Watermarking photos and other Saturday stuff

Yes, a busy Saturday. I woke up at 5 am and decided not to try to go back to sleep, as it's close enough to the time I usually get up and by golly, I've got a bunch of stuff I want to get done today! I bought a program called iWatermark to put a watermark on my photos. I have not had it happen to me, but have read about several instances of images being copied without permission and and used to sell copied products. 

In one case, someone ripped off a graphic designer's pattern and put it on coffee mugs, without compensating the designer. My stuff is easy enough to replicate, so I just want to make it more difficult for them to use my images. The program is easy enough to figure out, and you can do batches of files and put them into a specific folder. The one thing it won't do is to sit at the coffee shop and replace all your photos on Etsy and Facebook. One pumpkin spice latte, please. Make it a big one.

I'm still waiting on my shipment of brooch backs from China. It's been two weeks, so they should be here soon. I might break down and buy some from the bead store. I've got bunches of brooches glued and would like to get them listed.

Finally, can I share some good news with you? This morning I had my biggest sale on Etsy yet. Someone bought eight (8!) of my button bracelets. I'm still in shock. I'm happy-dancing all over the place. Yes, it's the money coming in that is really nice, but there's also a bit of validation that comes from selling a bunch of one's work. Can you tell I'm still new to this? Ha! I bet that part doesn't get old very fast. It's nice when someone likes your stuff enough to buy one. Or eight.

Happy weekend!

Bits and Pieces

Another photo of stuff in progress. It's a lot of fun to have a box of "parts", in this case clay tiles I've made, and pick and sort through them to assemble things like these brooches and bookmarks.

Both items are a new thing for me. I have a lot of buttons that are too large for bracelets in the way I currently make them, but I still wanted to combine my clay tiles with them for something interesting. The bookmarks are nice little pieces, and I have enough variety in the clay tiles to match the buttons pretty well.

The brooches are also really fun to make. I've got striped tiles that I love to make, and I combine them with the solid texture tiles. They are about 2" (5.08 cm) across. I ordered a bunch of brooch backs, which are on their way from China as I type this. I like to buy "local" as much as I can, but findings like brooch backs all come from China anyway, it seems.

This or that. That.

I'm fooling around with making brooches from combinations of clay tiles and vintage buttons. I liked this orange one, and tried two sizes of clay tiles on the top.

Then I tried a smaller tile and I think I like that better. Proportion seems to be a pretty set thing to me. Things look better to me when there are almost equal distances between elements. 

Sorry for the (lack of) picture quality - I'm sure you can tell I took these with my phone. I'm going to assemble a bunch of these this weekend, and am looking forward to piecing together the elements. That's the funnest part of it for me. The gluing, not so much. Happy Friday, wherever you are!

Button clay mini

I made several of these and I like how they turned out. I tend to go monochromatic when I first start with a new style, but they do have their appeal to me. I started with a smaller bracelet blank and used smaller sets of buttons for this one. It's been my experience that when people sell vintage buttons, they don't really sort sizes much. It's usually by color. The result is a variety of sizes to work with. In the 600+ lot that I bought off of Ebay, there were a bunch that are too big for me to work into the two sizes bracelet blanks I'm currently using. 

I've seen people string large buttons together as a platform for smaller ones, and might try that at some point. Another idea I had is to use the larger ones to make brooches, mixing clay tiles and buttons again. I like the variation in color and texture. It's interesting to me that the process of putting the elements together isn't easily rushed. I have to sit down with a bunch of buttons and tiles in front of me and try different things until I get combinations I like. There's an orange one I love and I'll post that one soon. 

Tropical Texture Tiles (say that three times fast)

I made several of these over the weekend in different color schemes. I have to admit I do not have the sense yet to put colors together on the fly. I can't just look at my box of tiles and see what will look nice together. So I've been looking at other things - paint chips, flower arrangements, fabric, and have found all to be really good inspiration.

This one is in tropical colors. Warm and bold. Since I'm not replacing the clasp on these, I'm selling them for a couple of dollars less than similar ones with a fancier clasp. It seems good to see what people prefer. 

I'm also thinking of making some more monocolor ones, so a person could wear two together. I do like the look of two on a wrist.

New pieces

I've been working on a bunch of new button-clay bracelets and I'm very pleased with how they turned out. This one is just as red in person as it is in the photo. Bold and sassy!

I think I've solved my smelly button problem. Ha! That makes it sound like a hygiene issue, doesn't it? No, I ordered some buttons and they arrived with this weird small that made them unusable unless I got rid of it. So I first soaked them in dishsoap and water. Then baking soda and water. Then more soap. Finally, I put out a call on my FB page (which you can get to by clicking on the picture of the buttons on the right side of the page) and someone suggested vinegar.

Okey-dokey. I couldn't used them otherwise, so might as well give that a try. And it worked! They don't have a noticeable smell now, so I can use them. That's good because I really like them. The colors on a couple faded, but they all faded the same way, so it won't matter.

In the meantime, I ordered few more lots of buttons in colors I didn't have. Squee!

Have a good rest of the weekend, all!

Contest winner!

Elaine has won this bracelet in my "pick the one you like" contest. A sincere thanks to all who entered. I'll do this again in a few weeks so stop back if you'd like to enter again. Or if you'd like to check out the offerings or my musings. 

I laid out 12 new button-clay bracelets last weekend but haven't had time to glue them. It's kind of a zen thing. I don't like to be rushed when I doing my gluing (funny that way) and being tired and rushed leads to really sloppy work. So I'll probably do it this weekend. They turned out fabulous and I'm looking forward to getting them listed on Etsy.

I received an order of buttons (about $15 worth) and they are so pretty. I've got a problem though. They have a smell to them that is kind of horsey, kind of old and smokey and it has not gone away in the one soak in soapy water I've given them. Too bad because I really like them. But I can't use smelly buttons in my bracelets, now can I? FWIW, they are NOT from the site I got the picture from in my last post. Those didn't smell like anything (just the way I like my buttons, really). I've never had to return anything I bought from Etsy. Hopefully the seller will be easy to work with if I need to return them.

Lookie

Saw these on Pinterest this morning. I love the iridescent effect. The images are copyright protected, so to look at the loveliness, you'll have to click on the link and look at the artist's photo stream. Worth a click, I say!

I will post another button picture, though.

These are darn near perfect for what I'm doing with the bracelets. Most of them are flat, and not too big. the big order I got off of Ebay ended up having a lot of too-large buttons. That's OK, I imagine a use for them will be delivered at some point. I bought a similar lot of green ones and of pink ones, too. 

Kid>>Candy Store>>LindaCO.

!!!CONTEST-CONTEST-CONTEST!!!
Oh, one more thing. The super-wonderful Jaquelineand at Blether gave me an idea for a giveaway that I'm going to post on FB and all my outlets today. It'll end next Wednesday, 9 pm Mountain Time. Here it is:

Go to my Etsy shop, pick out a bracelet you would like to win, copy the URL, and paste it as a comment here on the Physaria Designs blog, or as a comment to the giveaway post on the PD Facebook page. I'll pick a random entry and that person will win that bracelet. Wh0oOp!

Tail end of vacation

My family has been out to visit this week. We've had all sorts of fun, but I haven't crafted much. Here's a set of decorative buttons I made a couple of weeks ago. I love making these fine stripes out of the clay. I never know quite how it's going to turn out, and I like that part of it. 

Mixing it up

I haven't gotten my 600 buttons from the Ebay purchase yet, but I had a few laying around, so I went to work on a new bracelet style. I really like it. It's easy to assemble, which is always a plus, but also has the very engaging and interesting (to me) part of picking colors, shapes, and locations for the various components. 

I knew I wanted to combine my hand-stamped clay tiles with buttons, and also really like the look of layers of buttons. So the first incarnation of this had layers of buttons, and just the larger clay tiles. I was eating my morning cereal, looking at the bracelets, and the muse, that little creative something came along and I thought, "add another layer of tiles". I'm very happy with the result. 

New necklace style

I like the look of having the bracelet links I use made into a necklace. I especially like being able to have a little spot to put an element of the necklace, and then switch them around until I like what it looks like. For some reason, that's really appealing to me. 

                                    

The above picture is the first design. Well, actually the first design was just the four links across, but it suffered from floppiness and would turn over while I was wearing it, so this is the first design offered for sale. A friend fiddled with things and found that hanging something from the middle helped. Brilliant! 

Not sure why Blogger isn't letting me center the picture, but you get the idea...

So my latest necklaces then have three tiers of elements. I'm still using the vintage watch faces and mainspring barrels, and added a couple of vintage buttons. It's interesting and shimmery. 

Oh boy Oh boy Oh boy

On the 1-10 button fanatic scale, I am about a 5.5. I really like using them in mixed media pieces, and am fascinated by the seemingly endless variety of size, color, and the other fun stuff that's done to them to make them pretty. But I won't collect them to have a collection of them; I see them as supplies. 

Do you bid on things on Ebay? I'm pretty particular about what I want from their listings. For buttons, I was looking for larger ones this time around. I bought several hundred little ones (from a clothing factor that closed in the 70's - vintage enough for me) and have recently wanted to goof around with layering buttons for larger pieces. 

The photography for some listings is junk, and I won't bid on something that I can't see every piece of. I'm pretty sure this means I end up bidding on more expensive items, but at least I know what I'm getting and don't have to put half of it in bags hoping I might have a use for it some day. 

I also don't want to wait too long, usually try to bid on things in auctions that are over within24 hours, and I don't like to add my bid when there's already 10 bids on the thing. Hmm, I guess I am pretty specific about what I want from Ebay. Anyway, these came up this morning and they totally fit the bill. There's nothing there for scale (which I also like :-)) but I can tell there's smaller ones in there, so the majority of ones are the size I'm looking for. The other photos showed that about 20% of the lot is to the right of what's in this picture and there's a few interesting ones in there (squee!). 

Finished color mix tiles

Here is my first set of color mixture tiles. I etched a number in each one that corresponds to my notes in my notebook. The plan is to string these on something and have them as a reference. I'd also like to branch out a bit to perhaps do some of these with different amounts of the metallic clay I like so much. I'm smiling while I write this, because that level of organization is elusive to me yet. Part of me is pretty certain that these would have sat as uncut samples for longer if I had the space to leave them lying around. 

More on mixing colors

Every three weeks or so, I get the urge to mix more colors and make more of the small clay tiles that I use. Sometimes I have a few specific colors in mind, but other times I pull the clay out and just start to mix things that seem interesting. These are the ones from my latest effort. The copper color in the bottom right corner is what I referred to in my previous post. It turned out pretty good. In my search for a good metallic bright orange, I seem to have made the color of carrots. Again. I think it's the 3-4th time. That's OK. Trial and error is part of the process.

I feel like I'm starting to pay more attention to color. There's a pinner on Pinterest that pins a lot of color pallets from a site called Design Seeds. I seem to repin almost everything she posts, and am not surprised that the blue-purple-green pallets are what I find really attractive. I thought I might refer to these pallets a little more often to come up with color combinations for the jewelry that I make. It seems like learning about color is like almost anything else in that the more you do it, the easier it becomes. 

I think we all have a sense of what we like and what we don't care for (and what we couldn't remotely imagine using. Ever). I intend to build on that and see what happens. I've got a couple of new bracelets that I'm going to take pictures of and will get those posted here that I used the pallets and really like the results.