Extra Help

We've been super busy filling and shipping orders lately so luckily we were able to call in some extra help yesterday of the four-legged kind. Here's Dutch preparing to stick the labels on the shipments at the end of the day.

New design idea....

Our site will soon have a page dedicated to new stamping design ideas. Until that page is ready, we will continue to post ideas here.

Here is a piece that I recently made for a magazine ad. Isn't it great....I gave it to my sister (the only person I know crazy enough to have 4 kids!) and she loves it and wears it everyday. She gets a bunch of comments on it. Perhaps you should add this design into your jewelry line....here is how.

~ I used the 1" Square Washer with 1/2" ID.
~ Stamped it with the 3/32nd" letters, and Tiny Heart design stamp
~ Punched 2 holes in one corner with the 1.8mm Hole Punch Plier
~ Dangled one Stylized Heart Tag from the middle with a Heart Spiral design stamped on it. I hung that with a 3mm 18g. Jump Ring

Have fun!

We've Lowered the Price on Our $38 Classes!!!

Why the price break you ask? Well, we have streamlined the process of producing our online classes and want to pass the savings on to our customers. Also in order to keep class prices accessible in these difficult economic times we have decided to lower our highest priced class.

That means all of our $38 classes will drop to $28. That's a $10 savings!! The prices for the $12 and $20 classes will remain the same. If you have been putting off taking a class...the time is perfect for you to jump in.

Also, to give our students more information on the class, we are categorizing our classes into two new groups. The "Designer Series" will focus on classes that are a signature class of the instructor. This means the class is one of the instructor's specialties! The "Technique Series" will concentrate on teaching a general jewelry making skill. You may still do a project in these classes, but the technique is adaptable for many designs and may be a prerequisite for other Beaducation classes.

We have a bunch of new classes coming up in the next few months with great instructors and inspiring projects. We hope you enjoy our classes as much as we love to bring them to you. Do you have feedback for us? Feel free to let us know your thoughts, concerns or questions.

New in the Shoppe...Nickel Silver!

What is nickel silver you ask? We thought that you might want to about the newest blanks that we have added to the Shoppe. They are made from Nickel Silver. Nickle Silver is an alloy of copper, nickel and zinc. It does not contain any pure silver and is named for its silvery appearance. It is much more cost effective than sterling silver, and you can achieve a nice high polish on the surface. It is a bit stiffer in comparison to copper in workability and hardness. The color of polished nickle is slightly darker than sterling or fine silver.

Certain people may have allergies to Nickle Silver. It will not turn your skin green, like copper might, but some people do experience a slight reddening of the skin with exposure to nickel. You can spray nickle (or for that matter, copper, too) lightly with a matte spray fixative to keep the metal from contacting the skin. If you choose to do this step, (the final step, after polishing) place all of your pieces on a piece of paper and spray lightly with the fixative. Let dry for 1 hour and repeat on other side. If you need to even out the coating, repeat the process once more.

Would you like information on all of our metals? You can find a handy metals reference chart here.

Stamped Design Idea:

We published this cool design idea in our latest newsletter and like it so much that we wanted to share it with everyone!

Stamp a Pair of Glamorous Earrings
The holidays are around the corner and quick and stylish gifts are always in fashion.
These earrings are a fun and easy project to make.
Here is what we did:

• Select a pair of sterling blanks for the focal piece. (We used the Sterling Silver Circle with 8mm hole.) We added the Sterling Silver 3/8" circles as the top dangle.
• Plan your design. We like the way the Tiny Heart and Loopy Design stamps looked together. The dots are made using a center punch. We added the Heart Spiral to the top dangle. Stamp away! (Need tips on stamping? Check out the free Stamping on Metal class.)
• Punch holes and add dangles. The 1.25mm hole punch plier works great. Mark the holes with a permanent marker and punch using the plier.
• Attach the focal piece to the dangle using a jump ring. The ring loops through the 8mm hole and through the hole punched in the top dangle.
• Add beaded dangles. To learn to add them with a basic loop, check out our FREE Basic Loop class. To add beads with a wire wrapped link check out our Wire Jewelry Fundamentals class.
• Add earwires...done!

Do you have any favorite designs that you have stamped that you would like to share? Send a photo to kate@beaducation.com and we can post it.

New lowercase stamp set font....drum roll please

Ok we received the samples of the new lowercase letter stamps, for making stamped jewelry, and let me say, WOW WOW WOW. The whole office was jumping with excitement (nothing excites us more than new cool tools). They only sent us samples of a few letters and the quality and precision is amazing. The sets are in production and I have begged and pleaded to get them before mid November so you can all have time to make your holiday line of jewelry with them, or to put the sets on your wish list :)

We still don't have the final price but IT WILL BE LESS THAN $200...woohoo!

So I am finally willing to show you the font.....here it is. PLEASE post a comment to let me know what you think!
This font was hand drawn by me (Lisa, head mama here at Beaducation.com). I learned a lot about how to create a font. Really, all we needed was an image for each letter but I went ahead and actually made it into an official font so I can use it in Word Docs and such.

We named this font Kismet, because it was so meant to be.....it is so "me".

Each letter was very thought out and edited over and over again. Some letters had a lot more loopiness to them but it got to be a bit much so we turned it down a bit. I am very happy with and hope you are too!

New Gary Wilson beads now in stock

When we launched our Riveted Rock Band Online Class a few weeks ago we also featured almost 40 beads by Gary Wilson. These beautiful large-holed beads sold out in a matter of days. We just added 24 new beads to the Shoppe so check it out and shop now because these beads are one-of-a-kind and are sure to sell out quickly!