragon egg effect.  All in all it turned out pretty cool. 

 Warning If you have not read the Vampire Empire Series by Susan and Clay Griffith yet... First you really should and second this description may have some spoilers in it.

Oh Steampunk how I love you.  Below are the new products this week  made in honor of one of my favorite steampunk series it is technically the Vampire Empire series, but I always call it the Grayfriar after the first book and one of the main charters.  The colors of the bracelet are meant to invoke the cover art as well as some of the main colors in the book i.e. Grayfriar's cloak (gray) Adele's hair (red (red hair can have so many hues)) and of course the metallic for the steampunk elements (Iron and Bronze).   For the Charms I picked 5 elements that can be found in all 3 of the books.  The airship Edinboro, A book because they are all over the story in may ways, The Bloody Mouth with fangs covers all the vampires both good and bad, Lady with sword (the sword I drew was a Katana, but Adele uses many kinds of swords), and of course the all important cat Pet.  There is a cat in the story how could I leave him out!

The Earrings are Elements out of the books.  The book is meant to represent both Gareth's library in Scotland and Adele's library in Alexandra.  The Swards Woman and Vampire lips are meant to represent to lovers and there differences or maybe their similarity's.

Of course you don't have to be a fan of Susan and Clay Griffith to love the bracelet and earrings after all it is still very Steampunky, but it dose help.

Beautiful Kanji, Earrings

I have been picking up bits and pieces of Kanji (one form of Japaneses writing) for years.  I could of course blame my brother for this, as the younger sibling I have had years of practice doing this and it would have the advantage of being partly true, it's a hobby of his.  Or I could blame the vast quantity of Anime  and Manga I have absorbed (Japaneses entertainment), and this would also be true.  Maybe I can fob this off on one of my many friends that took Japaneses in collage, witch sounds cool so it's a fun one to go with.  However I'm guessing it's a combination of all 3.  For what ever reason I have been making a lot of charms with Kanji on them with English translations (very small) underneath.

This pair of earrings has the Kanji for Beautiful, witch is lovely to look at as just a shape.  The English translation is at the bottom. I used one of my favorite colors as the top bead.   I was going with the logic of a lovely bead for a lovely word. 

Day one Greenie rise and shine.

By Popular Demand I now have Maze Runner Jewelry.  Actually it has been on my to-make list for a while now, but you know me I have like 400 items on my to make list and I'm always adding more.  So sometimes it takes a customer shaking me like a rag doll and saying "make it, make it NOW!" for me to get around to it, and this was one of those cases. 

I like to read the books or at least watch the movie before I make a fandom Funky Bracelet, but in this case I had a wonderful customer help me figure out the charms and colors I needed to make for this one.  So it was not until this past Monday night that I watched the movie; ... sorry I only work 90 hours a week so I have not read the books yet, they are on the ever growing pile of to read though.   I have to ask is it just me ... when Minho came onto screen I thought good lord it's Levi.  Then when they cut back to Newt I thought oh there's Arman.   Guess that would make Thomas the ever hopeful Eren.   I know it cant just be me, there has to be other people out there that thought the same thing.  Oh casting and costume isn't it fun.  After watching the movie I had to change the order of my to read pile so on my next day off (only the lord knows when that will be) I will be curling up with Maze Runner.  I know that I will need to have an whole 8 hours free, because with the exceptions of necessary's I will not want to put the book down.   Or I guess I could buy the Auto-Book version then I would not need to wait... hummm.   

Anyway back to the Jewelry.  I could not decide on witch earrings to make, so I made 2 different pairs.   YEA! more Jewelry.  The maze on one side and "Float, Catch, Blood, Death, Stiff, and Push" on the other represents the book so well (or at least that's what I was told),  But for me "Wicked Is Good" was just perfect.   I mean really could you make only one or the other?  Because I could not.

Now the hard part is witch pair will you choose?  I was tempted to make a "Great We're All Bloody Inspired" pair as well, but I had to stop somewhere.    I had already made the earrings below so they are technically not Maze Runner Earrings, but they fit so well I had to put them in this post too.  "Don't Talk To Me.  My Favorite Character Just Died".

Wish-Ball Button

According to legend you only need 7 dragon eggs to get a wish.  Cool! I have no idea what I would wish for, but a wish granted could be awesome.  Unlike most of the buttons you will find on my website this one dose not have a copper band around it.  This makes for a somewhat thinner button.  Orange* and Yellow paint swirls together for the background color while 3 stars float above.  I could have put more stars on (in?), but I liked the way 3 looked.

*Note* the paint is a little sparkly witch seamed appropriate to me since the Ball has it's own life.  The sparkles help bring the color to life.

Little Black Book Earrings

There are so many things you can do with a little black book.  Most of the things that come to my mind are list.  For example Lovers, Friends, People You Want To Punch In The Face*, Death Note, Creative Ideas.  Really the possibility's are endless.  I handmade the books out of polymer clay.  The cover is black the binding tab is white so to continue the classic color scheme the bead at the top is red.

*Note*: This is my favorite list... not because I have one stashed away in my handbag. No that would be wrong.  It's just because the notion makes me smile.

I have been going crazy adding new product to my website this year.  At last count I have added something like 106 new items. 

Funky Bracelets:  21 new this year

       Pepole Pins:   15 new this year

If you include the time to create each item, take the photo, clean the photos, and post them to the website; this includes coming up with something pithy to say and an accurate description of each item, I have spent just over 500 hours this year alone on updating and adding new product to my sight.  I'm getting tired just thinking about it.  All that being said, it needed to be done and I'm happy with the results since you my wonderful customers now have over 300 items to gaze upon and choose from. Yea!

  Earrings of Awesomeness:  40 new this year

Adjustable Bracelets: 4 new this year

I'm going to keep adding new product this year, but I'm going to slow it down to a more manageable pace.  So for at least 10 weeks; but hopefully for the rest of the year, I will be adding one new item each week and I'll post about it on Thursdays blog so you can easily find the new items. 

Buttons of Bemusement:  New Product line 8  new