Vintage Challenge Winners

Thank you to everyone who entered and all those who voted and left comments too! Our winners for the Vintage Challenge are:

1st Place $100 Gift Certificate
#6 Sonali Bagaria from Dresher, Pennsylvania


2nd Place A Bag of Vintage Goodies
#16 Linda Mink from Clearwater, Florida


Stay tuned to my blog for another contest...we've got plans for the next one already!

Vintage Challenge Entries - Vote Today!

Here are all 18 entries for the Vintage Challenge! Thanks to everyone for entering! It was like getting wonderful party favors every time a new entry came in. Take a look at all the entries below, click on the thumbnails to see the full size picture and then vote for your favorite in the poll below the entry pictures. First place wins a $100 gift certificate to eebeads.com. Second place is a big ole bag of Vintage goodies from eebeads.com. I'll announce the winner on September 18th. Good luck to everyone!

Audrey Had Her Baby!

So many of you have been asking, I thought I better get these pictures up! Audrey from our Customer Service Department had her baby on August 26th at 11:57pm. Both Mommy and baby Patrick are doing great. Audrey is finally home and Mom and Dad brought Patrick for a visit today where I was able to get this adorable picture of him sleeping. Audrey is pretty camera shy, but did let me take this picture of her when she was still expecting. Sadly, Audrey won't be coming back to work for eebeads, but we're hoping she'll come back occasionally and design some ideas for us! Congratulations Audrey and Pat and welcome to the world baby Patrick! You can leave a comment for Audrey below or send an email to me and I'll forward it on to her.

Vintage Challenge for Anyone - Enter and win!

This past week, all the girls at eebeads.com made ideas using our vintage brass charms and findings and had a lot of fun doing it.

Now it's your turn! Make anything you want using beads and findings from eebeads.com. Your creation must include some of our vintage brass items. Entries need to be made only from items that are available from eebeads.com.

Entries need to be emailed to me at blog@eebeads.com by September 1st. Any graphic file type is fine. Please include your full name with your entry, but names won't be posted until after the winners are chosen. One entry per person but a set (like a necklace and matching earrings in one picture) is fine. Voting will begin by September 5th and anyone can vote. Voting will last 2 weeks and the winner will then be announced on September 18th. Any questions, feel free to email me at blog@eebeads.com

First place winner will receive a $100 gift certificate and second place will get a package of our vintage brass pieces!

Get creating and have fun!

Kimmy Turns 50!

We are loaded with Birthdays at eebeads.com these days and we had a very special one! Kimmy, from the piece work department, has turned 50! Kimmy has been with eebeads the longest of any of my current employees, she's been here since October of 2002. She started out as a piece worker and now is in charge of the piece work department. Not only does she bag a ton of our beads, she also hand makes all the Bead Collections we sell. She also happens to be the one of the few employees here who will let me put up her picture so I had to blog about her special day here!

Allen and I decorated her work area the night before her birthday and Michelle bought her a fun bag full of all sorts of "old fart" items. Kimmy is also a Breyer's Vanilla Ice Cream junky so we had that instead of cake.

I try to make a card for my employees on their Birthday and Kimmy's 50th was no exception. I used one of my favorite quotes from Picasso "It takes a long time to become young".

As is a new tradition at eebeads.com, when it's your birthday, we put all your favorite beads on sale for a week so visit Kimmy's 50th Birthday Sale for her favorite beads. Feel free to leave a comment below for Kimmy and wish her a Happy 50th!

Sorting Day

I love when we get a delivery and I'm told it's from my plater. I'm never sure what is going to be because it depends who made it to the plater first with my unplated goodies. Today it was 43 pounds and I was thrilled it was more of the wonderful, chocolate brown vintage style patina charms. The only problem is these beauties are plated in 3-5 pound batches and yep, that means we have to sort them out. Allen and Kelly were hard at work today sorting (talk about brain damage!), Kimmy would count them and Michelle would get them back up on the site. We were able to get a bunch of out of stock items back on the site today and more are coming next week. We also got 12 new styles today including blanks so keep an eye out in our email updates for the new ones! Stop by and take a look at all the pieces we have now.

And The Winners Are...!

I finally heard back from all the winners of our contest last month and also the winner of "find the errors" contest we ran last month. The winners are:

Karen Carl
Maneca, California


Margaret G. King
Las Vegas, Nevada


Joy Husted
Muir, Michigan


The Find the Errors Contest:
Karen Goodhelpsen
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada


Thanks to everyone for playing and helping us celebrate our new look at eebeads.com!

An eebeads Bead!

What could be better than a new website people seem to love? A bead to match it! My special customer Lisa Crispin from Austrailia told me she had a surprise coming for me to celebrate the new site, but I never imagined an eebeads bead to actually match the new site! Lisa is quite the talented lampwork artist and jewelry designer, visit here site Passion for Flame and have a look around. Thanks again Lisa...I love it!

New site and a yet another contest!

This contest is now closed. The number of files on the day of the site launch was 10,215 and Paula Hornberger of Ringtown, Pennsylvania guessed 10,030 so she won the gift certificate. Congratulations Paula and thanks to everyone for playing!

It's up! I can't believe it! After 5 months of working 7 days a week our new look of eebeads.com is finally live. Thanks to everyone who sent me comments here or emails about the new logo. I hope the actual site lives up to the look of the logo and you love the new site as much as we do.

Now lets have some fun!

Background: Allen brought me the new site on his flash drive to install on my computer yesterday. The old site had over 20,000 files. We never deleted anything off the old site...if an item was discontinued, we just left the image files on the server. Not too smart, but we've got a ton of room so it was no big deal. The new site had about half as many but it was pretty dramatic for us. Uploading anything to the new site is soooo much faster. But enough of my babbling...you want the fun...

We're running a contest to win gift certificates already on the site but let's start another one. Guess how many files the new site has! You got a hint above, the old site had 20,000, the new one is about half as much. Send me an email to blog@eebeads.com and in the subject line put the number of files as your guess.

I'll run this contest for 2 weeks ending with me picking a winner on April 18th and the person who comes closest to the number of existing files on the site the day of the launch will win a $25 gift certificate. I'll put the winner's name, city and state here in 2 weeks. You can enter as many times as you want, heck knock yourself out, but just one entry per email again with your guess in the subject line. Guess your brains out! Allen and I are just a bit fried after the last 5 months but we are so in the mood for celebrating so send in those guesses!

Keep the errors coming! If you went to our main contest, at the bottom you can enter to win another $25 gift certificate by emailing me any errors on the site you find. Our favorite so far: "We just wanted the site to be easier to navigate and we think we've archived that." Yeah, we meant achieved...duh! ;) And then there's my apostrophe policewoman Helen who has found (I don't know how many) cases of "it's" when I meant "its". Remember one error per email so I can keep track and then you can enter as many errors as you find!

Shhh...it's a secret!

Changes are a brewing at eebeads.com. It's coming. (It's kind of a secret, but I'll share a little with you). See the new logo on the left? That's just the start of it. Allen has been working about 12 hours a day on our little project. Don't worry, things won't change too much. All the things you love about eebeads.com will remain the same including great prices, adding multiple things to your cart with one click, new ideas every week, fun new items and more. Just our look is changing. It's time we had a face lift and we've been busy making it happen.

For a little nostalgia, I thought it'd be fun to show you past versions of our home page before the new one is launched (soon!). There were lots of variations, but these two were our main looks for the past years before the current one (for now!)

This one was from about 2000 when we didn't know how to make a page that filled up or stretched across the entire screen.

This one was a few years later still with a drop down box to find your way around and no real pictures of beads on the home page.

The current site is alright, but it lacks the fun and playfulness we feel that should surround us and our beaderific customers (not to mention it's just not purple enough and you know how much we love purple). The new site is coming just around the corner. Take a last glance at the old look of our site and we do hope you like the new!

If you have a minute, leave me a comment below and let me know what you think of our new logo. Comments from anyone are welcome and you can leave them anonymously if you like. Wish us luck with the new site launch too!

Vintage Challenge - The Opinions Are In!

A few weeks ago I put up a Vintage Challenge in which the first 5 people to email me would receive $10.00 worth of their choice of our new Vintage Charms and Findings (they could of course purchase more if they wanted to). I had 5 folks respond and out their goodies went. Regrettably one who was supposed to be in the challenge, Brooke, received her items but never got back to me, so we won't get to see her creations or get her opinion of the products, but I think you're going to love what the other 4 came up with! Click on the small picture below to see what each person created. Gorgeous work all around!

Carolyn White from Wartrace, Tennessee
Carolyn used all pieces and beads from eebeads.com.
Carolyn's Woodland Fairy Earrings are an idea you can make at eebeads.com

"This was my first time working with Vintage pieces and I loved it! I've wanted to use the pieces before now, but they were too expensive for my beading budget. (I had searched the Internet for prices at other bead sites.) I was so excited when eebeads added Vintage to the site at such great prices.

When I received my pieces, I was very impressed with the quality and color. I spread the pieces out on my work table and realized how versatile they could be. You can turn them in different directions, layer them, or put the different shapes together. The possibilities are endless.

I used the medium diamond shapes, long diamond shape, the fairy charms, amethyst and peridot crystals along with Indian glass flowers to create my Fairy Garden earrings and matching ring. The dragonfly piece, rose crystals, pink baby bells, and Czech leaves made a whimsical Dragonfly Journey bracelet. I used small diamond shapes, red hearts,siam crystals and red seed beads to create Heart Fantasy Valentine earrings. The last piece I made was a really easy Oval Delight ring with amethyst and peridot crystals and a white flat oval Czech bead.( If you aren't happy with a piece you've bent for a ring, you can flatten it and start over. You can even remove G-S Hypo cement with your fingernail without marring the finish.)"


Heather East from Hazard, Kentucky
Heather used all pieces and beads from eebeads.com.

"I've not bought vintage pieces before now. No complaints about color or price, nor quality. I prefer cast charms as apposed to stamped, so it was a challenge to work with stamped pieces on a bracelet due to concerns for chaffing. To assure a smooth wear, I paired the stamped vintage pieces back-to-back against each other - yeah it used twice as many I anticipated, but it was worth it.

Other materials I used were copper and other metals, and Glass, red rondelles and purple with AB finish - not a combo I planned, however it fell together beautifully.

I typically create shiny, sparkly, brights or sharp contrasts, so this was a slight departure. I enjoyed stretching my brain a bit because I'll rule out nothing in creative pursuit...except lack of imagination. I don't think I would have ordered vintage pieces on my own, so it was good to try the vintage beads through your challenge. I will order more in the future - they are worth keeping in my collection.

I planned to make a bracelet and had an idea of what colors and beads to use. However, my idea didn't come together as I originally envisioned. Oh yeah - I had hoped to make matching earrings, but I ordered too much variety and not enough matching pieces. best laid plans.... and so the story goes. The rich color of the vintage pieces was a great backdrop for the metallics and red rondelles. I already enjoy mixing metallic finishes together, especially copper, so it was nice to find a new way to use these favorites. All said and done - I am pleased with my creation. The bracelet wears well (which I did for a few days) and I got compliments. I expect that as it wears and weathers, it will achieve a more authentic vintage look. Additionally, the textures added visual and tactile complexity that appeals to me. "


Joyce Davies from Houston, Texas
Joyce used our pieces from eebeads.com and other suppliers.

"Making jewelry from metal pieces and chain was a new experience for me. I never thought I'd use filigree pieces because they are so Victorian and my jewelry is pretty eclectic. I string beads and make wire bangles. But I couldn't resist the Challenge and getting free stuff to play with. Almost all that I ordered has been used. The findings, odd charms and some of the beads are from sources other than eebeads.com. I enjoyed stepping outside my comfort zone and making pretty, feminine jewelry and I will probably use vintage pieces again. I thought they were beautiful and for all their delicacy, they were strong when I tried to curl a square into a cone. The hard part was getting things to lay right and getting the dangles to show right."


Jenni Kinney from Ogden, Utah
Jenni used our pieces from eebeads.com and other suppliers.

"I haven't bought vintage pieces like these before. I loved their color, I'm always searching for colors like this. The quality was great, and really well made. And the price was great. In my piece I used a chain I had to a gypsy belt, and random beads I have collected over time. And a small jewel I had picked up for another project. Black cord from a necklace to tie the pieces together, and a toggle and clasp to be able to wear it. Ihave wanted to try the dark antique look for a long time I could just never find the middle pieces until now! The circlet was inspired by medieval/ Renaissance/ Fantasy Faire wear. I had always wanted to make a circlet, but could never find colors that fit well with each other until now. I was finally able to complete a project I had in mind for a long time! yay! The way the piece was made I tried to make it as "natural" as possible, trying to figure out ways on how it would have been made way back when. Of course I had to improvise on some areas, like the glue."


Thanks everyone! You did a fantastic job! Leave a comment below and let the Challengers know what you think of their pieces!

Look for another Challenge open to everyone coming really soon!

Sick of the "Going Green" thing?

At the start of the year, I read an article about a university in the Midwest. Apparantly each year they put out a list of phrases or words that should be banned from the universe from the past year. In 2008 "go green" was number 1 on their list. In fact, one professor stated that if he heard about one more company "going green" he was going to start burning tires in his back yard.

When I started eebeads.com in 1994 our homepage had a "We reuse and recycle" banner on the home page (shown on the top graphic) which got a fair amount of hits, but nothing spectacular. I've always been nuts about recycling and saving resources here at eebeads, so last year I decided to make a new page about our efforts (much snazzier graphic this time shown below). But then I pulled it because I was starting to get sick of hearing about the "go green" thing too. In fact, after our page went up, three of our competitors put one up.

If you want to learn about our recycling and conservation habits, click here.

Anyway, are you sick of hearing about companies "going green"? Leave me a comment below (it can be anonymous) or send me an email to blog@eebeads.com I'd love to hear from you!

Icy eebeads world

Mother Nature hit us with a cold blast this past week in Pennsylvania and at eebeads.com. Keeping warm at our warehouse was a bit of a joke. Our walls aren't insulated like an office building, they're just cinder block. And our windows aren't those fancy gas filled double panes either...just Plexiglas with bars...so, that's right we froze last week (and our windows froze as you can see in the picture). Shouldn't complain too much, with the heat running constantly, we could get it up to a balmy 60°. We turn the heat off at night when we leave, so when the first person shows up (she's nuts and comes in at 7:30) I don't even want to know how cold it is.

I usually work alone on the weekends and shut all my office doors and turn on a space heater and that usually works pretty good. Not yesterday or today...took 2 space heaters to keep my fingers working. Ugh. Well, the good news is today it's up to 36° and that's definitely a lot better than last week.

What's it like where you work or live? Are you freezing, or do you live down under and your dying from the heat? Send me an email at blog@eebeads.com or leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you!

Vintage Brass Challenge

A while ago I learned of a company that was selling vintage brass charms. Then I learned the prices these pieces were wholesaling and retailing at. Just about fell off my chair and concerned my employees at the state I went into. So I started contacting the companies that make the charms and found out my plater could do the exact same finish. The result? We added 25 new charms and findings to the site with the rich chocolate finish at prices that beat everyone. And I do mean everyone (as of this posting). Seemed like a challenge was in order (geez it's been a while since the last one) so here goes...

The Challenge: With this challenge you'll receive up to $10.00 worth of our Vintage Brass Charms and Findings from eebeads.com (your choices). You can create anything you want with these items using the brass and other beads and findings (we'd like them from eebeads.com but they don't have to be). Send your creation(s) in the mail back to me (within 10 days of receiving the pieces) and I'll get it up on my blog. I'll email you a list of questions that I would like answered about the brass pieces. Once up here I'll mail your creation back to you. You must also agree to let me post your full name and city and state where you live.

This challenge is officially now closed. Come back and visit in a few weeks to see what the beaders made with this new line of charms!

p.s. Even if you don't want to take place in the challenge, feel free to leave me a comment below (it can be anonymous) and let me know what you think of the pieces and the prices.

Loving Our New Prices on Gemstone Rounds

This holiday season we put up our Christmas Tree and Snowman Earrings. I thought our prices were good, and then I started looking around. We blew away the competition with the trees at $5.75 including sterling silver findings. One competitor was daring to sell the trees at $10.99! They had one more tier to their tree, but come on...that's a bit steep!

Anyway, we got better pricing from our gemstone rounds supplier a few weeks ago due to the volume we buy. I was sooo happy! I spent the next two weeks working on getting them repriced to bring you lower prices and they went up this week. This afternoon I had some free time so I went around and checked out our competition and I'm delighted to say we're stomping them once again. I found one competitor with better prices, until I zoomed in. The stones weren't round...whoops!

The best part (I think) about our gemstone rounds is the consistency in color and quality. Every batch is the same color...no changes and no surprises. I've had tons of suppliers have me try to switch to them, and I always go back to my original supplier for the exceptional quality of stones they have to offer.

Take a look at our gemstone rounds and compare prices with other retailers. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at our prices. If you've tried them or have a comment, let me know below or send me an email to blog@eebeads.com

By the way, a new Challenge is coming in January so stay tuned!

The Next Hot Thing?

I get a ton of emails from China offering new and sometimes really neat items. Then sometimes, I get emails that are just downright silly. I opened my email the other day to a subject that said "The Next Hot President Jewelry". Hmm...they couldnt be serious could they? They were. Obama jewelry. Well that set me off in giggles. Who would wear such things? The had bracelets, key chains, cell phone jewelry, earrings (shown here) and anything they could attach the heart charm with. Even if you LOVED Obama, would you wear this stuff? Leave me a comment below (it can be anonymous) or send me an email to blog@eebeads.com

The Holidays...this early?

I can't stand it anymore. I really can't. I've now been to three different stores that are playing Christmas music in the past week. Tonight I went to get groceries at a leading store and they have wreaths, poinsettas and Norfolk decorated pine trees sitting outside. Are you kidding me? It's not even Thanksgiving yet!!! If I was insane enough to buy a wreath tonight it would be a dead mess by Christmas. I found a few stores doing all this holiday stuff before Halloween, but I thought it was just a fluke. Now...I'm inundated and disgusted.

I admit it. I'm ready for the holidays at eebeads.com and I have a few graphics planned for putting up on the site, but that's AFTER Thanksgiving.

I heard on the news that retail sales are down right now...maybe it's because people want to wait to hear holiday music when it's closer TO the holiday and are avoiding these overly exuberant stores.

Are you disgusted? Is it too early or is it just me. Tell me honestly. Leave me a comment below (it can be anonymous) or send me an email to blog@eebeads.com and tell me your thoughts. I promise a pretty little holiday type show at eebeads.com, but when I think it's appropriate.

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!

The Joys of Photography

It takes a lot of work to photograph all those Jewelry Making Ideas I have for you at eebeads.com, but it's a lot of fun too. Years ago we used to just lay the jewelry on a scanner and scan away, but not anymore. Scanning is a very easy (not to mention inexpensive) way to get pictures of your jewelry up on the web, but I was picky and wanted more.

After a lot of investment in time and money Allen (hubby and co-owner of eebeads.com) figured it all out and what you see today is the results. It also didn't hurt that my brother is a professional photographer. He lives 800 miles away, but through the miracle of email, he helped us get where we are today. The only problem is little Ms. Picky (aka me) wanted more than Allen had the patience for. "Can you move it a little to the left? Can you try it at a different angle? Could you move the light to the right?" He's patient, but there's only so much he can take. So I took over and we've all been happy now. Yep, I take all the photos that appear on our site. I know a lot of our competitors have multiple photographers, but we can't afford that and I'd probably be miserable anyway.

The trickiest things have always been the earrings. We tried laying them down flat and shooting from above, but some earrings just wouldn't cooperate. A perfect example is the angel breast cancer awareness ribbon earrings that I'm putting up this week. As you can see, there's no way those little angels and ribbons would have laid flat properly. In came Allen. He made the little "stage" you see above to shoot earrings and I think it's just perfect! Let me know what you think by sending me an email to blog@eebeads.com or leave a comment below.

Crystal Glue-In Charms

The last time I asked you why something wasn't selling (the Psychedelic Tye-Dye Beads) you gave me some good feedback by the way of comments and email so it's time to ask you again.

On Friday I put up a new line of Crystal Glue-In Charms that you can customize by gluing any color of crystal flat back you want. I thought they were just about the neatest thing I've seen in a long time and got 10 different designs (not all shown here) and 8 colors of sparkling flat backs. Running a scan on what sold this weekend, it wasn't these little guys, and my other confusion is a lot of the folks who did buy the charms didn't buy the flat backs.

So...why aren't they selling? You all made it perfectly clear to me via comments and emails back in July that Hot Fix Crystals were a bad idea, but these aren't glued to clothing, they're stuck to these adorable little charms. Or did I pick bad designs (there were others to choose from)? Take a look at the Crystal Glue-In Charms and please let me know what you think by leaving a comment below or sending me an email to blog@eebeads.com

By the way, for whatever odd reason, the Psychedelic Tye Dye Beads started selling about a month after they were up...who knows why! :)

Out of Stocks?

I had so many wonderful comments left here and suggestions via email about the last post (the red X in our shopping cart has been replaced with a more subtle purple trash can by the way) that I decided to submit another question for you that Allen and I need help with...out of stock items.

What a bunch of our competitors do is remove an item from their site completely if it's out of stock. In our site redesign we could do that and that's where we're stuck. The picture shows what an item at eebeads.com looks like right now if it's out of stock. The best part (we think) is you can sign up to be notified when an item is back in stock. Would you rather not see the item at all or do you like it the way it is?

The other problem is the Inspirational Jewelry Making Ideas we have up. Here's an example: November's Jewel Necklace If we had simply removed the out of stock items, and you clicked the "Add All Above to My Cart" button, you'd only get the items we had in stock and probably not even realize you didn't order the complete idea. Again, which way do you think is better?

Ponder our dilemma and leave a comment below or email me at blog@eebeads.com
Can't wait to hear what YOU think!

Got an Opinion? I'm looking for yours!

Allen (my husband, joint business owner and fellow bead nut) has been working away at redesigning the shopping cart at eebeads.com for a while now. This is just phase one in the redesign of all things eebeads.com which I promise is coming to a monitor near you at some point in the future. Anyway, we're pretty happy with it and it is SO much easier to check out now. There's just one thing that neither one of us (me with the art degree and him with the computer science degree - what a troublesome combination) can agree on and it's the "remove an item from my cart X" you can see above in bright red.

I don't like the red X because it looks like something you'd see on a paper from school where the teacher said you made a mistake and were bad. (By the way, did I mention I was a teacher for a while and refused to use red for corrections...surprise, surprise, I used purple :) I made a teal X but that just didn't work either.

So now it's up to you...what color should we be using or is the red fine and we're overreacting (and over thinking)? Or is there another type of icon we could use other than an X? If you want to try the actual cart and see it live, just visit eebeads.com, add something to your cart and you can see it in action!

To let me know your thoughts, leave me a comment below (it can be anonymous) or send an email to me at blog@eebeads.com or bug my husband at TheDigitalBead@eebeads.com (By the way, I know he'd love an email from you telling him what you think of his new cart...you can try all the steps and if you don't want to place an order, just don't complete the order by hitting the "Place Order" button. I get tons of fun email from you and he gets only the problem emails...make his day and tell him an honest opinion of his hard work :)

Later.... Thank you for all the comments and emails!!! We tried different things with the X and in the end went with a light purple trash can. We think it looks MUCH better and appreciated all the suggestions you sent us.