Black Friday Sale – 2023

Howdy, friends! Its that time of year when I get super overwhelmed with holiday shopping at work and almost forget to put my Etsy shop on sale, haha.

This year we’re putting everything on sale. Patterns are 25% off for the rest of the month and finished jewelry is 30% with a few seasonal pieces on even greater discount. No coupon needed and no rush since the sale will stay on until the end of the month. If you haven’t grabbed my newest Headliner Herringbone pattern or need a super quick holiday earring pattern, this is a great time to grab them. Hope y’all have a wonderful end of the year!

New Design! – Headliner Herringbone Bracelet

Hello, friends! Thank you so much for sticking around and staying subscribed to my much less active blog. I promise to still post my new designs here, so you never miss out on a new one.

This week, I’m announcing my Headliner Herringbone Bracelet, which you can find here!

A few weeks ago, I shared this bracelet picture to a beading group that I’m in on Facebook and received a ton of kind words and over a dozen requests for a pattern.

I had made this bracelet awhile ago and had briefly thought about doing a pattern, but thought it was too close to my River Reed bracelet, which I had recently put out. But since I had so many pattern requests, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to write one up!

I’ve mentioned before that I’m always looking for ways to incorporate larger beads into my beadweaving designs. I have a real soft spot for Czech glass beads and have a huge stash of 6mm druks and fire-polished beads, so I wanted to make something that gave me a chance to use them. This bracelet actually starts with that center panel of 6mm beads, which you can customize with different size and shape beads in different amounts, as long as they’re about 5-6mm in width, you can get creative with what beads you use.

Once you have the center panel done, you move out from both sides in herringbone stitch which does go a little faster since you get to use 8/0 beads. I also couldn’t help but include some inclusions for more fire-polished crystals, although, again, you can customize quite a bit and replace these with lots of different sized beads.

I am really pleased with how this one turned out and I think my pattern writing skills have been improving. I’ve learned how to make these neat and tidy columns for the step-by-step diagrams and was sure to include information on the beads I used, thread recommendations, and customization suggestions.

Thank you all so much for your continued support. I hope you like this design as much as I do. I think I’m gonna play around with making more samples and trying a wider variety of beads for the center panel and inclusions. Let me know if you give it a try!

Charity Flash Sale for Point of Pride!

Hello, everybody!

Today is the last day of my weekend long flash sale raising money for Point of Pride, an incredible organization that provides direct aide to trans and non-binary folks trying to access gender-affirming care. In honor of the Trans Day of Visibility on Friday, I have put everything in my shop on an automatic 25% off and every penny that I make is getting donated.

Click the photo to shop the sale!

Or, if you’d rather your donation not get filtered through Etsy, feel free to donate to Point of Pride directly and then send me a screenshot of your donation receipt and I will gift you that amount’s worth of beadweaving patterns from my shop. I have like 40 to choose from now!

I love the trans and non-binary folks in my life and want them and people like them to have all the support they need. Increased visibility has come with a lot of violence and fear-mongering, so I feel drawn to help in direct ways like this that will provide individual people with care that they otherwise couldn’t afford. If you also feel drawn to help and would like some jewelry or beadweaving patterns, this is a great way for you to both help out and get a little treat. Have a great weekend! :)

Black Friday Sale!

Guess who forgot to announce on here that I started my Black Friday sale?

Twas me. I am a fool.

But in my defense, I do work at an online bead retail site that is ALSO having a huge Black Friday sale and my only coworker is out of town, so it has been such a crazy week for me that I’m lucky I didn’t forget to go to Thanksgiving entirely, haha.

Anyway, if you haven’t picked up my newest pattern yet or just want to see what I have available, now is a great time to do it! I won’t have another big whole-inventory sale like this for the rest of the year.

Click here to shop the sale! Hope y’all have a lovely weekend!

New Design – Quintadrop Flower Earrings!

Long time, no see, everyone! I finally published a new pattern and wanted to share it here. I think these little funky flowers are really cute and particularly like how the stem looks on a long kidney wire earring.

You can get the pattern here!

You need two-hole cabochon beads, 12mm bugles, Miyuki or Toho 11/0’s and either 3mm pearls or 3x4mm crystal rondelles. I think I’m definitely going to make a lot of these when I have cabochon leftovers after making a Demoiselle bracelet.

They’re pretty quick little flowers and I wouldn’t be surprised if I reach for this design for last minute Christmas gifts in about a month, haha.

This pattern does include the info on which colors I used and while it does include a bunch of photos, the instructions are written in clear diagrams that I drew myself, as always.

Hope everyone had a lovely autumn!

-Sam

Hey, y’all

Just a heads up that I am going to start donating to my local abortion fund every month using a portion of my Etsy profits, starting July 1st. Reproductive freedom is extremely important to me and I want to start putting my money where my mouth is, especially in light of the recent strikedown of Roe vs Wade.

If you’re cool with that, great! Happy to have you here. I have decided if I’m going to do a set amount or a percentage of sales yet, so don’t feel pressured to buy more things in my shop. Just want you to know my goals and values. I’m glad that yours are similar.

If you are decidedly not cool with that, that is your prerogative. Don’t buy jewelry or patterns from me anymore if you absolutely do not want your money contributing to helping people obtain abortions. I’ve decided that this is important enough to me that I am willing to lose customers, money, and your approval. Thank you for your past patronage. You do not need to contact me to announce that you won’t support me further. I will not respond.

Thanks, everybody. I’m hoping to get back to posting jewelry again soon. I haven’t been beading much lately, but hopefully a little quiet time with my beads is my future. My 30th birthday is on July 4th, in four days. This is part of my gift to myself. Another gift to myself is not allowing comments on this post. Have a good day.

A Sale and a Strike

So, how about the good news first?

As of right now, everything in my Etsy shop is 20% off. This includes finished jewelry and patterns and you don’t need a coupon code for it at all – the discount will be automatically applied. Please enjoy!

The sale will end on April 11th because I will be participating in the Etsy Seller’s Strike. My shop will be closed from April 11th until the 18th in solidarity with the strike. My patterns and finished jewelry will not be available during that week.

So, why the strike?

Mostly, because I ain’t no scab.

But seriously, if you want a more eloquent explanation, Mashable has a pretty good article here that ends with a bunch of testimonials from Etsy sellers and this petition has a fantastic breakdown of changes that sellers would like to see. It’s specific and accurately reflects my feelings and I would love if you would sign it.

For me personally, my exasperation with Etsy has been steadily building over the last few years, but the recent straw that broke the camel’s back was an announcement that they were going to hike our transaction fee from 5% to 6.5% in the same email that they bragged about their record breaking profits. In 2020, they more than doubled their gross marketplace sales. In 2021, they kept those pandemic sales gains and broke their 2020 record by $3.2 billion dollars. To then turn around and raise our fees by 30% when they are already making us offer free shipping and paying for mandatory offsite ads is honestly insulting.

I really want to believe in Etsy as a marketplace. I’ve made over 15,000 sales since I opened my shop in 2013 and my experiences have largely been good. But the fees are getting ridiculous (.20 per listing plus 6.5% transaction fee plus %12 advertising fee that I can’t opt out of). I don’t like being punished for not being Amazon with a timer counting down when a customer messages me or being punished for four star reviews. I want to be able to reach out to Etsy and talk to a human representative, not an AI chat robot that runs me in circles. I want the resellers and non-handmade items actually policed and removed from the marketplace. I want the choice to opt out of Etsy’s offsite ad program. Basically, I want Etsy the way it was five years ago before it went public and started putting lining shareholder’s pockets above creating the space for small creators and artists it claims to care about.

I really don’t want to move off of Etsy like so many of my friends have. Pattern sales in particular flourish in a marketplace setup. But I’m tired of feeling powerless and bullied by a mega-corporation that claims to be supporting me. So I will be participating in the strike and when it ends on the 18th and nothing changes, I will probably be raising my prices. Between that and my expectiation that Etsy will surpress my listings after being in vacation mode for a week, I am suspecting that this is going to be a bit of a lean month. So, please, enjoy the sale while it’s going! And if you can, avoid shopping on Etsy from April 11th to 18th. We really want them to see that their marketplace is nothing without the creators and artists who have been making them money this entire time.

Winter Blue-Grays

Hey, y’all!

I’ve been on a wintery color scheme kick with lots of grays and white and blues. I found this silver-splashed white GemDuo beads at work and really fell in love with them and wanted to make an Odessa bracelet with them.

I had a lot of fun with the bright silvers and pearl and went all out with an Elegant Elements clasp.

With the same GemDuo beads, I decided to do a small length of Tiptoe Chain to make earrings! I couldn’t decide on which length I liked better and the polls I posted on Instagram ended up being close to 50/50, so I just make a few of both.

I think the daggers on the end are just PERFECT.

I also had a few slightly older pieces that I thought fit this color palette. One was just some simple peyote stitch with Montana Picasso 8/0’s with silver scattered throughout.

The other was a Toying with Tiles bracelet in some silvered ivory tiles with, surprise, blue and gray!

We got a lot of snow and freezing rain at the very beginning of February, which ended up with me being trapped in my house for a surprise four-day weekend when my driveway got coated in 1.5 inches of solid ice. While trapped inside, I finally used a Humblebeads art bead that I have been saving for years. I used my Joystone bezel for the top and made a little tassel out of Tubelet beads.

 

And finally, I made a pair of Snowball fringe earrings! The drop is are adorable lampwork sugar beads from Elizabeth Girod over at Artistic Elements (formerly Fire and Fibers).

I know it seems like I’ve been busy lately, but this is also the first time I’ve posted since my Black Friday post, so this has been a nice long color obsession spanning several months. I think I’ve gotten this gray/blue obsession out of my system, but I guess we’ll see! What colors are you into right now?

Black Friday 2021 Sale

Hi, friends! I have just set up my sale for the weekend!

20% off Patterns – 25% off Jewelry

Thursday the 25th through Monday the 29th, no coupon needed!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/wescottjewelry

Happy shopping! <3

New Design – Holly Drops! Quick Festive Earrings and Necklace Tutorial

I’m baaaaaaaack!

I had a sudden burst of inspiration this week and using a combination of self-imposed deadlines and social shaming (I posted about the design on Instagram and Facebook so that I knew people would hold me accountable), I actually managed to get the pattern done in less than a week!

Introducing – my Holly Drops!

I just can’t handle it. I think they are so cute. You can get the pattern by clicking on the above photo or right here.

One of the reasons I was able to get the pattern out so quickly is that it’s a fairly simple design. But that’s part of what I like about them so much – they’re simple, but delicate and very Christmas-y. And they’re really quick to make! I can make one of the holly drops on ten to fifteen minutes, so they’re great for last minute gifts.

You only need a few supplies – GemDuos, 4mm Rounds, and Miyuki Seed Beads (yes, they have to be Miyuki. Tohos will not work in this project.) And then either chain or a necklace cord or whatever findings you want to use. The pattern includes the step by step bead weaving instructions and assembly instructions for making earrings, a pendant, or a necklace.

The pattern also includes the specific color names and codes for both color schemes that you see in this post. I’m really glad I managed to get a warm-toned and a cool-toned option so that you can pair up the colors with your preferred metal finishes.

Honestly, I’m really proud of myself for this sudden little burst of activity and it was so fun to have a design I was really excited about this week. I hope you guys enjoy the pattern and I would love it if you tag me in your social media if you post your finished projects. <3

Have a holly jolly one, my dear friends!