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DESERT STAR CREATIONS-LAURA GRAHAM BEADWEAVING TUTORIALS, KITS, BEADS & HANDMADE JEWELRY
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Nature is beautiful but do I want it in my jewelry?

8/24/2011

4 Comments

 
Dont get me wrong, I love mother earth. I am always amazed at what nature can do. I love storms, we get a few in the desert and most of them are in with a bang of thunder and out with a lightning strike. I camp a lot out in the dunes and deserts here in Nevada and in So. Cal and even though I run a quad and off road buggy all over the surfaces I am still very respectful and I always try to clean even more than just my own trash when I leave.  With that said, do I want nature in my jewelry? 
My personality is a big one and I think my jewelry shows that. There are not a lot of dainty items,  the colors I choose are always bold and bright and even though I am far from a girly girl I like shiny, sparkling crystal. Gemstones to me have always been muted earthy tones and subtle shapes so I never dreamed I would be buying and using gemstones and semi-precious stone in my jewelry designs. I have always love quartz and growing up in southern California and playing in the dirt with the boys, I found a lot of quartz in the ground. I still collect rocks, I find a lot of neat ones out in the local desert. I stopped in a bead shop here in Vegas, one I only go to once a year and I found these great 14X8mm Ice Flake Frosted Quartz rounds and I wanted to by all they had. I gained some perspective and only purchased 4 of them. After I used them in a pair of earrings I knew I wanted more. I went to the online bead shop I use for 90% of my items and got another string of the Frosted Quartz and I have been trying to find the muse for them ever since. 
To me, quartz doesn't look like a gemstone, it is either clear or frosted and now they also dye quartz too. I found some pretty blue and purple 10mm flaked quartz discs as well. But other than that I wasn't thinking of using any other gemstones in my work, that is until I met Marie. Marie has come up with an ingenious way of making you fight to get gemstones. She live in Minnesota and has a quarry close to her home. She became obsessed with rocks and eventually made  great little business out of her hobby, cutting and polishing gemstones. Now everyday Marie goes about her routine knowing there are hundreds of people sitting in cyber space waiting anxiously for her to post her daily creations on her Facebook Fan page. She has a Album she keeps adding photos of her creations to everyday and if you would like to purchase her beautiful hand cut and polished cabochons all you have to do is comment under the photo of the one you like. Easy, right? Not so! You have to be quick and catch them as they are being posted. The first person who comments "mine please" is the winner, so to speak. I purchased a blue Goldstone cab from her, my first gemstone aside from the quartz beads and I am hopelessly hooked! Now, keeping in mind what I said about gemstones, they are earth tones, pale colored rocks and I would never work with them, boy oh boy, was I ignorant or what! Marie finds the most beautiful stones of all colors and her talent just makes them more desirable. I have looked into gemstones and I was kind of right about them, most are beads I would never use in my work but they also dye them into pretty colors and others are great colors in the natural state. So now I have a couple items in my shop and I will be adding a few more. You will never see gemstones take over the Swarovski Crystal and beautiful glass beads I use everyday but there are a few of Marie's beauties in a drawer in her office with my name on them and you may see a few wire wrapped or just simply hung on a silver chain in my shop soon. Thanks to Marie I can bring you all even more variety and choices in my shop.  Coming soon!
For more info on Marie and her great stones, http://www.facebook.com/SuperiorAgates!
4 Comments

How easy was it to get this great website on a budget?

8/19/2011

1 Comment

 
I have spent the last year building my Etsy and ArtFire shops and building my brand name with social networking. The only thing I had not tried was my own site. I am a handy person when it comes to tech stuff. I understand how a computer works, I can hook up all my own home entertainment components without reading a manual and I taught myself how to make jewelry by just studying the supply catalog from Fire Mt Gems. However, with that said, I am DUUUUMMMMBBBB when it comes to the internet, websites, SEO and domain and IP address stuff. I can work the computer and list my items in my shops and I understand tags and I am slowly getting better at some of the other things like SEO but I was down right scared when it came to website and HTML. I knew I was going to have to learn and take that next step of promoting me and my jewelry outside the ArtFire and Facebook realms. I found a website from a fellow crafter that I thought looked nice and I noticed at the bottom it said "Build you free website on Weebly.com" so I clicked and decided I had to try something sometime.

Weebly was very easy to use and figure out and they have great tools to add links, blog, and multiple pages. There is absolutely NO HTML that I need to write myself. They have a number of different designs already made that you can choose and a lot of the tools are drag and drop. After a couple hours of putting components where I wanted them, I was done. I have gone back a couple times and added more information and moved things around but it is not as time consuming as I thought and it is very easy to change things up and to add more info. Then with one click, published!  Weebly wanted $35 a year to purchase my .com so until I could afford to do that I kept the free site which was DesertStarCreations.weebly.com, not too bad. Then I remembered the silly GoDaddy commercials and went to their site. I was able to purchase www.desertstarcreations.com from them for $18 for 3 YEARS! Big price difference! I even got help in the form of email (they responded same day!) from Weebly and GoDaddy to have my free site renamed without the weebly in it. It was surprisingly easy, I just had to tell the domain what IP address to point to. Now remember, I know almost nothing when it comes to web and internet but I got it done from the step by step instructions sent to me from GoDaddy. GoDaddy was very easy and helpful, I cant recommend them enough! So, if you have been thinking of doing your own site, get a free weebly one started and for $20 get the .com at GoDaddy. A few hours of playing on Weebly and you are set.
This is my new web site and I am very happy with how it all worked out.
Good luck to all!
Laura
www.desertstarcreations.com
PS. you get one free email for that domain (you can buy more) as well so you can now email me at 
[email protected]
Now that looks professional!
1 Comment

Welcom to my website/shop.

8/15/2011

0 Comments

 
Hello all. I have finally taken the time to build my own website and buy my domain name. I am so proud of the work I have done on all my craft projects but especially my jewelry. I have all my jewelry and cards for sale on Art Fire and maybe soon I can get enough of a following to sell directly from this site. Take some time and look around and I will try not only to entertain with my blog but to share my creative process and add some sparkle to your life! Feel free to contact me for any reason or just to say Hi!
0 Comments

    Laura

    Check in here to see if I am able to articulate my thoughts and my creative  process. For more info on me, click the INFO tab at the top. Thanks!

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