~ Storewide Sale for Columbus Day ~

I am so excited because I actually get Columbus Day off!  So, to celebrate, I am putting everything on sale!!!  10% off all the fun supplies at Happy Cloud Supplies.

Also 10% off all the pretty handmade Swarovski crystal jewelry at Happy Cloud Moments.

All the prices have been adjusted already!  And as a blog reader bonus, I will include a small gift with your order if you answer the following question, in "message to seller" when you order.

What makes you happy?

Have a wonderful weekend!!!

~ Travel Back in Time at the Maryland Renaissance Festival ~

I have heard of the Renaissance festival a few times before and this past weekend I finally got a chance to go! I was so excited though the hour of traffic tired me out! By the way, if you are going, you may want to either go really early or take Honeysuckle Rd. There's only 1 road from the highway to the fairground that everyone takes and it's packed!  So, what's there to do at this festival? 

Eat

 Yes, of course.  I am all about the food.  Most of the food is very typical carnival food like funnel cake and hot dogs.  They even have egg rolls!  But, of course all the food stands has Renaissance themes.  My favorite was the italian sausage at the Steaks on a Stake place.  The cheesecake on a stick was good too!  The turkey leg was a little bit salty for me though.

Shop

 There are so many cute things there!  All kinds of fun hats and Renaissance costumes, jewelry, magic wands, fake swords, lotions, pottery and more!  I saw quite a few handmade jewelry stands there too. 

Look Around

It is pretty cool to see the buildings and people in costumes.  The whole place does feel like a bustling Renaissance town.  It's huge too!  Don't forget to get a map!

Play Games

There are quite a few unusual carnival games like knife and axe throwing.  They also have a wall climbing game with various difficulty level.  It's cute to see kids dressed up in their knights costume and trying to climb up the fake castle wall to grab the stuffed animals.  There's also a big playground for kids.  And there were elephant rides!!!

There are many other activities like hair braiding, face painting, and many performances to watch.  As crowded as it was, it wasn't too hard to find a seat to eat or watch shows.  Tickets are $18 for adults and $8 for kids.  They are only open for the weekends till the 24th.  This weekend's weather is supposed to be gorgeous so it'll be a good day to check it out!

~ Newest Swarovski Crystal Star Jewelry ~

I was inspired by all the Swarovski crystal stars I have and made a few things this weekend!  I spent a few hours taking pictures last night but I didn't like them.  I was trying to go for a lighter background and brighter look to match the "Happy" in Happy Cloud Moments.  I found this paper that was pretty and blue and has the word happiness on it.  I thought it would be perfect.  Here's a quick compare of the light blue background vs the dark brown background that I have been using.  Big difference right?  The colors of the crystals just pop so much more with a darker background!

I think I am going to stick with this background for now.  I may get a matte gray textured paper later because that's more neutral.  Anyway, let me introduce my newest pride and joy!  First, pretty star charm bracelets.  The yellow and blue one (Wishing for Sunshine) is for me.  I just can't resist yellow stars.   Wishing for Candy is inspired by the colors of Little Twin Stars.  And Wishing for a Date is just... pretty?  It was hard for me to name this one.

This necklace will match the Wishing for Candy bracelet.  I love these colors and it's matches so well with the crown!  And with that cute heart chain, it's just so very girly!

 Next, I have more Autumn Inspired pieces.  There's the fun one for Halloween called Wicked.  I usually don't do seasonal jewelry but I couldn't resist.  Halloween is a fun holiday!

More fall colors with this pretty orange and olive green star necklace and these fish earrings.  I have been using these figure 8 chains a lot because I think they are unique and very pretty.

This one is for all the Scorpios out there!  Well, it's really more for me.  A scorpion for Scorpio and pink star because October birthstone is pink tourmaline.  Don't worry, if you are a November Scorpio, I can make it in yellow for you!

Another pink one for October.  This time in the form of love birds! 

 Ok, this one is a little bit random.  I was think about a circus and these colors just jumped at me! 

I have listed a few items on Etsy and will be listing more later.  Hopefully more new items to come soon!  I placed another for the new Swarovski crystal heart pendants and clover beads today.  Yes, I am a shopaholic :)

~ The Easiest Way to Run a Sale on Etsy ~

One of the pain points of Etsy is that you can't do bulk changes on prices of the your items.  And there's no coupon code system so what do you do when you want to have a sale?  Either do the tedious work of changing each individual listing and then change them back after the sale, or offer refund through Paypal or revised invoice.  PAIN.   But worry now more!  EtsyOnSale.com to the rescue!!

EtsyOnSale is easy!  You just sign it using Google, allow access to your Etsy shop and fill out a simple for to start a sale.  I got a sale running in 2 minutes after I signed in!  So far, you can either do all listings on 1 section in your shop.  Discount is either % off or dollar amount off.   You may want to run more complicated sales like 10% off $100 like you can on Artfire, but this not the purpose of EtsyOnSale.  I also don't think a 3rd party service can do something like that for Etsy.

Anyway,  for my first sale, I am doing 15% off my polymer clay section in my supplies shop for this weekend.  Look how all the prices changed and a prefix "...Sale..." was added to the listing title.  After the weekend, everything will change back to the way it was. 

This is pretty new and there are improvements and issues I see already.

1. People are supposed to be able to browse through sale items set on sale on Etsy On Sale website.  But, I haven't seen my items added yet.  It may just take time though.  The sale items are on their website now!
2. I can't find a place to connect my jewelry shop!  Customer support said it's not possible right now.
3. There's no "My Account" page.  I have to click on Sellers, and a few other links to get to the page to add a sale.  It's a little bit weird.
4. I didn't see anything about what happens if I put new listings up or relist items after they are sold.  Will they automatically be put on sale?  Someone please buy something now so I can test it! :)

Other than that, it does what it's supposed to do and it helps a lot with sales!  Now I can run a weekend sale every week!  Saves me so much time and hopefully will get more buyers.  This is going to be awesome for the holidays!

~ New Rare Colors for Swarovski Crystal Stars ~

 I posted about new colors for my favorite Swarovski crystal star beads before.  But, I found more!  Supposedly, there's fuchsia and olivine!!!  I am so super excited because they make great earrings!

I just finished listing these earrings because I am too excited about them to not list them.  I am really liking the dark brown background in the pictures too.  It's warmer than gray and more unique.

I am going to share these beads with all you fellow beaders too!  These are now listed in my supplies shop.  You won't find these anywhere else right now.  Not at Artbeads, Fusionbeads, Fire Mountain Gems, Brightlingsbeads and Beadinpath.

I just love this bright pink color!  What else should I make with these??  I am already thinking about charm bracelets!

And yes, I did buy the factory pack.  Does it make business sense?  Not really, but I really, really wanted them and I can only get them in factory packs.  I hope someone else loves them too!  I am not crazy right?

~ Handmade Jewelry Inspired by the Falling Leaves ~

After the wonderful picnic and being close to all that nature, I was inspired to make some Autumn pieces. I love the warm earth tones and cute pine cones and pine nuts.  Add some mums and rich purple flowers and you get a rich fall palette like this bracelet.

The yellow and orange flower crystals are rare vintage Swarovski daisy crystals.  Don't they look cute with the pine nut and pine cone? 

I also made a necklace with a bigger pine cone and an oak leave.  I have this huge oak tree in front of my house and these leaves are going to cover my lawn in a month or so!

I also put together these super sparkly earrings.  I love the helix beads and they sparkle even more in golden shadow and crystal copper.

These babies also have helix crystals in purple velvet.  It's hard to photograph these crystals.  The color is not as blue as the pictures. 

Finally, a simple warm necklace made from 14mm sparkly rondelle crystals in Crystal Red Magma.  Super warm and super sparkly!

I couldn't help myself and I used these awesome earwires with bails from my supplies shop.  These are not sterling silver, but I love them too much not to use them.  Aren't these earrings so pretty?

These will be listed in my jewelry shop soon!! I had so much fun making jewelry this weekend :)  Feeling so inspired lately!

~ Momo and Chloe at Black Hills ~

Chloe was staying with me over the weekend and we all went to Black Hills Regional Park for a little picnic. Surprisingly, Chloe didn't really run around like Momo. I think she had fun though because she was getting lots of attention from my friends.  Momo had a lot of fun running around too.  They were both so dirty that it took forever to bathe them!

We also met up with a bigger friend Mac the Shiba Inu.

I took this opportunity to take some pictures.  Trees and leaves have such interesting texture but I just love the colors of flowers more.

I found mushrooms!!  These are totally cute!  And very yummy looking!

Black Hills is pretty nice!  We were afraid there would be no shelters left for us to have the picnic but there are a lot of picnic tables and grills at parking lot 3, right across the road from visitor center.  There were a lot of people by the afternoon though.  Glad we were outside on this beautiful fall day!