Divella Delights

   Are you like everyone else this year and looking for low cost gifts? These crocheted bracelets are beautiful gifts and very reasonable. What is really wonderful is that they allow you to give a piece of handsome handmade jewelry without breaking the bank.

Fabulous, wonderful and colorful, durable, not to mention easy; just roll on and off, no claps to fiddle with! These crocheted bracelets are made with heavy-duty cord to give you years of enjoyment. They are available in most any color.

Typically winter has been a time for muted tones and earthy colors taking all the color out of our world just when we need it most. Chase away the winter blues with one of the new Flapper style hats this year. Just because the trees are bare and the skies gray and heavy with snow is no reason to go colorless. Make a bold statement today with a Flapper Hat and Scarflet.

Each hat is a one of a kind piece of art. The designs for the hats are pretty much the same although I do tweak them depending on the types and weights of yarn used. The embellishments on the hats make the statement and no two are alike. For those of you who really can’t force that much color into your life, I do make the more muted earth tones. I have done several special requests as far as color goes but my style is such that I have to have artistic license with the flowers, leaves, etc… Everyone has been very pleased.

Payment is made on approval, never before so you can be sure you are getting a hat you will want to wear every day!

Check out what I have in stock. More are added nearly every day so keep checking or better yet e-mail me with your color preference or coat color!

Hand crocheted using a variety of rich, lush yarns from my favorite yarn store, this hat is sure to get you noticed this Holiday Season. Perfect for your entrance to those parties coming up! You will want to be fashionably late wearing this hat. It is fashioned in my new Flapper style but with embellishments that make this one a real work of art. It does contain wool so needs hand washing. It is difficult to get a good photo of the flower; the depth and richness are amazing! I made this flower in 8 separate pieces Look for the scarflet to match and more Holiday Hats coming soon!

I have been working on this free form peyote for a while now and think I have some pieces I really like. The newest one can be seen in the bracelet section. It took some tweaking and no two are alike but I believe I have come up with a template for the design I approve of. The center 49 strand professional wire and a clasp is attached to that, usually hand made by me in either sterling or 14K gold-filled wire with a gemstone or Swarovski twisted in. The rest is done with a variety of seed beads, gems, pearls and Swarovski crystals to add texture and make the piece truly a conversation piece. The result is a sturdy, beautiful piece of jewelry that will give pleasure for years to come. The thread I use is a nylon professional grade made for stringing gems and is very tough.

Black Friday, Buy handmade

Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year in the malls and retail stores. I wonder if the same is true for on line shoppers? I am thinking it must be; people are off for the holiday weekend.

If you want to stay home this Black Friday take advantage of all the Internet sites offering handmade gifts this year. You can find most anything at an online shop and support small business at the same time. Best of all you will be giving a one of a kind gift, handmade with great care.

Most artisans who sell their work at a site on line sell products that are of superior quality; they depend on repeat business! We cannot afford to have someone displeased by a purchase they made from us, we all know how fast bad news travels. In buying handmade this year you can accomplish a lot. Among other things by shopping the Internet shops on Black Friday or any day you can:

Save energy, time and money by shopping from home.

Support small business, maybe even someone in your own town!

Give a high quality USA handmade gift with a person and a story behind it.

Know that the person you are buying from depends on word of mouth and repeat business, they will want you to be thrilled with your purchase!

Avoid road rage, trying to find parking spaces, long check out lines, shortage of "advertised specials".

Avoid the infamous bait and switch practice used by so many retailers, especially on Black Friday.

Black Friday is part of a wonderful long weekend for most people and a chance for you to enjoy family, friends and wonderful food.

There are wonderful websites out there full of handmade artisans where you can read about the artisan and their work, ask questions, request special orders. One of them is Etsy.com. I have a shop on there for my knit goods and my own shop at www.divelladelights.com as well for my jewelry as well as my knit and crochet goods

On Etsy you can find just about everything your imagination can come up with and then some and it is handmade!. There are:

Wood products

Clothing

Jewelry

Home Décor

Books

Patterns

Soaps, lotions and oils

Paper goods

Pottery

Paintings

Sculpture

Music

Candy

Leather goods and it goes on…

These new scarflets are a lot of fun to make in fact I carry these in the car now in place of the sock bag! I use a double strand (or single if the yarn is very thick) of a variety of yarns to make these scarflets and you will find this information in each listing.

There are hand knit and crocheted hats to match most of them and if there is not, I will be happy to make you one! The scarflets are a great alternative for those who want to keep their necks warm but do not like scarf ends hanging down or coming unwrapped.

The new scarflet can be made with acrylic, wool or a blend so if there is something specific you would like, let me know and it will be my pleasure to accommodate you if I can.

I will of course be making more so if your color has not popped up yet, keep checking or e-mail me.

So if you are tired of those ends falling down and constantly having to adjust your scarf why not try a scarflet?

The person with the most referrals to my website wins one of my new designs with matching earrings similar to the one pictured here.

I took some time out to make some crocheted hats as the weather is changing here in New England. In addition to gemstones, knitting and crocheting is an addiction of mine and one that I enjoy very much. Typically I am in my studio upstairs during the day making jewelry. When my husband gets home I sit with him and knit or crochet while we watch our favorite shows and work on our various projects; he with his wood and me with my yarn.

He will occasionally say to me "Can’t you just sit and relax?" My answer is that knitting and crocheting is very relaxing for me. It is very difficult for me to sit and do nothing; I even have a sock bag so I can knit in the car!

I hope you enjoy the crocheted hats and other hand knit and crocheted items I offer as an aside to my jewelry. I love making them!

I will be doing some is wool soon.

My favorite yarn store has a huge sale every January so watch periodically for more hand knit and crocheted hats!

The family budgets have taken a beating this year and this has left me wondering what I can do for my customers this Holiday season. As I have just lowered my prices to wholesale there is not a lot I can do there. I was thinking though of offering a line of non-gemstone designs. You know what you came here looking for…did I have it? Is there something you liked but did not fall within your family budget?

I would be interested in what YOU think. Would you be interested in something without gems or just a more simple design overall? Do you have any design ideas you would like me to work up?

In order to give my customers what they want I am asking for some feedback. Let me know what you are looking for, what is important to you and what price range easily fits in your family budget.

You can of course, see the Centipede Bracelets on the bracelet page of my website and there was past blog as to how they came to be.

I have a wholesale account at a local fine jewelry store. I find it is so much easier to sell in person than on line, probably due my lack of skills as a photographer. The 2 Centipede Bracelets that I took to the store sold already so I am busy making more in different colors. They feel so wonderfully soft on the wrist and they have a very playful movement. I am going to make more in the Autumn colors but no 2 will be the same of course.

I also think that because so many folks will need some low cost gifts this year I will teach some classes in how to make them. I always prefer getting something handmade, even if the person giving the gift does not make it.

They can be quite low cost if you use just beads, or a little more special if you use gemstones and pearls. Because the core is done with an elastic cord, they will fit nearly everyone.

I have been asked by the local Starbucks to do a coffee/jewelry class and I think the Centipede Bracelet is the perfect item for that. You can complete one in about an hour and a half. It should be a lot of fun and I will use any excuse to go to Starbucks!

The first thing I do when I make the Centipede is the clasp and core so that when I am finished weaving the rest of it, it is ready to wear. Even though you would not finish it during the class, you could take it home and finish it with no problem!

So ladies, if you live in Maine, near Boston, MA or New Haven, CT e-mail about doing a class in your home and learn how to make the Centipede Bracelet!

Social Networking

Social Networking is all the rage now and there is a group for everyone nearest I can figure. I am so new to it that there is still a lot of mystery surrounding it for me. I was invited to my first group, MUIB a few weeks ago and I joined. From there I was invited to a couple more so I joined and so on. OK so, now I feel myself spread a little thin., too many social networking sites, not enough time. Although I am new to this aspect of growing my business I can offer one word of advice. Unless you have nothing to do but sit at your computer all day, look around and find just a couple that really meet your needs. Otherwise you could end up like me and find yourself actually neglecting your business just to keep up. Joining a social networking group requires time and energy if done properly. You are there not only to get but also to give.

The idea is to find a group of people with common goals and help each other meet those goals. On the two that I belong to, MUIB and WAHM, there is lot of activity. We have members with a wide variety of expertise specifically geared to work at home moms. Although we work from home, we need to make the most of our time and social networking can be a valuable tool if used correctly.

While years ago there were clearly defined lines as to the duties of a woman, the role of woman/mother is now quite convoluted. When I was growing up my mom stayed home, raised 5 kids and sold Tupperware or Sarah Coventry in her "spare" time. Dad was rather old fashioned and successful and no wife of his was going to work outside the home, it looked bad. To him selling Tupper and Sarah wasn’t really working! The point is that things were simpler then, the juggling act was more clearly defined and a family could survive quite well on one income. Now most of us HAVE to work so if we can work at home and put food on the table or oil in the tank that is a wonderful thing.

That is where the social networking helps. Sometime between all the other responsibilities in their lives, these women find the time to help each work out all the complexities of owning their own business while still being the primary caregiver to their family. There is such a medley of talents to draw from and contribute to. We have women in affiliate marketing, communications, artists and artisans, direct sales, and the list goes on. If you are under the impression that social networking is all about gossip you could not be more wrong, There is a lot of work going on!

Social networking is not all about business. There are sites out there for just about everything. There is even a site for Navy Moms; I had to join that one! Talking to women about the worries and woes of having a child in the Navy is a wonderful support system. The same idea really, I feel a responsibility to participate although not on a daily basis. Happy social networking!

If you like the new designs, you can thank Marsha at my local jewelry store. I have a wholesale account with them and she has suggested that people are going to be more cautious this coming shopping season. She has sold many of the woven designs similar to the ones I posted here but asked me to come up with something in a slightly lower price range. The result of that challenge is the "Gemstone Twist", a 3 strand necklace that can either be worn loose for a more classic look or simply give a twist for a more modern, chunky look. I have made earrings to match. They will be available at wholesale until next month when I have agreed to post at retail.

In addition to the design being right I was most afraid of the cost. I have been quoted thousands just to design the site, never mind keep it up and running. With Artisans Accomplice I pay $20.00 per month for everything. I am going to go to the yearly plan of $192.00, I just wanted to make sure this was going to work first. The total expense to design, build, get the domain away from the other guys, and get the site up and running was $35.00 and included my first month. Now I don’t know about you but I can’t see paying thousands of dollars to someone to give me what I have for $20. The support I received is wonderful and they don’t make me feel like the computer idiot that I am! With those other guys I would ask a question or ask for help and IF I heard from them at all they would just repeat themselves over and over. My time is valuable to me and another thing I love about Artisans is that they value my time as well.

Now that I have been up and running for a couple of weeks, love what I have with these guys the next step is to figure out how to get people to my site.

So now it was time to find someone to do it for me. When I started getting quotes on what the design would cost I was astonished! I am a (very) small business here in Waterville, Maine. My studio is in the refinished attic of my home. I don’t have thousands of dollars to put into a website.

My daughter lives in Massachusetts and I go down there fairly often. I have a favorite coffee shop down there, Bohemian Coffeehouse in Melrose. If you happen by there, tell Hillary I said hello! Anyway so I was in the coffee shop one day talking to Hillary and sipping a wonderful triple latte and she introduced me to a really nice guy that owns one of the biggest bead stores in New England. The Bead Gallery http://www.beadgalleryinc.com/

Come to find out he is also the owner of Artisans Accomplice, a designer of websites geared to the needs of artisans. I still looked around for another 6 months or so. What a waste of time and probably money! The folks at Artisans Accomplice ROCK. I told them what I wanted, simplicity, colors palette, etc and they put the whole thing together for me. They wrestled my domain away from a large company that I had it registered with. They handled setting up the shopping cart. The list goes on. Most importantly to me, someone who is computer inept, is that I can manage everything on my own! This would include photos, blog, coupons and sales, editing pages and I can even decipher the very detailed Reports page to see who is coming to shop from where! Amazing!! I tell you I am really a beginner when it comes to this stuff and I can do it. In the event I have questions they are just minutes away. Now really, I mean support is available free within minutes…not hours or days or how about never as was the case with 2 webhosting companies I tried. OK so enough about the wonders of Artisans Accomplice, Suffice to say to that if you are looking to open your own website you should check them out. Part 2 complete, I found someone to do it for me. Now, the cost…

I have been designing and producing jewelry and fiber products for a few years now and had a shop on Etsy.com. That experience gave me the opportunity to break into the Internet marketing plane, something I was a little shy about for a while. I had some wholesale accounts but wanted to make this a full time occupation rather than burning the midnight oil in addition to a full time job. So I opened a little shop there. It took me 2 years to get up the courage to plunge into my own website. I am pretty much computer hostile so it took me some time to see that it might just have some benefits. I am science minded and have to analyze everything so first of course I had to do some research.

First I had to have the thing designed. I looked at other sites and came to a decision on the basic design I wanted. Something simple, not garish or trendy and I knew I did NOT want anything to dance or sing on my pages. My taste in music is not for everyone and I have left many sites because of the music or some dancing woman, flashing stuff, glitter all that stuff distracts me and makes me dizzy. I am 50, not 12; this is jewelry not dolls; so I don’t want cartoons on my pages. I love earth tones, despise neon, etc… So I had the basic concept, what next?

The next logical step is to find someone to do it for me because although I said I was computer hostile, I am really just inept! So I had to find someone to do it for me…