Ornamentea featured on Visit South!

We were recently mentioned in an article on Visit South, a lovely little blog with great, Southern-focused, travel writing. We're at the bottom, below Holly Aiken's Stitch and Quercus, a nice shop here in downtown Raleigh that is getting a bit of buzz lately.

Check out the article here. 

5x5 Challenge with Elaine Ray beads

Elaine Ray is the featured artist in this month's Bead Chat Magazine. The 5x5 test group takes 5 jewelry makers and gives them 5 components from bead artists. You have to visit the on line magazine to check out what the artists made!

Check out the Elaine Ray 5x5 Test Group beads and the magazine here.

Ornamentea on The Scene with Sharon Delany

Check out this clip from NBC17's The Scene...it features me doing a party with Sharon Delany and some friends...it was a fun time!

An inspiring new eMag

Okay, I have to admit I don't usually care much about eMags. I am an old-school magazine reader.

(OKAY, I am an old-school, blog-author-and-online-content-creator-magazine-reader!)

There is just something about print on actual paper that I really like. There is the whole portability issue; I can chuck a mag in my tote bag and pull it out wherever to read a few pages. There is the sharability issue; I can cut a page out and post in on the bulletin board at work for many to see. Yes, I know there is also the whole wasteful-use-of-finite-resources issue. And I know that digital is where it is at (or going to be at) in the publishing world. I'm just slow to adapt.

HOWEVER, that all said, there is a new eMag you should check out. The Everyday Bracelets issue from Interweave is AWESOME and I am not just saying that because Danielle Fox totally was inspired by a necklace of MINE to make a really fabulous bracelet that uses a sweet house bead by Jubilee Beads. OR because the issue is full of Elaine Ray's beads and bead caps. OR because there is a lovely project that features our Japanese Rayon Cording. Nope. I'm telling you that because this eMag has printable shopping lists.

On behalf of all bead-store staff everywhere, I want to say THANK YOU to the folks at Interweave for the shopping lists. Do you know how often we have to try to figure out what that 'round metal thingy that closes' is when an new beader comes in to make a project they saw somewhere? Do they mean jump ring? Clasp? Bracelet memory wire? We don't know. They don't know. Everyone is frustrated.

We want to help the new beaders, but we are as lost as they are sometime. Now if we could just figure out how to make folks USE the lists! ;-)

Thanks for the shopping lists, and the fab projects, Interweave!

Go download your copy here.

Hear about us on Inspired At Home

You can hear lots of great crafty talk on Inspired At Home with Tiffany Windsor. Ornamentea will be mentioned in the next episode, this Sunday!

Listen to the program here.

Money Saving Beading Tips from me!

lookie here! I will be in the next issue of Stringing and you can read the outtakes NOW on their website...

I'm gonna put the freak in beadfreak...

Well, in just a few hours I get on a plane to NYC. I will visit the Stationery Show at the Javits and enjoy some of their delicious bargain priced coffee, then spend some time with my friend Emily in Brooklyn getting crafty...THEN I come back to Raleigh to officially freak out about the photo shoot. What? you ask...well, the amazing Jo Packham is coming to Raleigh to take pictures of Ornamentea in less than two weeks. The photos will appear in Where Women Create, one of my favorite magazines. Yes. Hmmm... so I am going out of town and not staying home and obsessively rearranging and repainting and redecorating everything that does not object. Perhaps that will be good, right? right? right?

I will let you know about that...

Ornamentea folks in Stringing - this issue!

The talented Kay and Nathalie have projects in Stringing magazine! Look for Ocean Blue, by Kay and Cubes in Squares by Nathalie and you'll be inspired.

Candie Cooper also has a project, Migration, that features loads of our charms and lockets-it's on the cover along with a smidge of Kay's necklace as well.

See our painted masterpieces

We had a great time on our Staff Development Day when we closed down both the stores and spent the day at the park. We all did a bit of Round-Robin painting. The paintings were really great and now we are going to show them off to the world at one of my favorite places, Locopops. Yep, that's right, you can come see our paintings AND eat an Avocado popsicle. Or a Mango Chili, or even a Strawberries and Cream. If you haven't been to Locopops yet, it's across Hillsboro Street from the NC State Bell Tower.

You're invited:

Locopops
2600 Hillsboro Street, Raleigh

Thursday, July 3rd from 7:00-9:00

You can meet the artists and mingle with them, it will be the best art show you have ever, ever been to!

See you there!

We're in Beadwork!

Some of our fabulous items are in the Challenge column this month. Look for great ways to use the hammered brass rings, the flower dangles and other fabulous favorites from our stores. My favorite? It is hard to choose, maybe the necklace by Melinda? But then the earrings by Danielle have a lovely simplicity that I would wear every day. I also really like the hair pins by Elizabeth but they won't work in my shorty-short hair...and that bracelet by Michelle, nice. Ok, I can't decide...you check it out and let me know...

We were surprised that not one of the challenge contenders used the seahorse, octopus or keys. Those are very popular on at ornamentea.com. Hmm...

Ornamentea in Beadwork!

Our fabulous selection of key charms and keys is featured in Beadwork this month. The editors love the old rusty keys and the teeny tiny keys and the key toggles and the lucite keys and so do we. I have used the keys on earrings, added them to little bitty things I tie on other painted or otherwise adorned objects. I even sewed one on a tee shirt.

Just think, if you live here in Raleigh you can just wander in and have "the doors of your creativity blown wide open." That last part is a quote from Beadwork. Wow. Makes us sound pretty amazing, huh?

Jane is in Beadwork this month!

Wahoo! big congrats to Jane MacGregor Hamilton Mormino for her Let's Fly project in Beadwork this month. Jane had this lovely necklace featured in Beads 2007 as well and the editors were so in love with it then they wouldn't send it back until she let them publish it in Beadwork.

Actually, they still haven't sent it back! Uh-oh!

Check it out, the necklace is really even prettier in person.

Mixed Media Month at about.com

July is Mixed Media Month at About.com's beadwork site. I love this site and it's forums. When I have time I like to prowl around and read the discussions and see all the projects folks post. I wonder what type of mixed media projects they will have to show? Paula, the moderator, is getting a nice box of goodies from ornamentea.com.

Don't you think that's a good idea?

Hey, maybe I should send her some pics of my very mixed up work? Hmmm, what to send?

stuff swap

Did you see this?

http://www.coudal.com/swapmeat/swapped.php

They are swapping art and craft from folks all around the world (? don't know about that, actually) and I am going to have to figure out how to get in on it. What a great thing, make the stuff you like and then have someone else send you something in trade. Like a very parity oriented Santa.

They were recently featured in the NY Times. So they may be overwhelmed now, huh? Well, maybe there is still time.

Anyway, don't clog them up with jewelry, o.k.? That is my gig.

Projects in Stringing this issue!

I have a project in the newest issue of Stringing Magazine. It is a necklace that I love and wear a lot, so it is kinda weird to see it in the magazine. Elaine Ray made the center beads and she also has a piece in the magazine that uses her tangle pendant.

Last year, 2006, before Nora was born I decided that I would try to submit one thing for publication each month. Well, that didn't quite work out. I submitted one before she was born in May (she'll be one on Thursday) and then quit. I did get the book project started in November, so maybe that counts? This year I have done way better with my 2006 New Year's Resolution. Let me repeat that. I have done much better with my 2006 New Year's Resolution in 2007. That just made me laugh out loud which distracted Nora from her lunch of blueberries and crackers.

For another laugh check out my contributor's photo on the Stringing website. That's Cleo behind me!

Watch lockets in BeadStyle this issue!

Wow, this project in this month's BeadStyle uses our watch locket, chain, toggle and birdy beads...all at ornamentea.com
The project looks great, I love to see them doing things with chain and not just stringing projects. I know the magazine is aimed at 'beginning' beaders but in the shops we always try to push beginners beyond the basics. This project even uses mixed metals!