Grand opening sale ends tomorrow!

My grand opening sale ends tomorrow! get your $4.00 while you can. They go up to $5.75 April 1st. Along with the price increase, I will also be offering my customers a bonus incentive. Not sure what it will be yet though. I will also be listing new pendants. Thanks to all who supported my shop during the first month of opening.

Poll added!

To better serve my customers, I added a poll to see if I can get an idea of what customers want. I realize that situations vary, but I want to try a new approach for my shop.
1. Buy three, get one free or a free chain
2. Buy three, get free shipping
3. or buy two...
4. leave it as is

It would help me if you could fill out the poll----->>>>> or comment with your answer.

5 days left of my grand opening special!

My grand opening special ends in 5 days! All of my pendants are now $4.00, will go up to $5.75 on the 31st. Get them while you can at this price!

New projects

I haven't updated in awhile! Time is flying by anymore. I have been working on some new ideas for my pendant shop and I have new ideas for my bottle cap shop that I still need to start. Anyways, I found an old Rummikube game at one of our local Goodwill shops that had all of the pieces and all of the stands, not to mention very well priced...so I have been making collage sheets to fit the Rummikube pieces and have found some neat scrapbooking paper and stickers that work well on these. I also put together a few button stacks and will make them into pendants as well. I got the idea from a purchase of some stacked buttons on Etsy from kitsandcaboodles. I added a larger button to some of her stacks. I also got a huge bag of buttons at Michaels that had some interesting buttons in it. Most of these new pendants probably will not make it to Etsy, will be going to consignment instead. I am also planning on finding a couple of shows to do as well. Busy, busy!

Make a collage with GIMP!

Woo hoo! Here it is! I have finally finished my GIMP tutorial. Things have been a little crazy here with work and life in general! I apologize for not having any photos to go with the tute, hopefully you can figure it out and find it useful. If you don't have GIMP, you can download it free from gimp.org
This tute may be more beneficial to those already familiar with GIMP or Paint Shop Pro.

Making a collage with GIMP

by Carol Bryce

This is how I make collages using GIMP!

Open GIMP

If making a circle collage, click the little icon on the left side that is round/oval. Click on file then click on new. This opens a box called Create a New Image. This will be where you will create your round images.

Next set the size for your image. For one inch circles, it is 300 pixels for width and height. Then click on advanced options and set your x y resolution to 300. This is for good print quality. Then click OK.

You will have a box with dotted lines.

Next, click on file and new. This will be a new image and where you will paste your circles into. I usually make 4x6 size, but you can make it any size you want. From the drop down menu select inches and type in the appropriate size. Make sure your xy resolutions are at 300. You will have another Create a New Image box with dotted lines.

Go back to your one inch square image box and mouse over to the left side of the box where the measurement line is. You should see a bold circle and a thingy that looks like a cross. Place it at about 150 at the dotted line and drag the mouse to the other side of the box moving the mouse up slightly, ending right at the dotted line. You should see a circle forming. Go to the middle of the circle you just drew and look for a little arrow. Move the mouse up to make the circle go to the top of the box, not crossing the dotted lines. Next go back to the bottom of the partial circle and drag the mouse to the bottom of the box to finish the circle. You should see a circle with moving dotted lines. Now click on one of the boxes that appear in the corners and you should have a circle with moving lines. Do not click in the gray areas because you will lose your circle and will have to start over making another circle.

Now that you have your circle, click on file and open to open a picture on your computer. Select your picture. I have found it to be easier to make circles with GIMP if the picture is 300 pixels. So, if you need scale the image, click on image and click on scale image. Click on the little icon that looks like a chain link-that will unlock the image dimensions for editing. Type in 300 for height and width and change x y resolution to 300. Then click scale. Click edit, then cut. You will see a checkered background. Now go to your circle image and click on edit, then paste into. Your picture should now be round. Click edit, then copy. Now go to your 4x6 image and click edit, paste (or ctrl v). Your circle will appear in a box and will be in or near the middle of the 4x6 image. Now, click on the circle with your mouse and move it to the top of the page, leaving some room between the circle and the lines on the image. If you want duplicates, just repeat the ctrl/v or paste. You can fit three circles across the collage. You can do four, but I find it to be too crowded. Repeat the steps until your 4x6 page is full. Once the page is full, you will need to save the finished collage to your computer. Click on file, save as. Give your collage a name, such as one inch circles 4x6. Go down the page until you see the line that says select file type and click on the little plus sign. This will open up your file options. I usually use jpg/jpeg. Select your file type then click on save. A box will pop up with the photo quality. I slide the bar all the way to 100 then click save. You may also have another box pop up that will tell you to export the image from GIMP to jpeg. Click on export and you should be all set.