Progress is a wonderful thing

work in progress, complete with notes!

  Today I finished up the research behind all the gemstones I have to put into the Spirit Tiles. Combining both Mystical & Elemental properties while keeping in mind how they will look & work together.  

  Keeping in mind the importance & significance of numbers as well I have placed 5 of each of 2 gemstones/crystals into each tile & 3 crystal quartz. 

All the teeny gemstones I have to work with.

  Next step is to add sealant to the crystals. Finish will be a sprayed on coat of sealant for the whole tile.

  Last thing before listing? A night of being charged by the February full moon.

The Creation of a Redwood Spirit Tile

You would think with so many ideas running thru my mind at any given time, getting just one completed would be easy. Apparently not.

showing painted & unpainted crystal grooves

Late last year I had an idea on what to do with the pieces of redwood that I was not going to make into the hotplate/trivets for various reasons. I’d turn them into something along the lines of an altar tile. Something special, that fellow Pagans from any given path could use on their altars or just around the home. Coming up with a name to call them was one thing. Coming up with a way to make them stand out, was another.

With this idea firmly planted in my mind I began transforming the pieces of redwood into the altar tiles. I gave them flat cork feet as opposed to the raised feet the hotplates / trivets had. I wanted these to sit flat & more flush on whatever surface they were on or to even be able to be hung on a wall. The thin cork would work perfectly. I also gave them the same beautiful Danish oil finish as the other wood pieces.

better view of painted/unpainted crystal groove

I wanted more than to just give them a different name & different feet. While we were in Florida in 2010 I picked up some beautiful tiny crystals in tiny bottles. I knew I’d come up with something to do with them sooner or later. Hey! I could put some of the crystals on the tiles. Then the decision of whether to just put them on top glued in place or inset them had to be considered. After much debate I decided to make a groove, slightly curved, to set them in. So began the discussion with hubby on how to best accomplish this. See, we don’t yet have a fully stocked shop filled with all the wood working tools one might need. But, we do have a Dremel. And there is a plunge router attachment that can be bought for it. After buying the needed attachment, & a set of bits we were once again ready to move forward with the project. Right?

Well, since I’m not a pro at using either the Dremel as a router, or a router alone, hubby volunteered to figure out how to make it work. He took the time to create a template so each curved groove would look nice & clean & the same on each tile. Then came lots of practice of both creating that nice curve & determining the right depth.

trial groove w/ crystals. no background color

While he worked on practicing, I worked on how to best seal them in there & whether or not I’d need some color behind them to show since they were set down into the wood. I had 2 sealants to try. After several layers, it was evident which to use. But with just the wood, the crystals looked lost. Now to decide which color to paint the groove, pearl white or metallic silver. Pearl white won out, looking much nicer.

While I was waiting to see if the chosen sealant dried clear enough to not affect the color, I gave some more thought to the finish of the entire piece. I had thought of using a resin type filler in the groove but I did not want the groove to stick out like a sore thumb which I felt would happen with the shine of a resin filler/finish. I did not want to have to seal the entire piece in resin either as I liked the natural look & feel of the piece. I felt sealing the entire piece in resin, like a bar top, would just make it feel more …fake. Like the natural feel of the wood, would be lost. 

crystals set w/ pearl white color behind them

Final decision? Using clear satin finish polyurethane to fill in the groove & give the top just once nice coat to blend it all together.For the final pictures, you'll have to wait a few days....

I do love tho, how in the bottom 3 images shared here, you can actually see some of the golden shimmer I talked so much about in the hotplates / trivets. Bottom 2 images showing the set crystals are from one trial piece of wood. The actual tiles will obviously have a much cleaner look! 

Almost 6 months after inception, I can finally see the final product & another unveiling!

Giving Thanks by helping others

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving (here in the US) Nicole's Visions, Breath of the Dragon & Uber Dreamer Concepts were among the volunteers helping out with the huge Thanksgiving foodbank at the Women's Resource Center in Wenatchee. Nicole's Visions has been helping every week for well over a year now & on occasion before that. Both Breath of the Dragon & Uber Dreamer Concepts have been helping out for a better part of the spring & summer. It is such a rewarding experience for us all. And we are all grateful that we can give back to the community in this way.

These 2 tents provide a bit of shelter while people wait their turn. We had a crappy day weather wise. Tho the rain did stop a few times & it even got a teeny bit brighter on occasion!

Looking down the driveway, we set up tables so we could offer a bunch of different choices for everyone. I was looking to see how much space we had left to add more things.

 On our trusty picnic table we stacked boxes filled with ingredients for families to make a Thanksgiving meal. All these boxes (& more were inside) were filled by volunteers, assembly line style. It takes a lot to pull this off!

 Including turkeys!














Things really filled in quick as we worked to get all the food out! I'm off there on the far left again... trying to figure out if we have everything ready & together.

 We had all kinds of breads & lots of misc foods too. And by the time we were done ... all this was gone.

We even had potatoes, pears, oranges & frozen turkey & gravy. You can see Sunfire from Breath of the Dragon off on the far left there!








And back here ... was a bunch of extra stock ... more pasta, more plums, more oatmeal, more tomato sauce ....



My friend Joe took these pictures so I dont have all the shots I wanted, but he did a great job getting these for me & it gives you all a good idea of what we do for the holidays for all these families. We fed over 200 families that day.

This week was another crazy week. Even tho we had such a huge line & gave out SO much food last week, we had another 100+ people in line this week. Less than 7 days after Thanksgiving. Not sure where all the food went since you would think maybe people would have some left overs at least... And we had a lot of new faces this week. This seems ot be a trend we're noticing. Longer lines each week than we expect & more new faces.

I am thankful that I am able to help out by giving my time. I would like to see if some of us small business people here in town could get together & have our own food drive with the proceeds going directly to the Women's Resource Center. When other places do their food drives in town, we are forgotten. We often dont get any portion of the collected money or food. It makes it harder for us to serve our community.

Marketing Material progress

Last month a fellow business person on Zibbet & I got together to make a new image for me. I have mentioned this before & you can see the beautiful results not only in the banner on this blog, but in my shop banner on Zibbet, my business cards, my avatars, web ads & last but not least product tags.

product tag designed by Judy

I wanted a nifty tag to use for adding prices to my things. Since not everything is flat photos anymore, I thought something new would be in order.

base image used for biz cards & banner, shot in my yard.

Judy was so patient with me. I gave her some images I shot in the yard to use as backgrounds for all the stuff & she worked her magic on the design front. I really had no concrete idea for the tags so I was beyond pleased when we worked out the details to get the result we got. 

Today I went in search of a hole punch & some kind of string. I knew for the smaller tags I would need a smaller than typical hole & hoped I could find something to fit. I did! Fiskars makes not only the typical ¼ inch hole punch but also a 1/8 inch one. And … it was on sale! 

Next was the search for string, or twine, or hemp, or yarn. Something fairly thin to use to connect the tag to the products. I saw some hemp in a nice brown at Wal-Mart. Not sure it was a good deal, I passed & headed to Craft Warehouse (where I found the hole punch) hoping to find more variety or something there. I found (in the jewelry dept of all places) something called colored cord. It’s thin, & brown. Wasn’t hemp like I had kinda hoped, but with the 40% off coupon I had, it was priced right.

           Product tags printed in various sizes & cut           

Now that I finally have my trivets ready to sell, I am looking forward to adding the price tags so they are ready for the local show I’ll be doing on November 12^th.

Small steps, constantly, eventually bring about great things!

Oh & I should mention too that the tags got printed best on nice 65lb cardstock on a laser printer. I tried at home on my inkjet & the color difference was amazing between that & the big printer at my local Office Depot. Well worth the cost.

Oops....

I totally missed updating today (this is backdated) as planned for the NaBloWriMo thing. I was sick & had to do the food bank on top of that. New entry coming for the 28^th.