Just Listed

Chicken Barrette, $6 from littleeyedesigns on Etsy

‘Ello!  If you haven’t peeked in to my Etsy shop lately (click there), you’ll be blown away at all the new items.  I’ve been hemming and hawing about new listings and I realized that when you sell tiny, little specialty objects it really is a numbers game:  the more I pack in there, the more chance there will be someone who connects with the artwork featured in the bottle cap!  Many new listings still to come, but I especially like that chicken barrette.

I’m also offering FREE SHIPPING on any order over $10, all you need to do is enter “ISPENT10” (all caps, no spaces) at checkout and the shipping charge will be removed.  That’s neat!

http://littleeyedesigns.etsy.com

Your Custom Little Eye Magnets

A couple of months ago I was delighted to receive custom orders from Malaika of Hand Me Down Designs and Laura Duplissis LeBrun of Sweeter Salt for two very different wedding-related orders.  Malaika needed gifts for bridal showers (magnet sets with the couples’ images and two bottle cap charm necklaces of the same) and Laura wanted some unique, DIY-type gifts for all her wedding guests.  Tonight, I want to illustrate the custom option that Little Eye has to offer for wedding favors, birthday presents, stocking stuffers, Easter hide-ables, baby showers, etc. etc. – the sky is the limit!  I love working with people and their designs, making them fit in bottle caps, and working together to color coordinate the caps for maximum customization.  It’s all about you, guys!

Laura wanted little wedding favors that were affordable and memorable – the first thing you should know about custom work from Little Eye Designs is that bulk ordering (100 pieces or more) is priced wholesale.  If I can get a whole bunch of work done at once I’m happy to pass the savings on to you!  So, Laura’s graphic design-savvy fiancé (now husband!) designed the perfect graphic to describe them, illustrated it in their wedding colors and passed it on to me:

Ross and Laura Sailing, Waving

Yes!   Ross sized the image in to a circle for me, but most of the time I am working with raw images and I will do a few crops and submit to my customer’s approval.  Some images are better at being ‘circled’ than others – I usually recommend that people send 2-3 images of the thing they might want in their custom caps, that way if one picture is not as good as the others for the crop then there will still be plenty of options.

After receiving the image, Laura and I decided that sunshine-y yellow backs for the bottle caps would be the perfect color to complement the image on the front as well as their wedding colors.  Coordination is everything, no?  Now, Audrey — get to work!

Custom Images - Printed and Cut

First, I made templates and printed out the design Laura and Ross wanted – then I cut them all out and stacked them up in little columns.  I am a bit specific about my process…

Prepared Caps and Fixed Images

The little Rosses and Lauras are then put in to prepared bottle caps (backs painted, half-filled with epoxy) and fixed with a crafters glue to prevent any color bleeding.  Then I did this about a 100 more times while I watched silly programs on television – most likely “The Cosmos” with Carl Sagan because I don’t have the right kind of attention span for “The Bachelorette.”

Ahh, finished!

You can see from the shiny-ness above that these are the finished caps.  The glued images were then covered in a layer of epoxy and let to dry and cure for maximum strength.  .5″ diameter ceramic magnets are then attached to the back using jeweler’s glue (pretty powerful stuff) which makes for a strong hold (3 take out menus?  One exceptionally heavy macaroni craft?), good functionality while not being too bulky.  You can also see the bright, yellow finish with white dappling which is my handy-dandy “Little Eye” technique.  Now put these babies up on a vintage ‘Frigidaire’ door at the entry of your wedding’s dining hall and you’ve got a really cool way to help your guests remember you, your wedding day and how much fun they had every time they open up their refrigerator door.

Here are some applications for custom Little Eye magnets.  (I make pins, necklaces, hair clips and rings, too!):

-Bridal Showers (photographs, wedding date, a ‘set of 12’ as a gift)

-Bridal Party Favors (flowers, images of the bride (and groom), sayings)

-Wedding Favors (illustrations, photographs, wedding date)

-Baby Shower Gifts and Favors (ultrasound images, illustrations)

-Stocking Stuffers (inexpensive gifts for everyone)

-Baby Announcement (set of 2 with photograph of baby and birth date/weight) in addition to greeting card announcements

-Birthday Presents (do your friends really like Twin Peaks?  How about a magnet set!?)

-Band Pins (your band’s logo or photo to sell at shows with other merch and music)

-Anything else you can dream up in your noggin!

Please don’t hesitate to ask if you’re interested in any of the above or more!

You can reach me at the ol’ gmail at:  littleeyedesigns

Metal Feathers Band Pin with Bumper Sticker Graphic - Click to See Their Page!

Strength in Numbers: A 4th of July Collaboration with Mollie Ann from Rough Magic Creations

Eureka!  This week has the important distinction of being the week I finished a collaboration with another talented crafter, Mollie Ann, of Rough Magic Creations.  It all began when the Etsy Maine Team came up with a 4th of July Team Challenge, to create (by yourself or with a partner) a holiday-themed piece for Independence Day.  Being the enormous fan of red, white and blue that I am (my photo background has been only that, lately!) I was super psyched.

I got in touch with Mollie, knowing that she was way more talented with metal than me.  I’ve been thinking for a long time about branching out of the bottle cap bezel world, and this was a great first opportunity.  Mollie and I put our heads together to make a star-shaped earring and pendant with a circular bezel hammered right in the center.  Here is our initial sketch:

And by 'sketch,' I mean image of a star I copied and drew elements on!

From there, we agreed that sheet aluminum would have the right color we were looking for (Mollie usually uses copper, but the silver color and price point of aluminum worked well with our design) so she ordered it and I waited with much anticipation to receive my new bezels in the mail!

Empty Bezels, Waiting for their stars + stripes

Finally (okay, I say ‘finally’ but it was so fast, like a day later!  I was just like an excited kid on Christmas morning) I received the lovely pieces (pictured above) in the mail, ripe for the epoxy-ing!  After cutting some custom size circles, gluing and mixing epoxy Mollie and I were the proud parents of the pieces you see below:

Stars and Stripes Earrings, $26 on Etsy

Stars and Stripes Pendant (You pick stars or stripes) $24 on Etsy

Stars and Stripes Earrings and Pendant Set, $48 on Etsy

Mollie and I are so pleased at how these turned out!  The photo prototypes are our ‘rough drafts’ so we’ve made some changes, including making the bezels deeper so that the epoxy doesn’t bleed around the edges of the circle … which you can kind of see in the picture but won’t be an issue on any further runs of the sets.  If you’re interested in ordering a pair of earrings, a necklace, or a set of earrings and a necklace please know you can specify what combination of stars and stripes you’d like!  Order from either Mollie or I in our Etsy shops (you can click on the images to link to the listings) and let us know what you’d like!  We can also do the stars with totally different images, not just stars and stripes.  🙂  The stars and stripe sets are made of lightweight charms with a nickel ball chain for the necklaces and sterling silver ear wires for those of us with sensitive ears!

All orders received by June 22nd should be shipped to you in time for the 4th of July.

Warm Colors, Cold Days

My “Reaching Apple Tree” bottle cap necklace made it in to a VERY well done treasury today.  Take a look!  Click on the image of the necklace to get you there.

Reach for the sky!

The treasury was put together by ArtsyAsh101, click on her name to visit her Etsy shop.

In other Autumn news – tomorrow is Tara and Brian’s WEDDING DAY and Kate and I get to be team photographers.  We will also be thoroughly drunk by the end of the night so those two better get the posed/family/pretty shots in before I forget how a flash works. We’ll be sharing Kate’s Mom’s digital Rebel (whoa whoa fancy digital camera!) and both be sporting film outfits too.  My trusty Mamiya C330 will be doing double duty as a camera and a centering weight to keep me from toppling over after one too many PBRs.  Yes yes yes!