Super Duo Bead Components

Hand Made Jewelry Club has posted this great tutorial for making super duo components.  Use the components alone or add to them to make other designs.

Here's a pictuer of the bracelet using only the components.  Click on the link above for the full, very simple tutorial.

Slaying Dragons Inspiration Friday

Slaying Dragons by Jewelry Tales

I use various methods for inspiration. Sometimes it's a building with unique lines, sunsets (beautiful color combos), or any number of things can inspire a bead design. I often go searching for pictures of beaded jewelry for inspiration and often see them on my Facebook feed.

A few days ago, I came across this beautiful design by Cynthia NewComer Daniel of Jewelry Tales. This one's got everything - elegance, sparkle, sweeping curves, spikes, what else could you ask for? You can just use this for inspiration to create your own design, or if you work from patterns alone, you can buy the tutorial from Cynthia on her Etsy shop.

Have a great week end and I hope you have loads of time for pursuing your beading addiction.

Black Friday to Cyber Monday Sales

ArtFire is sponsoring a huge Black Friday 2010 deals promotion. I went to ArtFire to see what the Beaded Jewelry artists were doing. Typed "beaded jewelry" into the search box and got 1245 pages of deals, mostly stringing and wirework. Typed in "beadwoven jewelry" and got 10 pages.

That gave me a big clue as to niche key words for my ArtFire shop. All of mine have beaded, jewelry in the tags, but not all had beadwoven. I'm finding this SEO really hard to grasp, but occasionally I see the light here and there.

Speaking of Black Friday, BeadPatternsBoutique is having a huge buy 2 get one free sale on bead patterns Friday, November 26th through Monday, November 29th. Twelve designers are participating in this sale so you can find a wide variety of patterns. Read all the details in the BeadPatternsBoutique Shop Blog. This is definitely not a sale you want to pass up. We've had this type of sale occasionally, but this one has the largest participation among the designers.

I hope all my US friends are having a very happy, safe Thanksgiving Day, and to the rest of you I hope you're warm/cool (depending on your location) and safe for the weekend.