On October 3rd we will be having our first jewelry party. I am really excited about this and look forward to organizing it. I’ll be using evite to send out invites and organize with. If you haven’t seen the jewelry in person yet, this will be your chance to do so! If you live or will be in the Albany, New York area in early October, be sure to stop by our party to see what we are all about! While our pictures of the jewelry here on the site are beautiful, there is something about seeing it in person that makes them really special.

Álainn Beaded Jewelry is excited to introduce the newest member of our family… Mya! Once Mom is done getting her trained I will have to get her to make some Mya inspired jewelry! Isn’t she cute?

I have finally gotten around to listing some of our stuff on Etsy! Be sure to check out our shop.

Over the past few months, my Mom has been ordering all sorts of goodies for her business. Cards, note paper, t-shirts, etc. When Mom sent my March of Dimes necklace, she also sent me this t-shirt with the Álainn Beaded Jewelry name on it. Yeah!

So, a while back my Mom got the book “Enchanted Adornments” by Cynthia Thornton of Green Girl Studios. This book explains how to create beads for jewelry and highlights a lot of advanced techniques and skills. I had never realized how much actually goes into creating the beads! (By the way, this book is an absolute joy to read, even if you have no interest in making beads).

Mom has since been dabbling in bead making. She created some really cool stuff. I will have to get her to post an entry about how she has been doing it, but the necklace below has a piece that she created. The white bead with the fairy is the one my Mom made.

Looking forward to being a part of the Technorati community!

We are now officially on eCrater! That gives us a total of three shops! The eCrater account, Etsy and the one here on the site. I have also thought about looking into seeing how setting up a shop on Amazon works….

I have been working on the site for a few days now and have added the new Portfolio page. It is pretty neat and easily breaks down all of Álainn Beaded Jewelry’s category’s. I have been trying to figure out a way for months to easily display all of the Alainn Beaded Jewelry photos that we have and I was making it more complicated than it needed to be. I am very happy with the outcome.

In addition to creating the portfolio page, I have also put ALL the pictures that I have available to me in the respective portfolio categories! So, there are lots of new pictures to check of newly created pieces and some of the older ones! I have also been adding items to the shop and have finally added the long awaited Wiccan Prayer Beads! Woohoo!

Next on my agenda is figuring out how to break the shop down into better categories….

In news related to our family, Kristen has been out of the hospital for months and finished her physical therapy. She is back home with her Mom and Dad and most importantly alive and very much with us in the world. We are all so relieved and very proud of her, because of all the hard work she has done. During those really tense months of November and December, Kabela sent my Mom an arrangement of pieces to use for Kristen’s cause. Mom has just completed a piece, titled “From Kabela, With Love,” using some of them. Here is the final product with the Heart in Hand charm. You can also choose from one of many charms in the picture below in place of the Heart in Hand!

I asked Mom to make a March of Dimes necklace for me since I will be participating in the March for Babies on April 18th. She came up with an absolutely LOVELY necklace. As seen here:

However, the group that I am walking with is also doing several auctions to try and raise funds for the walk, so I asked Mom to come up with an extra special necklace for the auction. This absolutely gorgeous piece is the result:

March of Dimes necklace

Holy cow! I can NOT believe it is almost April. I feel bad because I have kind of been ignoring the site for a while, but I had a lot of other things going on with my full time job. I was up late last night and early this morning making lots of changes on the site, moving links, adjusting prices, etc. I still have a lot of work to do, but it’s coming along.

I still need to post a picture of me with my necklace and diaper bag. Mom has been making a bunch of new necklaces and I will soon be adding them to the newly created Jewelry Portfolio page. She created a special necklace for March of Dimes for me since I will be doing one of the March for Babies walks in April. She has also made a new necklace for Kristen (who is doing awesome, by the way.) I also have a ton of jewelry to add to the shop.

I did FINALLY add the Wiccan Rosary to our shop since there has been so much interest in it. Mom’s probably going to have a fit when she sees the price tag I put on it, but it is a very unique piece and I think it is worth every penny. Check it out: Wiccan Rosary.

From my website….

Knit And Gab Christmas Party

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On the 22nd I went to the Knit and Gab Christmas Party! Knit and Gab is the group of women that gets together every Tuesday from my previous neighborhood and spends the night eating and gossiping (there’s actually no knitting). I still like to go when I have the time. It’s kind of a long drive me now, but it’s so nice having a night out, and Hunter is old enough now that I can leave him home with Daddy.

I have been looking forward to this Christmas party for months now. I brought little baggies of all those truffles I made for everyone who was there and Trent and I made a butter rum cake with a rum glaze. Everyone really seemed to enjoy  the presents I brought. We do secret Santa gift exchange and I had no idea of what to bring for my person. I ended up making a scarf for her and buying some lavender scented bath stuff. Since I can’t make hats I had Britten crochet a hat to match the scarf. Her daughter-in-law told me she really liked it. So, everything I brought to the party was a big hit.

I got a bracelet from my secret Santa. I don’t usually like bracelets, but this one is SO pretty. It’s just a simple silver band with “Live, Love, Laugh” written on it. Unless I lose it (which I hope I don’t) I think I’m going to be wearing it all the time. I love jewelry that is small and dainty, and this definitely fits the bill! Thanks Kay! (She was me secret Santa this year!)

I also tried promoting my Mom’s website while I was there. I wore my Kristen necklace and brought my other necklaces that Mom made for me. One of the Knit and Gab ladies pointed out to me that my Mom should start making eye glass’s chains. She told me that she’s been looking for a well made light-weight, but pretty, chain for her glass’s for a while. She said that she wants ten percent of all sales for the idea, or my Mom can just make one for her. I thought it was a grand idea! I think my Mom is going to start designing one soon!

I am trying to figure out how to restructure Alainn Beaded Jewelry to make it more user friendly for our customers. My Mom is worried that the site is too confusing for people to navigate through. I was planning on changing up the layout anyway. We don’t want the site to ‘feel’ like a blog, so I’m doing research on how to make it so that the site is more what my Mom envisions. Problem is, it’s slow going for me to do this stuff because this is my part-time job. My main job has two very demanding boss’s. There’s Trent, he’s pretty easy going but can make a lot of work for me, and there’s Hunter and he can be very demanding but if you are sure to do things the way he wants them done he can be very sweet. They are two and half and eight months old, respectively. Anyway, with two little ones running around, it’s hard to find time to actually work on this site. Changes are coming, though! So watch for them!

(tee hee hee)

We finally have Paypal integrated with our site! Which means that we are officially open for business!! Woohoo! I have been listing our jewelry on the products page for purchase. If you see something that you like on this site, but it hasn’t been listed on the products page, be sure to send me an email: marla@alainnbeadedjewelry.com I am still working on figuring out the plugin that I got to make Paypal work on our site, so there may be some more changes on the site in the future. There are other options besides the cart that were available with the plugin, so there may be some really cool things on the way!

In other news, I am still working on finding an easy way to make this site work with facebook. I believe this new plugin has an option to make wordpress sites work with facebook, which will be good. I hope it is easy to use.

Please be sure to check out our new purchase page to buy our necklaces and other jewelry.

(Kudos to anyone who gets the joke.)

Look for Paypal to be coming soon to Alainn Beaded Jewelry on Etsy. If I could set it up for my Mom, I would, but I don’t have the information to do so. As a result tomorrow I will be calling my mother to bully and harass her into setting it up. In the mean time, if a necklace catches your eye or you would like to order the Kristen necklace, please send us an email. This way we will know how many orders to expect once we have Paypal and Etsy all set up!

Also, watch for us on Etsy. We will soon be posting stuff in our store front there. As always thanks for stopping by Alainn Beaded Jewelry.