Craft Show Time

I am excited to say it is time to be in a craft show!  This Saturday I will be in Dover, Indiana for their spring craft show.  The time is 9 am until 4 pm.  Come on down and say hello.  I would love to meet you.  My sister Lisa of Creative Kitty Crochet will be there with her hand crocheted items.

Even though life has been chaotic I have been able to create some new pieces of jewelry.  I have been experimenting with using crochet techniques with wire.  Here are a couple of samples.

These are various glass beads crocheted onto 28 gauge wire.  I was very happy with the effect.  A fun summer time piece.

For this piece the pendant is a dyed stoned wrapped in silver plated wire.  The round amethyst beads were crocheted into the piece on 28 gauge wire and finished with silver filigree round beads.

I am still experimenting with Harmoniously Tanged jewelry to decide which direction I want my jewelry to take.  I am looking for those piece that say "Hey Look at Me!"  I want you to be able to look at my creations and say I know that came from Harmoniously Tangled.  How am I doing?

Forgive me friends.

I am not an everyday blogger but it has been way too long since I have visited with you.  At this time my life is not so harmoniously tangled.  Many developments in the wind.  Our oldest daughter and our two grandsons (5 & 4) have move in with us.  Our youngest daughter had married and moved out over a year ago.  Over time we had started making use of our new space.  We had taken a bedroom and placed bookshelves in there and was in the process of creating a game room.  This was sort of  halted when I began my journey into jewelry making.  I then began to use the room and spread my goodies all over the place.  To be more direct, the room was a piled up mess in which everything had to find a new home because that would be the room the boys would be taking.  The move in date was speeded up a week and this caused an increased urgency to make way. 

For those who have moved even in the best of conditions it is still not a fun job.  As they say, "When it rains it pours."  In the middle of the move in week I received a call from my youngest daughter (she is 19).  She was having abdominal pain.  After a trip to the doctor we received orders for an ultrasound.  We are now waiting on the results to see if there will be a surgery.

Although things are not harmonious at the moment I know as things go forward it will again come to that.  My logo for Harmoniously Tangled is surrounded by vines because if you turn a vine away from the sun it will curl its way back around to face the sun.  The sun will shine again here in my corner of the world and I hope all of you will stick with me to see it.  I can tell you over the last few days I have reworked a necklace and I have created another necklace that only needs to have the clasp added.  I will bring you pictures as soon as possible because my desk top computer has also died during all this.   It had the software for my camera on it. 

If you believe in the old wives tale that bad things happen in threes then I should be on my way to being harmonious again very soon.  What ever happens I am sure my family will hold each others hand as we walk through it.

I am pleased to say that I have my first craft show of the year coming up at the end of the month.

SPRING CRAFT SHOW at St Johns the Baptist Church, Dover Indiana
SATURDAY, MARCH 31, TIME: 9am to 4pm

I hope if you are in the area you will stop in and say hello.  I look forward to meeting many new people there.

WOW! I Am Amazed.

I am amazed and humbled by the many people who have taken the time to visit and like my little corner of the world on facebook.  Behind each of those little numbers is an amazing person.  I thank you for sharing time with me.

To thank you for sharing your time I will host a giveaway here on my blog very soon.  I need a little to time to create special items for this occasion.

Many things are going on.  As you read on my previous posts I am now creating with polymer clay to use in my handmade jewelry.  For the giveaway I want to create some unique items for you.  If you are interested in sponsering an item for the giveaway you can email me at harmoniouslytangled@yahoo.com  Send me a picture of the item with a link to your page and if it will be free shipping.

There is now another place you can find me, Pinterest   If you are not familar with Pinterest it is a place where you can create bulletin boards and put pictures of things that interest you.  Warning!!! This is fun and can be addicting.

Thank you again for sharing your time with me.  Stay tuned for the upcoming giveaway.

Getting back to what I had in mind.

When I started this blog my idea was to share the journey of jewelry making.  To allow you to come along as I learned to make different pieces of jewelry and let you know how I over come the problems I faced.  I should have known that I would probably not be able to follow that plan.  Mainly because I am the type of person who finds a solution and moves on.  I am now thinking that posting these small triumphs may be a way for me to see the progress that I am making.  This will also show I am not in the time warp I sometimes feel I am in.

First I want to say when I decided to start making jewelry it was a need to remake myself.  I left a very stressful job as a surgical technologist and my youngest daughter had graduated high school, married and left home. So faced with an empty nest and no career I needed to find something to do with my time.  I picked up a few odds and ends for jewelry making one day.  After creating my first piece I was hooked.  Not because it was so incredibly great but because it gave me a feeling of accomplishment and I enjoyed the creative process.

Naturally I started searching the internet for information on jewelry making.  I came across wire working.  I was amazed at the weaves and circles.  I watched videos showing people holding their wires as they created different patterns.  I gathered my supplies and jumped in.  I am not a strong or rough person but the first problem I came up against  when weaving was I would bend my support wires.  I was using 20 gauge.  Which is still the gauge I enjoy using.  I did what I always do when I come up against a problem.  I called my Dad. LOL  My Dad is 70 and I am so blessed to still have him in my life and close by.  He is someone who can come up with simple low cost answers.  I explained I would like to have a frame that could help hold the wires while I was weaving but I wasn't sure what kind of clamps to use.  His answer "How about a clip board?  Then you can cut the middle out."

Here is the outcome of that conversation.

 
I chose to use two clip boards so i could vary the length.  I cut out the middle and placed holes in the sides and used screws and wing nuts to hold it together.  The length can be varied by using the different holes.  The ends of the wires are slid under the clips which hold the wires straight and allow me to weave easily from front to back with out bending the support wires.  Note; I used mini clip boards.

This is one of the projects I have completed using my home made wire loom.

This is a journey of learning.  Sometimes self teaching is a slow painful method of learning.  Sometimes you surprise yourself and find you are more capable than you ever imagined.
Happy Creating to Everyone.

Are you ready???

I hope you all enjoyed your fourth of July weekend.  I certainly did.

I took my jewelry creations out into the public for the first time.  I set up a booth at our festival.  The festival for our little town is always a big event every year.  I enjoyed seeing people I had not seen in a very long time and I enjoyed meeting other vendors.  It was a wonderful experience and my sales were good for a first outing.

It was great fun watching the reaction to my Attitude creations.  You can jump over to my store and see what I am talking about by clicking on the Storenvy button next to Harmoniously Tangled.  I had wonderful comments on my creativity.  I had one person tell me, "Your work is so refreshing.  I am tired of seeing all the cookie cutter booths that have the same old jewelry."  That really made my day.

Creative Kitty Crochet and Harmoniously Tangled are finalizing plans this week for our Christmas in July Giveaway.  If there is a certain item from my store that you would love to see in the giveaway let me know and I may consider that for one of the boxes.

Creative Kitty Crochet and Harmoniously Tangled are also teaming up in our stores that when you purchase certain items you will be given a free product from the other store.  Keep watching our stores and our facebook pages for information.

Been a fun weekend but time to get back to work!  Went shopping today and picked up my supplies to create things for fall and Christmas.  So excited about getting into the creative mode for these.  My store is a little low right now but new things coming very soon!

Happy Crafting Everyone!

Stay with Us!

As you know we (Creative Kitty Crochet & Harmoniously Tangled) are having a giveaway in July.  Lisa over at Creative Kitty Crochet has been thrown a curve ball.  One of their grand babies decided he could wait no longer.  He came into this world just a few moments ago.  Happy Birthday!  Hang in there Grandma Lisa only two more to go this year. haha
Yep if you have read Creative Kitty's blog you know she still has two more grandbabies on the way this year.  She is a busy lady with making the new grandbabies goodies and keeping up with orders.
Have no fear we will be getting together and getting everything together for you!  We appreciate our friends and fans.
Today I took Harmoniously Tangled out into the public at our local festival.  It went very well!!  Even in the 90 degree weather I met many wonderful people.  I had wonderful comments on my creativity and the sells were good.  I am looking forward to tomorrow.

Have a fun and safe weekend.  Please be careful out there.  We had a very bad accident almost in front of our house in which one car was engulfed in flames.  Please don't let this be you.  I want all of you here with me!

Christmas In July!
From Creative Kitty Crochet
and Harmoniously Tangled

www.creativekittycrochet.blogspot.com

My sister Lisa and I are so grateful for all you that have supported our pages, listened to our whining, helped us grow and bought our products, and have now joined us on our blogs, that we are going to do something for YOU!  We will be giving away 6 packages. Each box will contain an item from Creative Kitty Crochet  AND  Harmoniously Tangled and I promise you won’t be disappointed! There will be 2 surprise boxes and we will list the contents of the other four. In order for us to give away six great packages we will unfortunately need to add the shipping fee. Thank you for understanding and I guarantee it will be worth the cost!

During the week of July 11th through the 15th we will be posting at different times and places a Christmas picture. We will let you know this has been done by posting "Merry Christmas!" in a status. When you see one of these posts the hunt is on! It could be on either the Harmoniously Tangled blog or Creative Kitty Crochet blog, or maaaaybe our Storenvy shops. Find it and leave a comment on Creative Kitty Crochet’s It’s a Giveaway page. Tell us what picture you saw, where you saw it. Your comment MUST include the word AGREE so that we know you are aware of the shipping fee. The shipping fee will be listed along with the Christmas picture. We will draw for all the winners on Saturday July 16th. Be sure to check back to see if you are a winner!

That being said...here are some pesky details

1)    Sorry but this is for U.S. residents only as we are not currently shipping anywhere else.

2)    You must LIKE both business pages and follow the blogs.

3)    You must use your name, not your business name, to comment with and type the word AGREE in your comment so that we know you are aware of and are willing to pay the shipping fee. A PayPal invoice will be sent.

4)    All winners will be chosen via Random.org and posted on both blogs.

5)    Winners will have 48 hours to contact either Harmoniously Tangled or Creative Kitty Crochet to claim your prize.

We hope you have as much fun as we have getting these presents together!

Hope you check with me often...you just never know when there will be a giveaway!  Since I like to change things up be sure you check the rules for the current giveaway

Swinging is harder than I thought

My last post I talked about how I was going to get into the swing of having a blog.  Did you notice the date??  Well like my name of Harmoniously Tangled trying to make all the twists and turns sometimes throws our swing off.  But my dear sister has now come up with something to push me into this a little more.  She says our business should have a combined giveaway.  Yes Creative Kitty Crochet (her store link is on this page, she also has a blog on blog spot) and Harmoniously Tangled will be doing a Christmas in July giveaway.  Keep your eye on our blogs for information!
I have been very busy.  Many new things in my store.  I have now posted my new liquid embroidery items.  There are new necklaces and bracelets.  Just lots of fun.  Head on over and check those out.
I am now pushing myself to learning more and getting my jewelry before more people.  I will be doing my first festival on July 4th weekend.  If you are in the Liberty, Indiana area at that time head on up to the court house lawn and look me up.  I would love to meet you.
Here is one of my new liquid embroidery items.  A Mail Bag!  With so many receiving letters from people in the military I wanted to give everyone a nice place to store those treasures.

Getting into the Swing

Time to get into the Swing of having a business and a blog.  Yes it is time to turn the switch and get things rolling.  Harmoniously Tangled is moving forward and branching out a bit.  Coming new to my store is liquid embroidery items.  I will be offering baby blankets that can be personalized with the babies name and if you want the birth date.
There will also be another surprise item posted today.  A special keepsake item.  So make sure you keep checking back today. 
As I am getting these things started it will be a gentle swing at first to add them.  I want to give you a sneak peak at an liquid embroidery item that I did little over 20 years ago.  My nephew liked dinosaurs but back then you could not find special items like that.  So this aunt set out and made a very special gift.  A hand painted blanket.  After a trip to the library where I searched for pictures of the dinosaurs I then returned home and hand drew and painted the blanket in this picture.  The paints do not wash out or bleed.  Tri-chem is the best liquid embroidery paint I have every used.  I have just purchased another set and I am excited to get back into this hobby once again.

It may take years but do not give up on things you have enjoyed in the past.  You never know when they may come around again.

Trouble with computers.

I am not good with computers.  It is like we speak a totally different language.  I will tell it to do something and it just sits there or even better it will do something totally crazy and mess up everything I have done to that point.  To make things even more fun I seem to have a knack for finding glitches.  I am lucky that I have a couple of people to go to.  My husband who is an IT person and my sister (Creative Kitty Crochet) who also has a blog and runs an on line store at Storenvy.
 Recently I tried placing the Storenvy button on my Facebook page.  The application looked like it took.  I was excited until........ I clicked on the button and I see my business name with the products from my sisters store  Three different people combed through the information and we could not find anything anywhere that should have linked Harmoniously Tangled and Creative Kitty.  Sent emails to Storenvy and Facebook.  Storenvy did keep in contact with me until the issue was resolved but I only received one message from Facebook asking for a screen shot.  Sent the screen shot and heard nothing more from them.
I have talked to other Storenvy users who have had issues with the application.  My answer came late one night or should I say very early one morning when I was sitting there still stewing over the whole process.  I am an old school person and still use Windows Internet Explorer for most of things I do on the internet.  Except on my Storenvy.  I cannot work with my Storenvy on Windows because I cannot see the design bars that makes things so much easier.  Until that point I had tried loading the application using Windows.  I decided to totally remove the application and try loading with Google Chrome.  It worked!!!!  I will add here that my sister had tried using Chrome to load the application for my store too but it didn't work when she tried.
If you are a Storenvy user and you have had issues with the Facebook application check out the Storenvy & Facebook Application tab at the top of this page to see the steps I went through that corrected my issue.  Hopefully it will work for you also.

Getting Ready

The recent military achievements have really cranked up my Patriotism.  Not that it needs a lot of help.  My husband served in the Marine Corp  and we have many other members of our families in various branches of the service so it just comes standard in our family.  This has turned my creative attention to things of red, white and blue.  I have been greatly disappointed by how few beads and things I can find in my area to work with.  The one area I have been able to find something to be creative with is once again BUTTONS.  Keep checking my Storenvy!  New Patriotic things will be showing up soon.
I am sorry that I could not seem to get things together to do special mothers day things.  I am working very hard to try and get myself organized to not only create but also be in tune with the holidays, season changes and style changes.  There is also the promoting.  Trying to get the Harmoniously Tangled name out there so all of you can find me and hopefully find jewelry you would enjoy.
Have ideas or suggestions.  I would love to hear them.  Are you a jewelry maker?  I would love to see your work and hear where you get your ideas from.  I can be found on facebook.  If you have a facebook page hop on over to Harmoniously Tangled and hit the like button.  I will repay you with a visit and help to introduce you to my circle of friends.
LETS HELP EACH OTHER SPREAD THE WORD.

Busy Busy.

Life is busy for everyone.  Seems just trying to keep up takes us in so many directions.  Try to remember to take time for yourself and the things you love,  what ever that may be.

I love to create.  Now my attention is on jewelry but I try to not limit my creativity to just one thing.  I also enjoy writing and picture taking, both allow a different type of freedom of expression.  For me when I give myself some freedom happiness seems to follow.

While creating new jewelry I focus on things that I have enjoyed in the past.  As a child I enjoyed kaleidoscopes.  If fascinated me how turning them slightly could bring a totally different picture.  I came across some beads that brought back that memory.  I created an earring and necklace set that reminded me of the carefree days of sitting with those wonderful toys and exploring.

Although I do not live close the ocean now there was I a time I did.  I enjoyed those days walking on the beach.  The days of exploring the sand and finding sea shells.  With that in mind I created two new bracelets, sea breeze and ocean waves.

To check out my new creations click on the Storenvy button on this page.  While your shopping also check out my sisters crocheting creations at CreativeKitty and my daughters knitting at Garters & Loops.

Take time for you!  Find something you enjoy to do and give yourself permission to enjoy it!  I hope maybe reading this blog is one of the things you enjoy.  I enjoy sharing with you.

Detour Ending

The past few days have taken me unexpected places but the road is finally smoothing out and I am beginning to recognize my surroundings again.  After a brief illness myself I am back on the road to creativity.  I have taken some extra time to see what is trendy and I have many great new ideas.
I have gone back and redesigned my Attitude charm bracelets and they are more in style and supporting removable charms.  I have some new pieces I am hoping to add to my store tomorrow.  I have been inspired by BUTTONS and have created pieces using some adorable buttons.
I am grateful for the support I have received and for the advice.  Keep your thoughts and ideas coming.it helps the ideas to flow.

Miles out of my way.

The detour continues and like most detours it is taking me miles away from the direction I want to go.  So what am I going to do?  Enjoy the scenery!  Which in this case are my grandchildren.  My son-in-law is having surgery so my grandsons are with me.  Means grandma doesn't get to work on her jewelry because little hands would want to help and thousands of beads and other things would not be much fun to pick out of a carpet.  So for a while longer we shall travel down the road to places where I had not planned on going but sometimes those turn out to be the best trips of all.

Detours

The past few days have not been spent like I had planned.  Then again it seems I spend much of my life detouring from my original plans.  Friday I was up and ready to get started on my charms for the Attitude line for my Harmoniously Tangled store on Storenvy and then I received a phone call.  My daughter and son-in-law were ill.  As anyone with children know it is hard to rest and get better with children to care for.  Jewelry things can wait and I took my grandsons for the day.  Quick call to hubby to bring home happy meals and we were set for a day of movies, computer games and play.  They spent the night so grandma did not sleep much.  They were very good and slept well but I had forgotten what it was like to have little ones in the house and I heard every noise.  That made Saturday a nonproductive day for me as well.  Although hubby and I had dinner out and a movie as a sigh of relief that the government came through with a budget.  That is a huge thing for us since my husband is a government employee.
Sunday was more productive for the store.  The first of the Attitude charms were added and a new bracelet that I called "Flowers for you".  I am going to put the Attitude line on hold for a bit as I finish another bracelet and work on a set that I am going to call "Kaleidoscope."  I have many ideas and the creative aspect is still for me a great rush.  Speaking of rush, it is time to rush off here and get busy.  Have a great day and come back soon.

Hello and welcome.

Glad you stopped by.  First what is Harmoniously Tangled.  That is a big question.  It could encompass so many things.  Perhaps my life that has been full of joy and tangled with despair.  A life that was nurtured in a small town in south eastern Indiana where I grew up and ventured forth to states such as North Carolina, Tennessee and Arizona.  Ventures that brought forth a past abusive marriage to a divorce and forward to a man who I love and have been married to for more than twenty years.  Now weave in two beautiful daughters and two grandsons.  For a few more twists braid in the many careers such as surgical technologist for more than sixteen years, owning a dog grooming business for five years and becoming a certified aromatherapist.  That alone would certainly give credence to the title.  While I am happy to blog about any of these there is another purpose for this blog.

In 2009 I left my career in the health care field and shortly after found my self amongst the many Empty Nester's.  Which left me wondering.  What now?

I have recently come upon the answer to that question.  Harmoniously Tangled.  The name of my new adventure.  I am designing jewelry and selling it at Storenvy.  I love the freedom to create and I am finding a new identity as I  weave wires into  a unique piece of jewelry and create wonderful characters with wood burning.  I am developing a line that I called Attitude.  This line was inspired by the emoticons that we have all come to love.  I am creating charms with emotional little faces that will allow us to give people a forewarning to our mood of the day.  It is wonderful to have a new adventure that makes me want to get up and see where the day takes me.

I am grateful you have come along with me and I am looking forward to hearing from you.