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

Survey/Giveaway

Thank you to everyone who left a comment, the random number picked was 2 which means the winner is @kayakcove :)

I just have a couple of questions... and I would love as many answers as possible so am hoping that by adding a giveaway to this that lots of people ( yes I mean you ) will be willing to leave a comment ( no need to sign up ) and answer the questions. Just by doing so you will be entered in the giveaway. The giveaway is for one of these key chains..

or $5 off any item in either of my shops. Michelle Ballards or Glassidentities ~ You pick!

Now on to the survey questions

1, Do all the frames in your house match or pretty close to matching.. or are they random?

2, What type/finish is the most common in your house for frames?

3, What size is the most common?

4, What types of things do you collect and do you display them?

Thank you for taking the time to read this and please take a moment more to leave a comment with your answers. I am going to leave this up for only a couple of days.. then will draw a random winner and will come back to post the winner right here on this post. Please be sure to answer in the comments so you can be entered to win... if you answer on facebook or twitter or email then it won't count.. even though I am grateful for answers anywhere I can get them.

~Michelle