Jolly Times at the Jolly Inn and Other News

Dartgun & the Vignettes played a kickass show last night at the Jolly Inn - many thanks to all those of you who came out for the show, it was a blast!

Emie was sweet enough to take the above picture, and then my stupid camera battery died! So this is all ya get.

I am working on designing some brand new clocks - I got a custom order through Grasshopper 510 in Chicago - it's just for one clock but I am going to create a small line around it for my shop, and will post pictures soon!

I also have some other weird things in the works. I went to SCRAP with Julie and bought 100 of these funky little plastic hinged pillboxes, or whatever they are. My plan is to make stickers of my mandala designs and come up with something similar to my old Mandala Travel Tins, which sold out a while ago and have been discontinued.
So far I'm not satisfied with the process. My original idea was to glue a little round mirror to the inside of the lid, but I can't seem to find the right size of mirror, and I think the size I got is too small. I'm lining the bottom of the insides with a circle of felt - I found some felt with adhesive backing, so that makes it easy, but I had a surprisingly difficult time making a circle template of the right size! Then I finally realized I could draw the circle on the computer and print it out. Duh!

I also thought I would collage the images onto the lids, instead of doing stickers, so it would have a more protective and long-lasting finish. But the prints didn't turn out that great and the stuff I used to coat them doesn't look so hot either. So I'm kind of stuck on that. Ideally I would have laminated stickers, or laser printed stickers at least. I guess I need to go to Kinko's but I don't think they carry glossy sticker paper for color copies...

Anyway here are a couple of prototypes. (Earrings by my good friend Elizabeth Etchepare of Artifacts International - they're actually Chuck's earrings by the way.)

Your thoughts and suggestions for this project are most welcome! I am pretty clueless about things like what glue to use for collaging and stuff.

I have finished a couple more Mandala Record Bowls too - may I introduce Rockabilly and Purple Purple?
What else is going on? I've mostly just been enjoying the hot summer days, hanging out in the backyard, getting some sun and relaxing in the pool! Julius turned 12 this month and Tangereen is planning her 14th birthday party.

I've been working on fun stuff at Trillium - recruiting new artisans, creating newsletters, listing stuff for our new online venture that is launching in August - we'll be selling on the all-new WorldofGood.com, an eBay marketplace - and working with some ladies who will be giving our retail store a feng shui makeover!

I'm also working with LeBrie on a "How to Sell on Etsy" workshop that we plan to offer at the DIY Lounge this fall.

I joined a new yahoo group called Mandala Oasis, which has been inspiring, and I am going to be interviewed by a researcher at Portland State University who is working on a book about Portland's artisan economy - that should be interesting.

So that's all my news, off to work on my new clocks!