We’ve been up to some fun at Hayden Brook Studios. The online business has been booming, and we are doing fewer shows. What on earth do we do with the extra time? Well, we keep developing the online business, for one thing. We make new “stuff”, too. It is all very cool. We are having a great time. One thing I’ve been enjoying about the online business is meeting people from many different places in the world. We have had about 1300 sales in our first year online. You’ve got to figure, that’s without having built a following, and not knowing what we are doing. I think it is only going to keep getting better. I am learning to use the camera. That is a very important part of doing business online. There are still a few bugs to work out. But, it seems to keep getting better. I am very excited about some of the new directions we are taking. I love the new clocks~! They will all be one of a kind. There are some pretty ones we’ll be listing next week. I hope they find homes for Christmas. The jewelry racks were made years ago. We took them to a few shows, only to find that we weren’t allowed to show them at those shows. There are enforced rules at the good shows~!  The racks were out of our “category”. So, they went into a box, and stayed there for years. At this point we have reduced their price, and we are hoping they get wonderful places to live rich lives displaying beautiful jewelry.

This link will take you to the wackiest section of our shop… the NON-Jewelry section~!

This link will take you to our BOOKMARKS shop….. ALL of the items are bookmarks…. very cool bookmarks~!

This link will take you to our wonderful glass jewelry shop… YAY~!

OK… Let me tell you about my buddy Rhett. I saw a photo of this lady and I wanted to know her. She has such a funny expression on her face. You can tell that she is smart, and sassy. She has to be hilarious, too. I ended up on some “teams” with her. She has personality…. it bubbles over the top. So, now I get to know her bit by bit.  Check this out… the name of her shop is, \”Rhett Didn\’t Give a Damn\”. It makes you think twice, doesn’t it. Then the questions. “What was she thinking, why that name? What does she sell?”  Well it seems to be vintage stuff… but not just anything she can put her hands on. It has to be special. So, go look at her shop, and see for yourself: \”Rhett Didn\’t Give a Damn\”.

AND…. Click on the pictures of the marbles to have a chance to win them…. But don’t actually win them…. I WANT THEM~!

BUT, this was an unexpected perk…. the birth announcement in triplicate of the Praying Mantis Hatches.  How amazing~!  You can blow these photos up by clicking on them…. You should really do that. They are awesome photos~!  (Dan is a photographer…. as you can surely tell.) And below these photos, there is the note that Terry sent to describe what is going on… their National Geographic Moment.

You can read about the benefits of having these little guys all over your garden:  NATURAL PEST CONTROL WITH PRAYING MANTIS

We have just opened a brand new on-line store yesterday. We have been making Dichroic Fused Glass Jewelry since 1994. So this NEW store is fresh and fun. It will allow us freedom from having to be stuck making the same thing over and over for our wholesale accounts…. and since we won’t be wholesaling from the new store, we’ll be able to price things however we want… not stuck having to “keystone” (double) our set wholesale prices.

SO? What will we be doing in this new online shop? Book Marks – yes… bookmarks in a huge range of media. I am thinking leather, metal, glass, polymer clay, collage, ribbon, yarn,  fiber… I have a list a mile long. I wish my days were as long as my list of ideas. As of right now, we might have 10 book marks listed… but we have  a lot of adventure ahead of us… and I am thrilled for this adventure.

Here is a link to the new store. Click on our store banner:

I know, I know…. you are excited for us… Of Course!~! But don’t forget to keep watching, and shopping at Hayden Brook Studios for that awesome bright dichroic fused glass jewelry you have been loving all these years~! And always… thanks for spending your precious time visiting us. We really appreciate you~! Click either image to go visit our etsy shop~!

Here is another treasury of really cool photos/items that I have “curated” on etsy (link below), the online craft show. This treasury did rather well statistically. It went to page 2 of etsy treasuries. (That is very good~!) And as of today, it has over 400 views. It is fun to make a treasury…. but the competitive goal is to get a treasury onto the 1st page, or better yet the main page of etsy.com (click here to see what i mean… etsy.com).  Then where it says: Handpicked Items See more… click on the “See More“… and that takes you to the list of the top treasuries, page 1. My college friend Kelly has been getting treasuries onto page one on a regular basis these days. That takes strategy, and time~! (To see Kelly’s Page, stained glass items, and access her treasuries, “Click here for Kelly”.) She said, it is fun to see the treasury climb the pages~! Now I know what she means. It was fun when my “Glass House” Treasury (see my last blog entry) went to the top of page 3…. and this one went to the middle of page 2.

But you may wonder why we make these treasuries. Well, mostly it is fun. But, it is also reciprocal. We make connections with other people who make treasuries… and we all promote each others’ work… we all get more exposure, presence, visibility.

AND… I love the Mad Hatter chair… too bad it is in New Zealand~! Go check out this Kaleidoscope of colors treasury~!

Click Here to visit the page: Kaleidoscope of Rainbow Color to Celebrate Spring

I curated a “Treasury” on etsy. I chose a theme and found interesting photos and items to go with that theme. These are fun to create. But, there is an added art… We try to get our collection onto the front page of the “etsy” website. One of the rules to making a treasury is that we’re not allowed to promote our own work… only that of other exhibitors of this online craft show. I am having fun. But, I am also meeting other people who like to make treasuries. So, maybe you’ll see the work of Hayden Brook Studios in someone else’s collection.

Link to Event: If You Live in a Glass House, Don’t Throw Stones

I made a “treasury” of items on “etsy”. Some may ask, “What the heck does THAT mean?” Well, it is a collection of items I like that follow a common theme. There are links to read more about each of these items. In this case, I have written about hand crafted body care products. I have been amazed and impressed with the all natural bath and body products on this online craft show, called “ETSY”. I have a new outlook on the type of products I will allow to come in contact with MY body. I guess it makes sense that most of the lotion you put on your skin sinks into your body. Skin is an organ. How about dental care? People take medicine sub-lingually (under the tongue). That means the toothpaste has 2+ minutes to enter my bloodstream. When I look at lists of ingredients 2 miles long, and wonder what I am putting into my body, it is scary. No wonder there are so many bizarre illnesses, like cancer and chronic fatigue. We are poisoning ourselves incrementally every day if we aren’t paying attention to what we are putting into our systems. Anyway, I put together a collection of LOVELY bath and body care products, even for DOGS~! Come visit my treasury and investigate these really cool stores.

PURE Natural Clean FUN Treasury

I am so excited. We just ordered these cute little business cards. They are 1/2 the size of a normal business card… very cute.  They give you the option of putting a ton of unique images on 1 side of the card. So… look what I did. I went into our Hayden Brook jewelry photo archives and took details of our jewelry and cropped them into the shape of the cards. I chose to use these 18 images on the one side. The other side says our name, our medium, and our web address. We ordered these because we got The Philadelphia Museum of Art as a wholesale account, and they wanted our work on small cards. I almost ordered something completely blank… but then I pulled my friend Lynn’s business card out of my purse. It was a tiny Moo Card. It hit me that this would be a good answer. So LOOK~!~! I am so pleased. They arrived last night. We had so much fun putting that order together for the museum gift shop.

Thanks Lynn~!  Here is a link to Lynn’s Online Store: UnaOdd

Link to Moo Cards: Moo Cards

We have been working on our design lines for 2011. That involves coming up with a basic concept, and then working it into many forms. For example, I thought it would be fun to have a lolly pop flower type of line this year. Simple and cute. So, the first thing I did was to make a few sample nuggets. I played around with the bracelet nuggets first. Once I had the basic look I wanted, I started to figure out how I would like the dangle earrings, varied pins and pendants, bracelets, and tiny studs to look. Brook wanted to work with the new technology of crinkled dichroic glass in a line this year. So, I had him sketch some idea of what he would like it to look like. We are introducing these new lines at the Philadelphia Buyers Market this week. In addition to the 2 new lines, we have taken advantage of advancing glass technology to update 4 of our older lines, too.  It has been a very complex season preparing for this year’s new lines and updates~! Then, we wanted to show our wholesale buyers photos of these lines to take away from the wholesale show… but we wanted to keep our prices low. So, for the first time, I designed the color catalog supplement, and we went to Staples for a reduced cost printing. Not quite as flashy as our past color supplements, but we are quite pleased with what we’ve come up with. It is a new look… like a sunny day at the beach. It does show some of our glass colors rather well, too. Here are our 2011 line sheet supplements to go with our color catalog (the one’s shop owners buy from… sorry, these are NOT retail prices). But, we figured you would enjoy seeing what we’ve been up to for the last month~!