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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night…

March 25, 2010

“…stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”

Here’s a clue to what the R&T BeadTour crew willingly goes through, to bring beads to your town!

Yesterday’s bead show in Denver was up against a major snowstorm. Our bead-truck driver and road crew, coming from Omaha, squeaked in ahead of the blizzard.

Photos by Sky N.

2 of us flying in from Spokane had a rougher time, though…

√ Delayed in Spokane

√ Unexpected plane change in SLC

√ Lightning strike on their plane over Denver

√ Baggage unloaded and left on the tarmac (as the handlers were called in to avoid lightning), so baggage was soaked

√ Rental car couldn’t drive in the blizzard so they had to upgrade to a 4 wheel drive

√ They finally arrived at the hotel at 9 pm instead of the 4:30 they expected!

On the bright side, we safely unloaded the beads through the snow, and had a great Denver show…

More photos at R&T’s Facebook ‘Bead Fans’ page

And the roads look clear to Salt Lake City for tomorrow’s bead show!

A peek inside: judging R&T's contest

March 20, 2010

Some of you have been curious to know more about the inner workings of R&T’s yearly contest, so our Melissa kindly provides a glimpse…

A peek…

Contest Judging Is Under Way

We always love to watch the entries roll in for our annual Your Designs Rock! Contest, and this year has been no different! We enjoy seeing familiar names, and we’re equally excited to have a large number of first-time contestants this year. New contestants will be entered into a drawing for a free goodie bag (winner announced the first week of June). We’re also excited to see entries from across the US (Florida to California, Texas to New Hampshire), and from Canada, Australia, Sweden, Singapore, Norway, Spain, India and Russia — a nice reminder of how far from humble Spokane, WA, Rings & Things’ circle of friends extends.

While the deadline to enter this year’s contest has passed, the work is far from over. This year’s winners will be chosen by six judges, all busy at work scoring a huge variety of creations. Our judges are all active in the arts-&-crafts community. They are required to have experience with both jewelry-making and with submitting their creations to competitive juries. So, for those of you contestants anxiously awaiting results, our judges can sympathize!

…behind the scenes

The judges individually score designs for each of the three advertised criteria: originality of design, quality of craftsmanship and overall aesthetics. Scores remain secret, so please do not waste time calling to inquire — we just find that things work better that way. In the end, the combined score is what counts! In other words, winners will be strong in all three criteria. Once tallies are complete, the judges meet to confirm the winners. After that, a flurry of work begins to create gift certificates, prepare announcements, and display winning entries in our online Design Gallery.

Winners will be announced the first week of June. We know it’s a long wait, but good things often take time! 🙂 Thanks to all of our 2010 contestants for another great year of exciting designs. Best of luck to you all!

"i" share the Design Gallery

March 16, 2010

A quickie tip for you fans of R&T’s great big Design Gallery!

Found a design in our Gallery that really speaks to you?

Hello knitty!

Just have to share it with your friends?

See the little yellow dot with a letter “i” in it, in the top left of the frame around that design in our Gallery?

Click it.

Scroll down — At the bottom of the page now, you’ll find the “URL”.

That’s the link that takes others straight to that design! Copy it, paste it into email/Facebook/Twitter, and share…

…because we brought enough for everyone 🙂

Attend BeadTour. Talk online. Win!

March 9, 2010

You know, R&T’s bead truck is making a springtime visit to your town. An easy contest helps you get the most out of our bead shows 🙂 …

√ Attend our BeadTour show in your town. Enjoy R&T’s exclusive bead deals!

√ Talk about it online:

• Facebook it

• Blog it

• Twitter it

√ When I see your report of our show, I’ll put your name in the hat.

At the end of our spring bead-show run, we’ll draw several winners to receive these coveted R&T BeadTour t-shirts!

Social networking has its rewards…

(Giveaway drawing: July 1st, 2010.)

Which show are you going to? Here’s the spring BeadTour list:

03/12: Houston, TX
03/13: San Antonio, TX
03/14: Austin, TX
03/16: Dallas, TX
03/17: Oklahoma City, OK
03/19: St. Louis, MO
03/20: Kansas City, KS
03/21: Des Moines, IA
03/22: Omaha, NE
03/24: Denver, CO
03/26: Salt Lake City, UT
03/28: Boise, ID
04/03: Missoula, MT
04/10: Bellevue, WA
04/11: Portland, OR
04/17: Seattle, WA
04/18: Mt. Vernon, WA
04/25: Minneapolis, MN
04/27: Green Bay, WI
04/28: Milwaukee, WI
04/29: Chicago, IL
05/01: Grand Rapids, MI
05/02: Detroit, MI
05/04: Louisville, KY
05/12: Sacramento, CA
05/13: San Mateo, CA
05/15: Orange County, CA
05/16: San Bernardino, CA
05/18: Phoenix, AZ
05/20: Albuquerque, NM
06/06: Ft. Lauderdale, FL
06/08: Tampa, FL
06/09: Orlando, FL
06/10: Jacksonville, FL
06/10-13: Milwaukee, WI – Bead&Button
06/12: Atlanta, GA
06/13: Charlotte, NC
06/14: Raleigh, NC
06/15: Richmond, VA
06/16: McLean, VA
06/17: Baltimore, MD
06/19: Philadelphia, PA
06/20: East Hanover (NYC area), NJ
06/21: New Haven, CT
06/22: Boston (Dedham), MA
06/24: Rochester, NY

Viddy this, droogies

March 3, 2010

Translation, for non-Clockwork Orange fans: Check out these videos!

R&T now features a growing collection (a raster roster?) of jewelry-making videos.

2 highlights:

…For perfect crimps everytime, a crimping-tool video, and…

……some help for those of us with 2 left hands…a knotting-tool demo, video-style!

Visit our videos, and you can scroll up that page for many more fantastic free artists’ resources!

You can use beads as lures…

February 27, 2010

…but I bet this one went for some serious bait!

We were tickled to find a Rings & Things face in the newspaper the other day. Our accounting manager, Ken, reeled in a heck of a notable fish:

It WAS this big!

At 14 pounds, 7 ounces, this walleye was worth the fight. Ken caught this animal on the Spokane River, near old Fort Spokane, and we couldn’t resist bragging 🙂

Nice going, Ken!

Our fail becomes your win

February 25, 2010

That’s what a Rings & Things colleague said on Facebook. I love how humble bead people are 🙂

In a March 2010 magazine ad for gemstone beads and filigrees, we let a typo slip through. It’s been corrected (since)…

…from inpired to inspired…

If you click this pic, you can find the word ‘inspired’. We mistakenly sent the magazine publisher a version that said ‘inpired’, oops…

Seeing a silver lining, we challenged our ultra-sharp beady buddies in the social media world, to see if they could find a typo in one of our ads.

Two people on Facebook (Rose and Heather) found this, in the new issue of Jewelry Artist!
In Twitter, Katie-Mae guessed that we meant to write ‘doughnuts’ for ‘donuts’, so she podiumed too.

Thanks for helping us turn lemons into lemonade!

Linking to Rings & Things?

February 19, 2010

We’ve noticed quite a number of you linking to Rings & Things from your blogs and websites. Here’s a thank-you, and some help for new “linkers”…

Turn your link to Rings & Things into a snappy, thumbnail-sized logo!

Including us in your blogroll links list? Mentioning us in article? Jazz up your link — right-click, copy & paste this image in:

PS: it’s 139×84 pixels (read on)

Want your R&T logo to look as attractive as possible? You can tell your blog (etc.) software that this is 139 pixels wide, by 84 pixels tall.

Another neat trick: Get into the image settings, and put a colored border around the logo, like this (try different colors and thicknesses of borders)…

RingsAndThingsLogo_139x84

We’re always honored and pleased when you link to us! Drop me a line when you do that. Just leave a comment below, or message me in Facebook, or tweet me.

I’ll be delighted to return the favor & build our relationship, by talking up your website. Thanks, R&T fans!

Sometimes…creativity goes bad

February 4, 2010

Sometimes…creativity goes bad! You can benefit from this 🙂

I wanted to share a fun flier designed by Rings & Things’ talented Selina.

Want a limited-edition paper copy?

DM me @Rings_Things on Twitter /
Message me, RingsAndThings on Facebook /
Leave a comment here, I’ll email you for your postal addy

…& I’ll send you the flier. It’s on durable glossy stock, with handy bead-sizing charts & info on the back side!

Guest blog partner is R&T's FB BFF

February 2, 2010

Introducing our newest winner in the “Guest Blog Partner” drawing, Melan Designs!

Every 3 months, with the help of random.org, we pick someone to be R&T’s guest blog partner. The twist this time around is that the winner isn’t strictly a blogger!

The un-blog partner

Melan Designs is an active Facebook user instead. We’re delighted to have her (Melanie) expanding the blog-partner program further into social mediaspace.

Click in to check out Melanie’s metalwork, jewelry and jokes. (“Temper, temper, temper,” said the metalsmith…)

And wish her well in this new partnership!

* Put your name in for the drawing too! Did you know–we’ll keep your name “in the hat” till it gets drawn? That way you don’t have to keep re-entering 🙂

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