Sunday, April 20, 2014

What's New At Giftbearer Jewelry and GiftbearerSupply


Happy Easter to all my customers (and soon to be)! today only enter coupon code HOLIDAYUSFREESHIP with your purchase of  $18.00 or more and get free shipping anywhere within the USA! 

While this deal lasts there's no limit on the number of items you can apply it to. Just check out and pay by midnight EST. You do not have to have a Paypal account to pay through paypal with a debit or credit card.

Take this rare opportunity to buy and save for everybody on your gift list for Mother's Day, birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, and other gift-giving occasions.

The above pictured black shark's tooth earrings are my newest; wire-wrapped with 14 Kt. gold wire, and dangle from vermeil chain and ear wires. They have a very black tie look to them while maintaining a distinctly tribal style.

In my supply shop new things are happening as well! Papercraft supplies have been growing in demand on Etsy, so I decided to purchase some die cutting tools and equipment to fill this need.  I'm gradually phasing in some of these paper cut outs;








In addition to these, I've also started adding some iron and anodized aluminum chain in bright colors. Here are a few of the colors I have in stock now;





And last but not least; I experimented with my unique version of rock candy. These took me way to long to feasibly make a profit on, so I'm keeping them for myself, but it was interesting to see what I could do with them;
 Hand-carved sticks in cups of sugar saturated liquid (one row of green and another of yellow). The best formula I could find online said to use about 3 cups of sugar to one cup of water, boiled until thickened. I used up a whole bag of sugar, but overall it was worth it.
 24 hours later some stray crystals began forming in the cups. I pulled them out and let them dry on a plate while more crystals started to attach themselves to the sticks.
 The sticks gathered a thin layer of crystals within the first 24 hours.
This is what I got after about 2 weeks! They are finally big enough to eat. I thought it was interesting that the lighter yellow one had bigger and more cubic crystals growing on it whereas the brighter yellow one had finer and more needle-like crystals. This seemed to have something to do with how concentrated the sugar solution was. Because so many crystals filled up the cups quite rapidly I had to fish out those that were attaching to the cups themselves so as not to get the sticks stuck in a mire of rock hard rock candy and reheat and pour the liquid back into the cups to get the crystals to grow on the sticks! Since the evaporation of the water in the solution resulted in less to cover the sticks each time crystals grew on the sides of the cups I had to add water before melting the hardened sugar back down. This is most likely why I got different results from one stick to another.

I don't have it down to a science yet but it was a fun project. The green ones are not growing near as fast as the yellow, but I have one or two that will look like one of these in a few more days. 

I did find that the remaining solution could be used for more sticks after I remove others, so I am staggering them as long as I have enough usable solution to produce more lollipops.