Get on Board and and Vote for our Village of Chase

Everyone in our town of Chase is extremely excited!  They have been trying to raise funds for a skate park and entered the Kraft Heinz Project Play Contest.  Our community is one of 4 finalists and the only one from Western Canada with the chance to win $250,000 for this project.  Now it is up to the Canadian people to vote and we need your help!!!

Voting begins on Monday, July 25 at 9:00 am PST and goes until the next day (Tuesday) 9 am.  Open to vote for 24 hours only and you can vote as many times as you want!  There is no limit.

  

Make & Take Button Classes

If you live in our area, come and make your own buttons from polymer clay in rich textures and jewel-tone colors.  We will provide all of the materials and tools required to create your buttons in your own preferred colors, shapes and sizes (up to 1-5/8").  Bring your projects, fabric or yarn to the class for color matching.

This is a sample of some of the buttons you can create:

Sunday,  October 4

1pm - 4pm

Adored Before, Home Decor & more

Chase, BC

Thursday, October 8

10am - 1pm

Thread & Paper

Salmon Arm, BC

We will be holding more classes in future so visit our website or sign up for our newsletter to keep up to date with any future events.

Team Chase Fall Tea & Fashion Show

Yesterday (last Sunday) we were involved with the Team Chase Fall Tea & Fashion Show.  It was an event in our town of Chase to raise money for Breast Cancer Research.  We had the opportunity to show off our latest jewelry pieces from our "Snap Decisions" Collection which was very well received.

We also donated some jewelry pieces for the main raffle draw at the show.  The pieces included a "snap" bracelet, "snap" necklace with a selection of our interchangeable Posie "snap" art beads.

Cool to Live in Chase, BC

We moved to our little town of Chase in the province of British Columbia (Canada) more than 6 years ago and really love it here.  We have lived in small towns before but this place is special.  We are surrounded with so much beauty and nature right on the shores of beautiful Shuswap lake.  We love the people here and have made quite a few friends and gotten to know most of our neighbors.

We just learned this week about another cool thing about our town.  The Haldane Elementary school (our only elementary school in town) received an award and was designated by national non-profit SEEDS Foundation as the greenest school in Canada.  The students in the school had completed 10,000 environmental projects and is the first and only school in the country to achieve what is called an Earth X status.  To read more about this and listen to an interview with the students click here.

Shuswap Lake

Chase Creek Falls

Mountain sheep in our yard

Mountain sheep coming down the hill behind our home.

Demo at the Salmon Festival

We had a full day last week at the Salmon Festival helping out at the Artisan Market and doing a demo.  We met a lot of tourists from various parts of Canada visiting along with some from the U.S. and as far away as Australia.

Artisan Market tent with demo out front

Table with clay items for demo

Dave and I later discovered this photo prop and were goofing off a bit.  That was Dave's Yogi the Bear pose (I think?).  lol

Sockeye Salmon are Coming!

It has been an unusually busy summer for us as we have the Salmon Festival coming up in October which happens only every 4th year.  The salmon are already arriving but the great event starts October 3rd and will run for 3 weeks.  This means we have had to work on creating our salmon pieces in between our regular shows and filling store orders.

In order to do this, we had set aside several hours each day to work on our salmon fish pieces.  So far we have made more than 1000 clay "fish" which are then attached to various findings and made into items such as key chains, zipper pulls, cell phone charms, necklaces, earrings, tie bars, fridge magnets and even switch plate covers.

Salmon earring beads ready to bake

Finished salmon pieces

Inspiration

It's January and after doing the mundane things like stock taking and doing year end, we find that we do have a small window of time to try new things that have been buzzing around in our heads for the past year.  When I hear about my friend, Wendy Moore, in Australia having to live through searing heat and brush fires every year at this time or other friends like Cynthia Blanton and Helen Breil who live in another part of our country,  are putting up with freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall, we feel so blessed to be living where we do.

We've lived here for 5 years now and the weather pattern seems to be similar each year with no major storms to speak of.  December cold temperatures and snow and January with acceptable temperatures and more snow.  As I look out my kitchen window, I see the lake is not frozen and most likely won't this winter.

We are nestled in a valley between 2 mountains which protect us mostly from strong winds.  We don't find it very difficult at all to get inspiration from our surroundings.

One neat feature of the area of where we live is that there are 200 lakes all within a 2 hours drive of us and they are all teeming with fish.

Probably the most interesting feature, is that every year the Sockeye Salmon come to our area to spawn and every fourth year they come in the millions.  I believe it is the largest Sockeye salmon run in the world (except for some place in Russia).  We will again be involved in the Art Festival surrounding the salmon run this October where over 100,000 tourists come to see this big event over a 4 week period.  This really is a unique occasion since many of our 3,000 residents of our town are involved as well.

We will be making many small pieces of salmon themed art work to sell during this time.  We have to think of our designs now as this may be the only large chunk of free time before the event.  Although it has been in the back of our mind since the last one, (more than 3 years ago), it is unique because we normally don't sell the salmon themed pieces at any other time.

So why am I talking about this now?  It takes away from our regular routine, as I say it only happens every 4 years and we are forced to think of what will sell to these tourists and at a price point where they will sell quickly.  Also, if last time was any indication, we will have to be more prepared and make dozens of each design which are basically the same.  This is a different approach for us as we pride ourselves on making unique and individual pieces.

Four years ago, we found that every second day we had to replenish our supply again and again.  This meant long hours doing pretty much the same tedious duplication of pieces we had already designed.  We don't like to work on a deadline but when it was all over, we found that it was well worth the effort both financially and creatively.  Forcing us to produce on a deadline with an assembly line style, we came away being able to produce larger amounts of other items such as beads and buttons in a shorter time period.  This became the basis of an increasingly successful wholesale business to yarn and quilt stores.

Expanding

We delivered some new jewelry pieces last week to Chum N' Luba's Unique Boutique here in town.  The pieces were to replace items that have sold along with some new designs including our fall line of scarf jewelry.  The Little Shuswap News Office next door moved out and so Chum N' Luba's expanded into that space resulting in a charming room packed with more gorgeous vintage plus new items.  This is a partial view of that room where Darlene, the owner, has it tastefully decorated.

That is one of our necklace and earring sets sitting on the antique cabinet among the vintage accessories and collectibles.

I've always had an attraction for vintage jewelry with all the rhinestones and jewel-tone colors.  Here are a few of my vintage inspired pieces that are now for sale at Chum N' Luba's.

(above photo by One Love Photography)

A Long Weekend

This was one of our busiest weekends for the season and we spent today recovering.  Thank goodness for our new hot tub jacuzzi which has helped me get through it.

It started with a Ladies Night charity fundraiser at our local Home Hardware store where I had a display featuring our new scarf jewelry and interchangeable earring system.  I was so busy I completely forgot about taking a photo of my table set-up. I did manage, however, to take a picture of Laura in her gorgeous gown and wearing one of our scarf jewelry sets.

It was a fun evening with lots of door prizes, activities, punch, wine and lots of yummy appies!

We were up early the next morning (Sunday) for the huge Kamloops Craft-a-Fair.  It was a very busy show as usual and very successful.  Our new scarf jewelry and stick shawl/sweater pins were well received and we nearly sold out before it was over.  (This photo was taken later on so was looking pretty slim after selling more than 2/3's of our inventory!)

The main drawing feature was the slide show we put together on a digital screen with the photos taken by Natalie of One Love Photography. (see photo below)

Our new Interchangeable earring system was also a big hit.  I came up with the idea when I was experimenting with some new ear wire designs where all the art beads can be easily interchanged.  I was getting weary of making so many ear wires for every pair of art beads and then having to change them when a customer would prefer a different style.  With this system, you choose the style of ear wire as well as your art beads which can be easily interchanged.  I am in the process of updating our website which will feature this system very soon.

Chum n' Luba's - exciting news!

Remember that exciting news I wanted to tell you about?  There has been a lot of chatter in town over the new store that opened up in Chase.  It is called CHUM N' LUBA'S Unique Boutique and sells mostly vintage women's clothing and accessories but is adding a new line of clothing as well.  Most everything in there is so fabulous and unique it is such a fun place to shop!  Darlene, the owner, has everything organized and arranged in such a wonderful way -- I love her front counter with the antique furnishings right down to the old cash register!

She also has such fun window displays and I like checking them out to see what is new on my daily morning walks.  This is one of the mannequins in the front window and you might recognize the necklace on it?  It is one of our double-sided bead necklaces in the jewel tone colors that goes beautifully with this vintage satin blouse.

And that is the exciting news.  A selection of our handcrafted jewelry is now for sale in this fun new store!  It  is really great to have a local venue to sell our work on a regular basis and it couldn't be a better place than this!

This is Darlene, the owner, wearing another one of our pieces.  The cable pendant necklace made with the CaBezel moulds.  She looks so beautiful wearing it, don't you think?

I asked Darlene what the name Chum n' Luba's meant.  She told me how Chum and Luba were the names of her husband's parents and a little about their history.  This store is in their memory which I found to be so special.

Now back to mixing up some more clay colors -- I will have some new Pantone Fall 2012 color recipes for you soon.

Balancing work with pleasure

Someone commented earlier that they hoped we have been able to combine all our hard work with some pleasure and at least enjoy the  summer.  I guess I try to keep this blog more about our clay and what we are up to.  That sometimes can come across like we have no time for enjoyment so I thought I would share with you how we have been enjoying this very warm summer so far.

One thing about the area in which we live.  We have traveled extensively and this is the piece of paradise we chose to settle in and we don't have to go very far to enjoy its' pleasures.  Most of these are just a short walk away!

A walk to the local water fall ...

A walk out of town ...

(No we are not in Australia and yes that is an ostrich!)

A walk into town almost every morning...

A walk to the park ... to celebrate Canada Day!

Or for a swim to cool off ....

or kayak ...

And sometimes we don't even have to leave

our home or studio as these

mountain sheep come to visit us ...

And when we go to the other side of the lake ...

we enjoy these weekly classic rock concerts

in the evening by Sly Valley ...

But most of all, we enjoy our

beautiful garden at home ...