Monthly Fire Divas Challenge Please Vote!

It's time for the Fire Divas Monthly Themed Challenge! For the month of July the theme of this challenge will be "Tide Pool." The entries must have something to do with the ocean and it's changing tides. Look below to see these beautiful catches!



Please vote for your favorite entry on the right side of the Fire Divas blog and leave a comment there to be entered to win a $20 gift certificate from Patrice at Shepherd Creations! Please include your email address with your comment so that we are able to contact you about your prize.



***You can find the poll to the right and at the top of the page***

Check out this great contest!

The Fire Divas are hosting an Introductory Jewelry Challenge! This challenge will be for jewelry designers who use artisan lampwork in their pieces. The winner of the Challenge will receive a beautiful group of Fire Divas' work. This is a wonderful chance for jewelry designers to show off their talents and get exposure!

Please click on the link below to get all the details & to enter: We love to see how designers use our creations, though for this 1st challenge, ANY artisan lampwwork beads will do as long as they're handmade.

http://firedivas.blogspot.com/2009/11/calling-all-desingers-introductory.html

Beading Challenge Part 2

Well we posted out challenge on the Etsy forums in the Business and Marketing section (Thanks Rob for the go ahead on this). It took less than 7 minutes to fill the remaining eight spots. We are doing twelve total with the idea of trying to get a Treasury when we are done. I will be listing the 12 people who are participating with links to their shops and also the judges with links to their shops at the end of this post. The beads are going out by Monday from SantiamDesigns
(thanks again Kira). Contestants have until the 24th of March to finish their designs and list them on Etsy for all of us to see (and hopefully they will sell also lol!). I will of course do a blog post with the finished products for everyone to browse also. Keep in mind that there is no prize so the speak just the fun of the challenge. Here are the beads that are in the challenge. What would YOU make?

So here is the list of participants making the earrings.

DesignedbyLucinda

SilverRiverJewelry

EarthlyCreations

BlackCoral (yes she does jewelry too)

byrobinlynne

virtuallori

DesignedbyLara

TeaguesBeads

SleepingCatBeads

melaniehazen

stonesandstarling

studiohart

And here is a list of the judges

YadaYadaYada

marelle

theHouseOfWorn

EmmaRoseJewelry

Beading Challenge

Well I was browsing through the Etsy forums ( which is extremely addicting, if you haven 't checked it out I highly recommend it, it is open to both sellers and buyers) the other day and there it was, another thread about "someone copied my stuff." Which of course started a debate on people coming up with the same design independently. Which happens all over the world all the time no matter what category of product you are hand producing. I am not saying that people don't copy, plenty of them do. I am also not saying that no one ever has an original idea because they do. However there are really only so many ways to make a circle out of metal, put bead on a string and make a tote. It's all in what you do with it as far as color, materials and that little something that is you and no one else. So I ran into a friend of mine on Etsy who happened to be chatting in the same thread (http://DesignedByLucinda.etsy.com) and I after some friendly banter I said something like "wouldn't it be neat if a group of us got together and using the same beads each came up with a design so that we could see how similar or different each persons design would be?!" Cindy said yes that would be so cool and then Kira (http://SantiamDesigns.etsy.com) said "Hey I would be willing to provide the beads and ship them to everyone". (Like anyone is going to turn down free beads to play with haha!). A couple of other people chimed in and said that they would be interested in joining us so the three of us decided that we would go ahead and give it a try. Not only would it be an interesting and fun thing to do but it would also be a good way to promote our shops. (We are really hoping for a storque article out of this). So Kira is providing the beads, Cindy is organizing and in touch with Rob from Etsy on the appropriate way to do this, and I am going to be updating our progress as we go. I will also post pictures of the finished products. I believe we will have a couple of judges although there is no prize in this challenge other than the satisfaction of seeing the outcome. (And free beads to play with). If this is successful we may decide to do it two or three times a year with a different person contributing the beads each time. So we will be posting our challenge in the Business and Marketing portion of the forums with Rob's permission and I will keep you updated on what happens next.