SAVE THE COCKS! Charity fund raising! PLUS coupon!

HELLO EVERYONE!!!

I am happy to announce this weeks coupon/charity! It has to do with a new charity I found in my area called Save the Cocks! Sounds kind of naughty - but its not, I promise! It's a special charity for roosters! I personally have a big heart for roosters having saved one myself. They are very friendly birds and are often sadly euthanized because they have no where to go. People tend to not want them around because they are quite noisy! But reading up on the Save the Cocks website I am learning that there are ways around that. At this rooster sanctuary their goal is to help raise awareness for these magnificent birds and find a job for them so they aren't looked over and given away or euthanized. For example it is said that they are great for all natural pest control on farms or in orchards, or vineyards! Now that's awesome! Get rid of poisonous pesticide and save lovely rooster lives at the same time! A misconception about roosters is that they will fight with each other when there are more than one around, but that seems to be only when the hens (female chicken) are around, they get "cocky"! But when there are no hens around they will get right down to business cleaning up pests around the grounds.

I am so excited about this charity, and so happy to help them out! Here is where you come in. You can help them out on your own here. Or you can do a little shopping with me and help them out at the same time! I am offering a 25% off coupon this week, PLUS I am giving 25% of profits to Save the Cocks!! But that's not it! If you purchase anything in my shop that has a bird on it (See examples below) you will get 35% off, and I'll donate 35% to the charity!! Lets do this!

To get coupon codes and be a part of this fantastic charity, please subscribe to my email list here. I promise no spam, I don't like that stuff just as much as you!

My 3 shop links are:

Lean Dog Jewelry | Ring Love Jewelry | Unique Jewelry Supply

Oh and another way you can help is by sharing this with anyone you know! Just simply forward a link of this blog to your friends and family! Or go to my Facebook Page and share my post about this with your friends. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

♥ Kelly ♥

CONTEST TIME!

Who wants to win this necklace? To enter all you have to do is join my mailing list here: http://leandogjewelry.com/emailList.html ~~ I will draw a winner using Random.org on Friday Feb 10th!! Good luck everyone! - oh and please share this with your friends/family/on your blog/facebook/twitter. If anyone you know joins you will get another entry into the contest - you just have to let me know the name of the person who joined because of you! Thanks!

Get Organized

Hello, its been a while - again! I seem to always get sidetracked, but I guess thats just a part of running your own business.

Lately I have been looking expanding my business. Wholesale is big on my to do list. I consign in a few shops, but I want to go bigger. It takes a lot of work to get there. I bought the e-book by Megan Auman of Crafting an MBA - Crafting an MBA Guide to Wholesale and Trade Shows. It is a truly helpful book that guides you through the whole process from beginning to end. I highly recommend it if you're interested in expanding your business. She also has a great website talking about running a craft business and offers her services as a consultant. I'm considering doing that next.

Also, today I am about to embark on an adventure in organizing! The studio space in my backyard is a disaster! How does someone work in a place like this?? So, its time. Next up after that is my office space needs some organizing too, since its been cluttered with bathroom remodeling supplies and such for the past couple months. I'm sick of working at the kitchen table!

Hope all is well out there. I'll post again soon, with some pictures of my newly organized studio, perhaps.

Out of Order

This past weekend was so gorgeous. On Sunday me and my hunny decided to take advantage of the weather and go for a bike ride to the beach. We get there and decide to take a walk on the beach. We were just hanging out and I see a wave coming at me and so I am backing up (I don't mind getting a little wet, but this looked bigger than normal) and not paying attention to whats behind me and what was there? A big boulder! I fall over the side of the boulder scraping up my left leg and twisting my right ankle in the process landing in the water falling hard! And yes, I heard that lovely snap/crack sound a sprain can make. Kind of creepy! Anyway. Rode my bike all the way back - it hurt a little, but not as much as it did that night. It's been 48 hours since it happened and I'm feeling a LOT better. The swelling is going down more daily and hope to be walking normal by next week. I can walk a lot better than just yesterday, so I know its healing nicely. It really does work to sit on your lazy bottom and rest when these kinds of things happen! It only makes it worse to walk on it. The only thing that sucks is I feel worthless that I cannot go out to my studio and work. I did go a little bit today and loaded some work into the kiln, but it started to ache. Anyway. Wish me luck on a quick(er) recovery! I need to get out there and create! :)

Heartsy

Last night while withering in my boredom I stumbled upon Heartsy. It's this fabulous site which happened to start up (appropriately) on Valentines Day 2011. They offer buyers 'out of this world' deals on featured Etsy stuff! Basically they sell vouchers towards featured Etsy shops for 50% off and up!! Amazing deals/steals! The way your shop can get featured is you have to submit 5 photos and fill out your name/email/website. They then post your photos up for a vote from anyone in the Heartsy community (thats me and could be you if you want) and if you get 30 votes saying "Yes, I definitely would buy this" then you move on to the next stage where Heartsy reviews your submission. If they pick your shop, you will negotiate a deal and a time and then your deal goes up for everyone to grab! I've noticed they have time limits on these deals as well as a limited amount of deals they offer. From my research of the shops involved I have noticed they sell a KILLING! Sure its at 50% + of their regular prices, but if you sell a lot its kind of similar to wholesaling and if your prices are priced right for wholesaling it shouldn't be a problem for you.

So, I submitted my work this morning and already reached my 30 votes. This does NOT guarantee I'll be featured, but we shall see. And if I do get featured, look out for some major steals people!!!! I'll keep you posted. You can still vote for me here. Thanks!

xo

Kelly

GLAZE - Black vs. White

Been doing experiments in simplifying a tad bit lately.... just in shape and color. Made pieces with a simple 1 colored glass with black or white glaze. Its fun to check out how different a color can look against black or white. See for yourself the differences.

Large green round pendant with black glaze or white glaze. 2" in diameter.
Same goes for the following beauties.... everything is still one of a kind! I've just simplified a glazing strategy - making it black or white or I even offer brown glaze (not shown).

Red/orange glass with black or white glaze. This is a small round pendant - 1 1/2" in diameter. Notice the amount of colored glass varies. That's just how they turn out, you never know. Still one of a kind! Always will be.

Aqua with white or black in oval shape. 2" x 1 1/8".

Yellow with white or black glaze. Oval. 2" x 1 1/8".

Cobalt with white or black glaze. Oval. 2" x 1 1/8".

Many of these have been listed in my Etsy Shop. They come with a 16" chocolate brown cotton cord. I can also sub a chain if you'd like or even lengthen the cord. If you see one that's not listed and you want it, contact me at Kelly (at) leandogpottery.com and I'll set up a special listing for you.

yum

I've been making some real good food lately - not just ordinary food, vegan food. Most people I know misinterpret the word "vegan" as something that has weird or strange ingredients, when in fact its the exact opposite! Look at your box of mac-n-cheese or any other processed food for those kind of ingredients. Something being vegan just means its made without any milk, eggs, meat products - or basically anything that comes from an animal. Substitutions are made in place of those ingredients. For subbing cows milk I use other kinds of milk - soy milk, rice milk, hemp milk, oat milk and almond milk - which is my personal favorite - and I am sure there are others I am forgetting. For butter I use a brand called Earth Balance which is made with vegetable based oils. For eggs you can use many different things - mashed up bananas, applesauce, tofu or there are special egg replacer products available in markets - there are a few other things to sub for eggs too, that I am sure I forgot. For cheese there are many, many different commercial brands that work - my favorite being Daiya! It melts wonderfully and is the tastiest stuff I have ever had in my life - better than real cheese - in my opinion. Below I made a vegan lasagna - I used trader joes soy mozzerella which is very much like mozzerella made with cows milk. I have made meals with this stuff and not told my guests it was soy until afterwards and they said they would have never known. Here is the recipe for the lasagna thats called "Love Potion Lasagna". I got it from vegweb.com which is full of any kind of recipe you could be looking for. I'm always on there looking for what to make next!

Hope this helped clear up any misconceptions you might have had about vegan food (if you had any at all). I leave you with a challenge - go find a recipe on vegweb and give it a try and come back and tell me about it.