New Giveaway

New giveaway is up and running today.. Winner will be announced in one week (15th of September) Remember you can always find the most current giveaway by clicking the giveaway link on the right hand side of the blog :)

You can win this Sea Glass Key Chain

If you would like a key chain but not this one... I do have a couple more in my shop and I can also make one just for you.. if you would like something custom. Also have Necklaces and bookmarks and earrings and picture frames and shadow boxes and more (coupon code 3off will save you $3 on all items marked with a yellow "coupon" banner.

Good Luck Everyone and have fun

~Michelle

Fun New Stuff

I found these cute little wooden frames awhile ago.. and I knew I needed them.. just was not sure what I would do with them.. well I figured it out... lol sort of as I went.. I just sat down with the frames, some paint and some boxes of imagination (different supplies) and started having fun with them.

I have them listed in my shop now and if they do not sell fast I may be claiming them for myself.... I love them! I also had fun trying out a new setting for taking pictures.. I think it worked pretty well.. Basically.. today was a lot of fun!

New Shop Update

The online woodworking shop is going to take an extra week or two to get up and running. We are getting orders coming in a bit faster than we had thought we would to start with so before we get going too far we decided to remodel the inside of the shop.

Made these three black boxes for a customers tv room, each box holds 30 dvds or games, now they are thinking they would like a couple more to put in there to hold more stuff!

As it was we were having to push the tools, table saw, router, sander, miter saw and planer into the middle of the shop so we could use them.. and since it is a very small shop... we would have to step over cords and move things to get to other things and it just was not working as well as it should be. We were making it work but, we have always known we would need to do something to make it work a lot better. What we would like to do is to build a new shop... for woodworking only... a huge one.. well not too huge but the size of a 2 car garage... with a different place to park the jeep. That will not be happening though so a remodel of what we have has been started.

The plan is to build custom cabinets for each tool. Right now they are on stands that roll around... but our goal is to have them in cabinets that stay put along the wall. Dave designed cabinets for each tool... they will hang on the wall.. and have drawers and cupboards for all of the tools that go with that tool. The sander will have a drawer under it for all the other sanders ( we have about 6 of them ) and a cupboard above that will have all the different papers in it. The router will have drawers in it for the router bits and tools needed to change them. Everything will have a place. This should save a lot of time, not having to go back and forth across the shop for things.

We are adding a bunch of storage and making things a lot easier to use. Getting rid of a lot of things that we just never use and won't ever use, making room for things we need. We learned when we did the house that a place for everything and everything in its place really works well. If it is something we want or need then we need to make a place that is for that item... and then keep it in the place. If we do not need or want it then it needs to go. Makes everything work so much better.. a lot less clutter and mess.

We are keeping this shelf and the pegboard here, took everything off of it and cleaned it up and now giving it a coat of white paint to clean it all up.

This wall will have a counter top, the miter saw, the router and the sander. I am just going to once in awhile give a little peek, because I am so excited about it all... I can't wait to get it all done and take a lot of good pictures to show it off.

~Michelle

Sneak Peak on Some Boxes

It has gone from Spring is almost here.. to hard freeze winter, this was taken last night... since then not much more snow.. but everything is frozen solid



Been working on getting some pictures taken of the boxes we are making, still need some work on getting good pictures of these.. but they are getting a lot better :) A few hundred more and I should have it!
This is a pine box stained a walnut and then some coats of tung oil. This is not finished yet, will take some more photos when it is all finished.


This is a maple frame with purple splines ( not sure how to get the purple to show up in a picture as purple.. that is one thing I need more work on for sure)
Black Shadow box, this one will be getting listed in the shop hopefully this weekend. It is ready to go!

This is a pine box with oak splines.. it is ready to go and should be listed soon also.

Maple shadow box.. tall one.. with purple splines. Matches the frame above.


Hickory Shadow box

Close up of the purple splines.. still not looking purple though :(

Boxes have keyholes in the back so that they are easy to hang right up tight to the wall.

That is a sneak peak into some of the boxes we have been working on. We still have a list of orders we are working on.. which is wonderful! Makes it hard to get some into the shop.. but.. it will happen. With each box we make it seems to open the door to many more ideas.

~Michelle

New Items in the Shop

I got some new drill bits the other day and it took a bit of practice to get them to work for me but once I did just about drilled holes in everything I could find. Now I have a lot of drilled sea glass waiting to be made into fun things so there should be a bunch of new listings happening in the next couple of weeks :)

I wanted to start with a couple of things for St Patrick's day

Green and White Earrings

Green Earrings

Green Necklace that can go with either pair of earrings

Also listed this white and blue necklace, not so great for St Patricks but I love it!



More to come any day :)

~Michelle

Item of the Week ~ Recipe ~ New Stuff

Item this week is the Heart Locket Necklace. Free shipping world wide ( even though it says US)

New recipe was added this morning to Coffee Tea and Recipes ~ Apple Streusel Muffins. Made these last night and they were wonderful for breakfast with a cup of coffee :) It is a great basic recipe for muffins that you can add just about anything to, super quick and easy. Please remember that I would LOVE to have everyone post a recipe on this blog.. well I would love to have you post a LOT of recipes on here. Coffee Tea and Recipes

Spent some time this weekend working on some new shadow boxes... I am so very excited.. I love every single one. We have four new boxes. A couple of different sizes and styles. I have spent the weekend trying to pick one as my favorite and I just have not been able to. Tonight we will be finishing the boxes up. One is getting painted.. I can't decide if it will be black or white.. and the other ones will be finished in clear so that the details of the boxes themselves can be shown off. Hoping to be showing off pictures of them all soon.

~Michelle

Beach in a Bottle or in a Heart

Well this has been one of those weeks when blogging was not happening for me. I am not sure why besides the fact that not a whole lot happened. I spent some time at the beach and worked on some new necklaces and hmm well that is about it. I did go out to dinner with Dave and we had a wonderful time. Spent some time in the shop working on the new boxes Dave has been working on getting some new joints perfected and I just enjoy being out there with him. I can sit and visit with him while he is working on them, as long as it is not while he is doing the math figuring. To be honest there is not a lot of physical help I can be in the shop due to my shoulder but I do enjoy spending the time with him and I love the way the shop smells when he is cutting up the wood. I also always have an idea or an opinion on just about everything and am more than willing to share :)

I do want to share my two new items this week in the shop. One is a heart locket filled with sea glass

and the other is a little glass bottle filled with some of the beach so you can do your own treasure hunting ~ Beach in a Bottle

I have also decided that every week ( or so ) I will be picking an item and putting it on sale. Could be free shipping or a gift with purchase or maybe a percent off. I am going to try some different things and see what people like. Would love your input on what you like to see in a sale that makes you want to buy something. ( just leave me a note in the comments ) This week the special is the Beach Themed Shadow Box ~ marked down to $40 and will send along a free gift.

Just look for the item with the yellow banner when you are browsing through my shop.

~Michelle

Titles ~ Todays Special ~ Smile of the Day

I know that the title of the blog post is so important.. it is what will pull people in.. and yet.. I struggle with that so much. Most of my blog posts are all mix and matched a bit of this and a bit of that and some of everything and sometimes nothing. So I tend to have very boring titles.. many times I have sat and stared at it and just not written anything because I can not come up with anything that even sounds interesting. I am wondering if I should do smaller posts that are more focused on one thing at a time.. or if I just need to get with it and be more creative.. or .. I have no clue.. would love any suggestions or ideas to try. Thank you!

Item of the day!!! Valentines Key Chain ~ frosted white sea glass and a heart charm ~ free shipping world wide today for this item!

I am going to start doing a few items of the day with either free shipping.. or a % off or something on a regular basis.. not daily... in fact might end up being an item of the week... not sure how it will work.. but I do not like to put the shop on sale.. or do those things since I never seem to get any orders when the shop is on sale.. and then a week later I get sales.. weird.

Today on a friends Facebook I saw something that touched me.. and reminded me... life is not about the money or the material things that we have and I wanted to share it. it is so easy to get caught up on the bills we have and the money we don't have but... in the long run.. money and having it or not really is not what is important... not that this helps any stress of having more bills than income.. but... it does remind me to keep things in perspective and it is my smile of the day.

There once was a rich man who was near death. He was very grieved because he had worked so hard for his money and he wanted to be able to take it with him to heaven. So he began to pray that he might be able to take some of his wealth with him.

An angel hears his plea and appears to him. "Sorry, but you can't take your wealth with you." The man implores the angel to speak to God to see if He might bend the rules. The man continues to pray that his wealth could follow him.

The angel reappears and informs the man that God has decided to allow him to take one suitcase with him. Overjoyed, the man gathers his largest suitcase and fills it with pure gold bars and places it beside his bed.

Soon afterward he dies and shows up at the Gates of Heaven to greet St. Peter. St. Peter seeing the suitcase says, "Hold on, you can't bring that in here!" But, the man explains to St. Peter that he has permission and asks him to verify his story with the Lord. Sure enough, St. Peter checks and comes back saying, "You're right. You are allowed one carry-on bag, but I'm supposed to check its contents before letting it through."

St. Peter opens the suitcase to inspect the worldly items that the man found too precious to leave behind and exclaims, "You brought pavement?"

Today was a beautiful day on the beach.. cold at 32 degrees.. but sunny and beautiful... that water was still like glass and you could hear people on the island across the water (well maybe not but it felt like it ) Compared to Monday when it was storming and the waves were muddy (video here ) The picture at the top is from today :)

~Michelle

New Projects

About a week ago we introduced new items we had been working on over the holidays and people seemed to love them. We have sold a few, mostly to other people who collect sea glass and want to show it off.

The big thing is.. we have gotten a lot of feedback from people who would love it if it was bigger or deeper or had a door or ect. With keeping the feedback in mind we are once again out in the shop and working on some new ideas. We will have bigger and deeper and doors :) We have also figured a way to make them so that they are more custom, a way that you can pick how tall, how wide and how deep you want them. You will be able to pick a solid back, a mirrored back, or a see through back. You will still be able to pick from the 6 finishes too. These should be able to work with the suggestions we have had for shot glass displays, fiber art displays, bead displays and all the other wonderful collections people have and want to display... well not big things.. we are still talking smaller things... people who collect big things that they would like to display... we would love to work with you too... just give us some ideas if what you want.

We are very grateful for the feedback we have gotten and do hope that you will all keep it coming... leaving comments here or on facebook or twitter.. you can even email me Michelle_Ballard@hotmail.com Tell us what you would like or what you need. We have a wood shop... we love working with wood. We have made our own cabinets and done all our own wood work in the house, made furniture and would love to make something for you.

Custom cabinets we built for the bathroom

Custom Laundry room cabinets, without the counter top ... the great thing about these is that the bottom two hide the hot water heater.. and then the top one holds the extra towels and t.p and stuff... open the doors and unscrew a few screws and the hole thing slides out to replace the hot water heater. To maintain the hot water tank you can just open the door.. but we wanted to build the cabinet so that it easily comes out without doing any damage to anything.

More photos of home can be found on my flickr page, all of the work we have done ourselves.. lot of it needing to be custom as we do not seem to fit into any boxes anywhere and we both like things to be a bit different :)

~Michelle

Weekend into Monday

I had the most wonderful weekend... so relaxing and yet we got so much done. We had been collecting things that needed to go to storage and had the back room totally full.. so we loaded that up and headed to storage.. which.. we happened to have a huge pile there that needed to go the goodwill and another pile that needed to go to the dump.. so we made a trip to goodwill and then loaded up for the dump and brought that home. That was Friday night.. it was late.. the dump was closed, which was ok because we had a few things at the house that needed to go... as always. I really have no clue where all this stuff keeps coming from. When we got home we decided, since the back room was clean, to sort some stuff around. We ended up staying up until about 3 am and moving the treadmill from the living room back there.. and the computer table from the dinning room back there. We also rearranged the living room and dinning room.... which we have decided we love.. makes the house look twice as big. It is nice having the wood floors... not only did everything move easily ( which was nice since I could not help ) Dave was able to just push things around, I also think that having the same floor throughout most of the house makes it all look a lot bigger too.

We finished that up on Saturday and ran to the dump... then later that night we had company over for dinner. They are some people that Dave has known for a long time and I am just starting to get to know, they are so much fun.. I laughed so hard my jaw hurt. They brought their daughters (teens) with them.. and they are totally sweet, fun girls and seem to have a really good relationship with their parents. They also brought some awesome chips and dip stuff.. ..I have gotten the recipe and will be adding it soon to Coffee Tea and Recipes. *hopefully tonight*

Sunday we did nothing.. and I mean nothing... we stayed in our jammies all day.. watched some tv... in fact I was chilling too much to even bother taking a nap. We did finally ( after dinner ) start working on some things.. me online and Dave had some work to do... so once again we did not get to bed until 3 am... we are much better swing shift people than morning people.

Today was horrible getting up...and it is the start of our walking everyday again.. so I set the alarm for 30 minutes early... starting off very slowly. I did walk for only about ten minutes.. did just over a half mile.. and then I got on the scale... arghhh. I was looking forward to heading to the beach today.. it had been over a week since I had been there.. it was a wonderful day to be there too... the water was so very calm.. the sun was shinning like it was a spring day.. and there were so many wonderful treasures... and then.. it started snowing.. with the sun shinning and a bright blue sky. It did not snow very much or for very long but it was beautiful!

I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out the facebook fan page and the networked blogs and the signatures in artfire forums. I am trying to find as many new ways as possible to promote my shop and get some more sales going. Seems we sell a lot better in person than online.... so still going keep on working on building up stock and going to some shows this spring :)

~ Michelle

Our New Items

I am so excited, been working on these for awhile and I am so bad at keeping secrets.. yes I do all my Christmas shopping on Christmas eve... other wise I either tell people what they are getting or I just give it to them :) Keeping this to myself while working to get them finished was hard for me to do... so..... here they are.

Handmade wooden see through shadow boxes or display cases.

They sort of have a long name because the best thing about these boxes is that they can be used for a lot of different things. Dave made these for me for my sea glass.. this way I can set it in the window sill or hang it in the window and the light can shine through and show the real beauty of the glass. Some of the white glass if left in the sunshine will turn a lavender color due to the manganese... or straw colored due to the selenium in the glass. I can also keep a frame full on the coffee table.. this way people can look at the sea glass but it keeps it safe from dirty fingers ( ok that is not really a problem for sea glass.. it washes.. but if it were something like dried flowers or something else you might want to be able to share and yet not have people touch it would work)

These are the colors of frames we have on hand, we love custom orders though.

We also made one for our friend who loves to walk on the beach with me and then other people started seeing them and thinking they were cool and we decided to go for it and here we are. The plan is to make many more with different styles and sizes. Expect a lot more blogging about them as we work on a lot more ideas we have going on. We will be making a style that is a lot bigger and deeper and has doors on the front with shelves inside and someone else was asking about us making them one that has different sized grid inside. We have also had some request for frames that would match. We would love to explore any idea anyone has in these directions so please feel free to add any comments or ideas or suggestions you have. Please!

~Michelle

Coming Soon

Plan is to add some new items to my shop in the next couple of days. Dave and I have been working on some items that I am so very excited about. These will be non jewelry items... in fact a hint would be that we bought supplies at Rocklers and Home Depot :) I LOVE the new items.. and I Love that they are something that Dave and I are able to work on together. Hoping that this will open a whole new set of doors to our crafting and selling world.

Just a photo I love from the beach the other day :) *nothing to do with new items*

~Michelle

So Far This Week

This has not been a very busy week... I have spent a lot of time on the beach... Surprise :) Today was so beautiful.. warm and sunny... walked the beach for a couple of hours with a friend and we watched an otter playing in the water and then saw an eagle fly down and try to pick him up.. the otter was able to get away and seemed unhurt.. Eagle was angry and flew away pouting. ( or so it seemed. My friend has a cat that walks with her on the beach... I was worried about the eagle thinking the cat was lunch but the cats have been there for 8 years with no problems.

This has been an amazing week for collecting treasures on the beach.. heart rocks and wish rocks and cool shells and lots of sea glass. I have a bunch of ideas running around in my head... sometimes it gets like this where I have a million ideas, colors, shapes, and a mixture of beads and glass and shells and yarn and wood and wire and things I do not even know... all these projects just mixing around until I sit down and something happens... most often it is not what I think it will be either. It is always fun though.

I did get one new necklace listed... and I have had a couple of request for some items that I am looking forward to making.

The other really cool thing that I did this week is I "launched" a new blog I am working on with the help of a wonderful friend. It is called Coffee Tea and Recipes.. a place to share and talk about recipes. I would love if you would have a peek and follow us there and please leave a comment introducing yourself and share a recipe or two or hundreds. I am hoping this will be a place that my friends and family and people I do not know yet... will come and visit often. I would love if people share their recipes, stories, links, anything they would like to share.

Now I am heading to my kitchen to make some peanut butter cookies and finish up the chili that is in the crock pot for dinner :)

~Michelle

My First Collection

I guess I should start with what a collection is, and where and why. A collection is a group of items that have a theme that I have picked from artfire. It is a way to promote other sellers on artfire and a way to show off some things I have found that I like.

This is my first collection and I titled it ILY ASL which is I Love You! American Sign Language!

I found a lot of fun items on artfire that are in American sign language and are the ILY hand sign.

Having Gone through Seattle Central Community College and the interpreting program there and having spent a lot of time in the deaf community ASl has always been a big part of my life. All of my children signed long before they would talk and my daughter still signs very fluently.

I would love it if you would take a minute and visit the collection ( Click "View Collection" on the right hand side to see the full collection ) and check out these fun and awesome items. Clicking on the items themselves take you to that persons shop and you can explore more of their items. Leaving comments at the bottom of the collection is always welcomed.

ILY ASL

Curated By: MichelleBallard

ArtFire.com

Handmade Soap

Thank you,

~Michelle

New Creations

I had some ideas the other day on something I could do with the sea glass I find while walking on the beach. I wasn't sure it could be done and if it could I was not sure it would be something I could do. So I started looking for videos about different things on youtube to see if I could find anyone else doing it. There are people doing it but no videos about them that I could find. I did find some other videos about things that had to do with it so I watched as many as I could. I also talked to Dave since he had some experience with the type of thing I wanted to do. After all of that I was thinking that it was something I wanted to try and at least see if I can do it.


Now to find a place to buy the supplies... hmm.. craft store... no... hardware store.. no... a stained glass store.. yes. I needed copper foil tape... what size or color backing I had no idea.. so I bought the stuff the lady said would work great.. turns out it is not so great for everything I want to do.. but I am guessing she had not used real sea glass.

I want to wrap each piece of sea glass in this foil tape and solder around the outside so that it is then wrapped in a pretty silver casing and solder on a jump ring. This sounds so easy.. and watching the videos of people making memory pendants it looked super easy. One thing I did not take into account is that the sea glass is not square or flat or even the same thickness on one side as the other. I also had no experience soldering. In the videos.. they make it look super easy... you just "paint it on" not me... well not when I started... I was going for the "painted on" look.. but was using the dab at it and poke method and it was not working so well.

This was my first attempt... I was so proud of it... now I am embarrassed lol

I have now made a whole lot of pendants... and can really tell a difference from the ones I first made and the ones I am making now. I have learned a lot too... and I see the door open for learning so much more. I need to try some different types of copper tape.. I read there is a black backed one for using with clear glass... I am going to try that next. I have a lot of white pieces of sea glass and the copper tape gives the pieces almost a pink color.. which is beautiful.. but not a true color of the glass. It seems to me that black would show up even more than copper... but I have been told it wont... we shall see :)

I have started listing some of the items in my shop and hope to be listing more soon.

~Michelle