PRICE REDUCTION NEWS

I have reduced the price on some of my products up to $50 for the Holiday Season. So if you have them in your favorite or wish list, now it's the time to buy them! I don't have a date yet when the sale is ended but it could be tomorrow, in a week, on New Year, or while stock last. Quick reserve your favorite items today! I'm willing to reserve your items up to 3 days! Hunt for the SALE ribbons! :D Receive Free Shipping on select items! Look for FREE SHIP labels.

New FLAT shipping tariff! Only US $3 to anywhere in the world! Once your shopping cart reach above $100, get free shipping! Get Free Shipping for Indonesian customers on all of Popnicute's products.

YAYAYA EARRINGS

This is the finished earrings I promised my aunt to match the Golden Rutilated Quartz on the last post! Just gave it to her this evening and she loved it and gave me hints to make a matching bracelet for them too!! :D

Intermezzo

Someone asked me where I got the Yayaya name from.

The name came from my excitement of the necklace got sold a day after it was made! "Ya" can mean yes or ok. So it was supposedly yesyesyes but yayaya was easier to pronounce. hehe.. Yayaya was the tag line for our birth control program. haha! The commercial had the husband calling the wife for a night "fun" and the wife answered him "ya ya ya" with confidence (cos she had the birth control going on). lawl.

Last night, for five hours straight, I created this necklace and today it was sold to my aunt! <3 I officially called it YaYaYa Necklace now (ya = yes) :D

This is about the second necklace that I made from a stone that I was thinking of returning. This Golden Rutilated Quarts was too fat for my liking. But as I had it in my hand, my mind was playing on its own.

It started with a Cocoon bead. I thought of making a simple necklace featuring my beaded Cocoon bead as the focal and strung it on 4 strands of leather cord. My mind was pretty fixed at that time. I thought that necklace would be a good unisex necklace. After i created the frame of the Cocoon bead, I thought of making it curvy. Uh-oh, one step away from the initial plan. Then I looked at my Swarovski crystals stash and start digging for colors. I picked up some red, purple, and orange. Then I remembered my fat Rutilated Quartz pendant bead and laid it under my cocoon bead. Wow, I thought it looked great!

As I beaded my Cocoon bead, I thought partially beaded would look better than fully beaded (my intial plan already went to the bottomless pit at that time). I was still in the dark about how would I attach the fat pendant to my Cocoon bead at the moment. I thought of a simple wire wrapped frame for it but after about an inch of coils, I scrapped the idea. It looked weak. Then I digged my scrap wire, I had a few cut wire from the Birthstone Angel that was bent on the wrong place. Loop - loop - loop - loop - hammer - loop - loop - loop - hammer - and the rough shape of this necklace was born.

I added some more crystals, wrap the frame here and there where it was necessary, and I'm done!

Phew! Next step was oxidizing the necklace. I oxidized every metal bits before I attached them to the leather. This is important so the oxidizing agent wouldn't get absorbed to the leather. Oxidizing - cleaning - buffing - cleaning and the leather was finally ready to be inserted into the pendant bail. I added some claps (which was also oxidized prior) and yay! I'm done! <3 Final step is to check for any kinks, wild ends, and flatten the wire if necessary. Quality control yo!

This necklace may look effortless but i was having a hard time attaching the bits and pieces together. Mainly because the stone had glossy surface (slippery) and fat. Plus balancing the front and the back side was not easy to do either. 

I brought this necklace today to my aunt's. Last year she gave me two Swarovski pendants in similar size and cut to this Rutilated Quarts. I showed her this necklace and asked if she wants a similar piece done with her crystals. Turned out she loved the Rutilated Quartz more than her crystals haha.. She thought the natural stone look more down to earth and would be easier to wear with her everyday outfits. So she bought the necklace from me and gave me those two crystals. Oh, in addition of this already good day, she ordered matching earrings to go with the necklace! w00t! What a great day!! 

I wish everyday could be as great! lol. Btw, she also offered to help me selling my jewelry to her customers too ;) weeeeeeeeeeeee.................. Then we ate pasta at the mall. Double weeeeeeeee!!!!

More and bigger photos in my Facebook fan page! Sold Products

Now off I go to make the earrings! Ta ta :D

Introducing: The Twelve Angels of Christmas in Birthstone colors! :D These are the new collection from Popnicute, my handmade jewelry line.

On a sunny, lazy day of late October, I got the idea of making these angels after a failed attempt of making a pair of earrings in Angel's wing shapes. I didn't like the result as much as I thought I would. I was this close to scrap the idea and moved on to another project. But I had this nagging feeling that I could make this design work! So my next thought was to turn the wings into an angel pendant. I started digging my bead stash for some briolette shape beads that might be suitable for the Angel's body. Again, this brought me no satisfying result.

I doodled some sketches on my sketch book. I like swirls so I made some swirly shapes. The sketches brought up a result that I liked that I took my practice wire and starting to make shapes with it. My first Angel was born a little too thin. I liked the result but it was too flimsy I afraid it would bend too easily. My next step was to use heavier gauge wire. My second attempt was satisfying to say the least. But my newborn Angel looked so plain on its own that's where I got the idea of making them as Birthstone Angels.

Google gave me an instant result. Several lists of gemstones used to represent each month. Here where I got stuck again. Genuine gemstones are expensive and most likely would be hard to find them in uniform shape and sizes. So I opted for Swarovski Crystals. They're affordable, very sparkly, and have gained an international reputation. Several websites generously put on lists of what colors represent the birthstones best. Thanks for that! Also big thanks to CreativeHaven for her help.

So I began my search of Swarovski Crystals in colors that I needed. I already got several on hand but for the rest, no. Several hours and 5 local bead stores later, I almost passed out from the heat, exhaustion, and frustration. I still got several colors left that none of those bead stores carried. Oh how online shopping saved me. But apparently Ruby was the hardest color to find that's why I replaced it with Light Siam color. Right now I'm waiting for my Blue Zircon bicones. Hopefully I will get them soon enough so the December Angel will have its sparkly Halo too! :D

Closer look of the Angel:

These angels are handmade from scratch that's why each of them is unique. They are very light weight and the wings can move a little as they're not soldered. They look gorgeous on the neck!

See more photos in Popnicute Studio. These angels are now available for sale in my shop. Also available in Argentium Silver!

Don't you hate the new Facebook changes? I do! *rants rants rants* Your fans n friends might not hear from you if facebook thinks you're not one of their 250 close friends! I don't know where did they get this idea. Getting a lot of updates could be annoying sometimes but this is just stupid. Who do they think they are choosing who I should be "friends" with? I'm a grown up, if I don't want to hear anything from a select few persons, I could just hide their feed or block them.

How To Set Your Facebook News Feed And Wall Settings

According to the article, “Live Feed automatically determines which friends to include based on who Facebook thinks you want to hear from most.”

So to lift up the limitation, please do what the article say about Live Feed (half way down the article).

Pass this through your friends and family. They might not aware about these changes.

When I looked back at my past sales, I saw one similarities. Intricate designs sold better than simple designs. Not say that it's true for the whole world, just applies at my own Studio. I take it as my buyers appreciate the sophistication in my designs and expect more than just a simple design. So by this analysis, I recycled this old, (possibly) boring design to something new and fresh(er)!

This image below is the old design. Plain sterling silver round tags and fused hammered circle made of Argentium Silver.

I transformed these simple earrings into this pair of earrings. But these earrings only used the round sterling silver tags. I added copper washers and pearls with faceted crystals dangles at the bottom. Prettier right? :)

But that leaves me with two unused circles. After a brainstorming session (read: staring at those two circles for a long time) inside my bedroom, I came up with this design. A funky owl-like pendant strung on double strand genuine suede cords. I love how this turned out!! Don't you? Truly one of a kind Phantom Quartz necklace.

I still have a circle left! Wonder what would I do with it... hmm :3 I have plans on recycling my other old simple designs that are still sitting in my shop after a year :)

PS: click on the photos to go to each listing :D