Diamond Rings for meeeeeeee.....

Look what's on the way to my house! These are ultra shiny copper jump rings made of square wire cut on the bias so that they're "diamond" shaped (ha, fooled you didn't I). Tell you what, though, I think I'm more excited than I would be if a "real" diamond ring were headed my way (unless it was everything I needed to make my OWN diamond ring).

These are coming at me from C&T Designs. They are cutting edge. Urban Maille is the only other site I've seen that does odd-shaped rings and I can't find any gold ones on their site (although I seem to recall that they had a site specifically for GF rings that I can't seem to find a link to.)

This is where I put in a plug (since it occurs to me that I haven't blogged one although I have raved pretty much everywhere else about them) for C&T. Are they the cheapest? Nope. If you want Wal-Mart, go to The Ring Lord, where you will find very decent rings mass produced, (please don't buy machine cut!) cheap, and I have to say it, their customer service sucks. I have twice emailed them about orders, once about something that was missed being sent to me, and got no reply. Zilch. So... I use them for anodized aluminum because their prices are unbeatable for it, sometimes enameled copper because they have more than one size, and a few other random things (I was using them for my bright aluminum as well because it was chrome shiny, but the last batch was dissappointingly dull... grrrr!). I use Blue Buddha Boutique for small batches of multicolored anodized aluminum, 20g 1/8" enameled copper (please make other sizes!) and neoprene. For pretty much everything else, C&T. If they're not the cheapest, why?











1) I'm a sucker for shiny. C&T's rings are on the left in both pictures above (copper and stainless steel, respectively), TRL's on the right. Curt tumbles all his rings before he sends them out, then you get a little nontarnish tab in the baggie with any tarnishable metals, to keep them glowing till you make something gorgeous out of them. I am talking SERIOUSLY shiny.... so shiny that when he sent me a picture of the rings at the top of the post I thought they were gold!

2) Customer service. I can email and ask for a specific gauge rings for a project, and Curt will experiment and calculate (something I suck at, so this is hugely valuable) till he finds the perfect aspect ratio. If you want to make a bracelet, he sends you enough for a bracelet, with a little extra. Then I get the stuff, make something stunning, and get to take all the credit. It feels like cheating. (although there is SOME creativity involved on my end ;)

3) Neat stuff. The square and diamond shaped rings are a new thing, but C&T is also the only place you can get rainbow anodized niobium, that is, a rainbow of color on each ring. Recently he sent me a toggle closure made of anodized niobium that was two colors, twisted... without any naked wire ends, which means he'd taken the care to anodize even those. Which brings me to...

4) Precision and care. When I order those TRL AA rings, sometimes I throw out TONS of them because whoever does their anodizing kind of sucks. The colors are not right, the colors rub off, they scratch really easily. C&T saw cuts everything, which means perfect closures (closures are EVERYTHING in chainmaile), even steel, which is nutty :) Everything anodized is completely anodized, and perfect. If I throw out any rings it's because I mangled them myself.

5) Custom service. This fits in with the customer service, but you can ask for pretty much anything round and made out of some sort of wire, and C&T will do their best to get it or make it.

6) Free stuff with every order. Rebecca at Blue Buddha does this too. I tell ya, I'd much rather get a little bagful of free rings than 10% off my order. It's like Christmas every time I get a package in the mail. And since I chat with Curt about the stuff I'm doing on a regular basis (because of the custom thing), he always puts the coolest stuff in.

7) Humbleness. Not too willing to sing his own praises, so I make up for it. :)

Second Store Opening!

Well, I've taken the plunge and ordered items for sale in my second store, WYSIWYG Beads, which will open when my stock arrives and I have time to photograph it. The premise behind its name is that in shopping for beads I'm getting tired of seeing reams and reams of beads in the picture listed, only to find out that what is being sold is ... 2 beads. Or when I'm buying an assortment of beads or findings, I want the picture to show EXACTLY what I'm getting. So my plan is to photograph exactly what the buyer will receive; What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG). Unfortunately it doesn't apply to the photo here because I don't have the actual beads yet :)

Stock in my first shipment will include a variety of semiprecious beads in a variety of shapes, some glass beads, a random finding or two, and some unique focal items, spacers, etc. I have the suspicion that pretty much all beaders and jewelry makers have a secret addiction, and I'm fast heading down that path. I decide what I want to make, pull out the bag with the beads in it (yep, I'm still working out of a gallon Ziploc but fast outgrowing it) and decided I definitely don't have enough beads. I figure this way... I can buy wholesale, share some of the savings, and maybe make a few dollars for further addiction funding in the process.

When http://wysiwygbeads.etsy.com opens, you'll find the news here!