Stunning Natural Material Pendants

I am so excited about a new line I've added to eebeads.com this morning....but let me tell you the full story. A salesman of mine (we'll call him Salesman Sam) came in about 2 months ago with glass, metal and many other wonderful things to make me drool. He said he had one more line to show me, but I told him I spent my quota on the other items. He said I must just peek. Well, I did more than peek, I bought 9 absolutely gorgeous and unique natural material pendants from him.

Only 3 are shown in the picture here, but trust me, you must see them all. Sam has known the folks that use these pendants for years. They actually have these pendants custom made for them in the Philippines and make finished jewelry with them and market them to high end department stores. Sam has begged that he made the pendants available to jewelry making suppliers and they said they would give it a try. All orders are custom made so it takes 2 months to fill any order. I tried to be patient in the waiting...

These pendants are one of a kind because each one made individually by hand. The base for the top 6 on the page is manufactured lucite. Each piece of shell, bamboo or onion skin is then attached to the pendant by hand and then a clear laminate is applied for complete durability.

The blackpen shell pendants pictures didn't do them justice. The shells are the deepest coffee color and transparent when held up to the light. The shells are polished and then etched to give the crocodile pattern.

I wasn't sure how these pendants would go over, so I didn't order a ton of them. My employees all drooled along with me when they arrived and were totally depressed when I said they had to wait until the second shipment in order to buy them. Sorry gals but I promise more are on the way!

Take a look at these beauties and tell me what you think of them by leaving a comment here or sending me an email to blog@eebeads.com. Am I nuts or these as stunning and incredible as my two month wait promised they'd be?

Squirrel Visits eebeads.com

Boy did I have an exciting weekend. I came into work alone on Saturday to get some stuff done. I turned off the alarm and heard all kinds of banging (then my heart joined in) and then it just stopped. A couple things were out of place in the warehouse, but nothing dramatic. I called Allen and he said it was the roofer fixing our roof...but there was no truck to go with said roofer. Since the noise stopped, I just blew it off, put the couple items back and got to work. Few more noises, but nothing like the inital banging.

On Monday (we were closed for the holiday) I again came in alone and there was MORE banging. This time Allen said it was the wind (it wasn't a windy day). I told him we had something in the warehouse but he said "Fear is the mind killer". I was getting annoyed. Went walking around the warehouse and found proof! There was a paper organizer that fell off a shelf that was pretty dusty, perfect for showing...squirrel footprints! The squirrel left all the offices alone except, you got it, the disbeliever Allen! hehehe (Well, his office has a window so the squirrel was probably trying to get out).

So, now I had proof and we put a call into the landlord. He said to open all the bay doors and our squirrel would leave. No such luck. I called Willow Grove Animal Control and they never returned my call. I called 3 exterminators and they all wanted hundreds of dollars to trap the little guy, couldn't come out right away, etc., etc.

Meanwhile, my warehouse is getting trashed. The worst part was our warehouse was a machine shop previously and all the rafters have inches of black, sooty, greasy, metal dust. Guess where Mr. Squirrel was running around? Yep, all our counters, shelves, computers, EVERYTHING was being rained on while he scampered around.

And to make things worse, it was like he wanted to stay! This morning (we called the employees to warn them) Michelle is the first to show up and there he is sitting in the window (that's the picture of him) like he's all at home! Michelle parks in front of this window and said she was laughing so hard she couldn't park. The bay doors were open for hours and he just stayed up in the rafters hopping around. There was no way this guy was leaving without encouragement.

We were able to get a catch and release trap from a friend this morning but he wouldn't go in it. Finally this afternoon Allen and Dennis wrangled him back into Allen's office. We locked him in, Allen bravely went in and removed the screen from the window and we all hooted and hollered and he finally went flying out the window into the woods. Ugh!

We really think he planned to stay. There was evidence that he had nuts stashed all around our warehouse so this wasn't his first visit. I bet he never comes hiding or looking for his nuts again. He was trapped in here at least 5 days. Happyily, he's back in Mother Nature and probably thanking his lucky stars he got away from all us crazy people.

Funny thing is, I don't think he took any beads!