And now, I wait

I got the first 10 bracelets finished, photographed and up on Etsy just now. You can see them at this link. Holy moly, it was a lot of work!! And on a scale of 1-10, I think the photos are about 6 or 7, I need to get larger pieces of background paper or fabric, although I did find a stash of old bottles that I like the look of. 

I spent a couple of hours this morning figuring out the little rings of metal, called jump rings, that can give some extra length to the piece, and also are used to attach things like the toggle clasps. I had bought a bunch of jump rings and with the two beading pliers I had, if I wasn't flipping the ring across the room, it was so mangled at the end that it was unusable. 

So I did what people do these days when faced with a conundrum - I went to Youtube. And there, I saw a video of a woman making her own jump rings from a length of wire. A-ha. (Alison, I did read your comment - sorry I never replied. I did get wire working books from the library and they were helpful.) The woman on the Youtube video had this nifty little pair of pliers that you could put an open jump ring in and when you closed it, the ring would close. So I went out to the bead stores in search of this wonderful tool.

And no one had one. I tried four stores. But I got some suitable wire to make my own rings, a pair of flush cutters and got a proper second pair of pliers for manipulating jump rings. I didn't need the special pliers. As is true in so many aspects of life, having the right tools made all the difference. I wound the wire around a knitting needle and then cut one ring at a time of the resulting coil, so that I had one turn of the wire with each cut. Then it was a simple thing to get stuff put on the rings, put them together and get on with things. 

After seeing the photography on Etsy in general, I decided my photos needed to be much brighter. These are a little washed out, but I'll get better at this as I go. 

What do you think? Any suggestions?

And for the rest of my evening, I'm going to take out the bind off from my Cadence sweater and add another 2-3" of ribbing, as it's just a bit too short. I thought I would take it on my work trip Monday. I'm flying to Long Island for some training. It's going to be a busy three days, so I'm enjoying just chilling at home today and tomorrow.