Celebrating Thanksgiving with a Fun Giveaway

We’re taking the “giving” in Thanksgiving seriously: Janie of Janie Junebug Righting and Editing and I have teamed up to do a Rafflecopter giveaway, The Great Thanksgiving Accent Gem Designs Giveaway! The prize package includes an Accent Gem Designs bracelet and earrings set (Tiger’s Eye and Blue Aventurine),

Tiger’s Eye & Blue Aventurine stretch bracelet and matching earrings set

a $15 Gift Certificate credit to be used in my store and three books edited by Janie. The authors of the books are fellow bloggers: The Amaranthine by Murees Dupe; Sophie Writes a Love Story by Linda Kay; and Creating a Joyful Life by Jennifer Williams-Fields.

Entering to win is easy! A rafflecopter is a fun way to participate in contests. You get entries by doing activities like following us on Twitter, leaving comments on our blogs, writing a blog post about the Giveaway, etc. All you have to do is go to the Rafflecopter and start entering! The contest runs now through Cyber Monday and is open to residents of the U.S. only or anyone with a U.S. mailing address (because of high shipping costs to other countries). You can also access the rafflecopter at Janie’s blog.

To further celebrate Thanksgiving, I’m offering 15% off STOREWIDE at Accent Gem Designs! All you have to do to get the 15% discount is enter the coupon code word JUNEBUG when checking out. Take advantage of this great deal and avoid the crowded stores on Black Friday weekend!

Join in the fun and celebrate Thanksgiving with us! The Rafflecopter contest is only open through the end of the day Cyber Monday. Good luck to all the participants! And Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Fun Rafflecopter Contest plus 15% off!

Don’t forget to enter our Rafflecopter contest! Janie from Janie Junebug Righting and Editing and I have teamed up to offer a fun Rafflecopter contest to win a great prize package:

1. Tiger’s Eye and Blue Aventurine stretch bracelet with matching earrings;
2. a $15 gift certificate to use at my store Accent Gem Designs;
3. a physical copy of the book The Amaranthine by Murees Dupe, edited by Janie Junebug;
4. a physical copy of the book Sophie Writes a Love Story by Linda Kay, edited by Janie Junebug;
5. a physical copy of the book Creating a Joyful Life by Jennifer Williams-Fields, edited by Janie Junebug.

Tiger’s Eye & Blue Aventurine stretch bracelet and matching earrings set

 

This fabulous Tiger’s Eye & Blue Aventurine stretch bracelet and earrings set is another “Accent Gem Designs by Michele” signature set! Ever wonder what the healing powers of these gemstones are?

Tiger’s Eye – With its vibrant golden color, tiger-eye is used to increase wealth and vitality. It enhances courage, brings passion and physical strength, and allows these attributes to be tempered with mental clarity and a joyful outlook.

As a power stone Tiger Eye has a wonderful reputation for attracting wealth, money and luck. However it has some powerful spiritual uses as well. The liquid movement of light across the stone makes it an excellent tool for vision or divination work.

Historically Tiger Eye has been used in protective medicine. Roman soldiers would wear engraved stones during battle, it is especially helpful against dark magic. A good luck stone, it is also used for discerning the truth in any situation, it can help with understanding of any cycle through which one is living.

Healing Properties: Healing eye disorders is one of the most common medicinal uses associated with Tiger’s Eye. It can help slow the flow of energy through the body which makes the gem very helpful in stress related illnesses.

Ruled by the sun and possessing a golden flash of light, this stone is worn to strengthen convictions and create courage and confidence. It is a warm stone, and it promotes energy flow through the body when worn. It is quite beneficial to the weak or sick. It balances the male and female energies.

Aventurine: Aventurine is used to balance the male/female energies, to help reinforce decisiveness, and supplementing greater motivation in all activities. Especially useful in leadership skills and abilities.

Aventurine is known to stimulate dreaming and enhance visualization. It has a positive effect on the psyche.  This is a wonderful stone for anyone involved in creative ventures: it is supposed to help impart creative ideas from one’s inner openness. Aventurine is considered a good luck stone, in any color, though the green color seems to be the most powerful, especially where money is concerned.

The blue shade of Aventurine is used in healing and balancing the emotions, helping us to communicate more clearly and creatively. It stimulates creativity, intellect, as well as independence. It is also said to provide patience, eliminate stubbornness, control excitability, and to give one a deeper understanding of the cause and effect in situations, thus allowing one to more completely understand any situation and to assist in finding the optimal solution.

Healing Properties: Aventurine is told to assist one in making decisions from the heart and bestowing the courage to live one’s truth openly and proudly around others, without worry of judgement.  It is comforting, supportive, and balancing as well.

Physically, Aventurine has effectiveness on the adrenal glands, muscular system, connective tissues, and nervous system. Said to be one of the best stones for relief of migraine headaches. Always helpful with eyes and eyesight, it also helps one “see” in true light. (Source: shimmerlings.com)

 

That’s one powerful combination! And it can be yours. Guys, be sure to enter the contest: you might win and have something really different to give to the special woman in your life!

Speaking of special: There are tons of special gemstone jewelry items in my store. And this week, EVERYTHING is 15% off!!

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All you have to do it enter the coupon code JUNEBUG at checkout. My prices are fantastic anyway and 15% off is a deal you shouldn’t pass up!

Be sure to enter our Rafflecopter. It’s a great prize package! Use this link to enter. Contest runs through Cyber Monday.

And while you’re at it, stop on over to my store, Accent Gem Designs, and take advantage of the Great Thanksgiving Sale! Remember to enter the coupon code JUNEBUG when you check out!

Have you entered the Rafflecopter yet? If not, do you plan to? Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? Do you prefer brick & mortar store shopping or online shopping?

I just finished some exciting new healing jewelry!

I spent this evening catching up on The Walking Dead and making jewelry. These are my latest creations:

Dalmatian Jasper and Black Jasper stretch bracelet and matching earrings

Sea Sediment Imperial Jasper and Glass Pearls stretch bracelet and earrings

Lapis and Faceted Pyrite triple-strand wrap bracelet and matching earrings

Flower Agate, Blue Quartz & Faceted Pyrite triple-strand wrap bracelet and matching earrings

There is some serious energy and healing to be had from these pieces! Pyrite is a favorite of mine, as is Lapis. I credit pyrite with getting my ass in gear to finally create this blog two years ago. I was wearing a pyrite necklace and I suddenly had this burst of energy and creativity that I hadn’t felt in some time. I wore that necklace for three days and for those three days I worked, developed, devised and built my blog. I’m convinced it was the pyrite that sparked it all…

Pyrite is a strong stone known to promote positive thinking and manifestation. It can help you to take the action required to create abundance and prosperity in your life. It will impart a favorable energy to your business, so it is a fortunate stone to place on the desk where you are working. Pyrite is a stone to enhance your mental abilities, and will allow you to hold your focus on the tasks at hand to completion. It has the added advantage that it also boosts your energy levels. Yep, I can attest to that!

The properties of Lapis are said to quickly release stress, bringing deep peace. It brings harmony and deep inner self-knowledge. It encourages self-awareness, allows self-expression and reveals inner truth, providing qualities of honesty, compassion and morality to the personality. It stimulates objectivity, clarity and encourages creativity. Lapis Lazuli assists to confront and speak one’s truth and inspires confidence. It bonds relationships, aiding in expression of feelings and emotions. Wow!

Agate, among other things, is said to enhance one’s perceptiveness and to stimulate analytical capacity, and to provide balance between one’s physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual states. Agate is also said to alleviate hostilities and promote goodwill. It is also supposed to help treat disorders of the pancreas and to improve circulation. It is also a balancing and cleansing stone that can help bridge the gap between head and heart. And so much more!

Blue Quartz, also known as Dumortierite, helps to enhance organization, order, and self-discipline. It helps to eliminate difficulties resulting from a scattered mind and disorganization by boosting mental clarity. Additionally, it helps users to perceive and accept reality, and respond to it in a productive way. It can also help enhance both creativity and expression.

Emotionally speaking, blue quartz can help reduce depression and exchange it with feelings of peace and joy. It is ideal for reducing emotional tension. Additionally, it can help one be less stubborn. (I need that!)

And physically, Blue Quartz is often used to help cool the body, throat, and thyroid. It is also commonly used to detoxify, calm over-stimulation, and reduce hyperactivity. It is believed to be beneficial for the spleen, endocrine system, and blood. Not to mention it is a strikingly beautiful gemstone!

Imperial Jasper is said to help you withstand heavy negativity. It is also said to stabilize emotions, provide protection (as all Jaspers do) and reduce fears and insecurities. Imperial Jasper lets us see the divinity in everything we do and perceive the ordinariness of the unfolding spiritual path. And it comes in so many gorgeous color variations!

And finally, Dalmatian Jasper is a stone that lessens or removes disillusionment, it will help one see their strengths and weaknesses, as well as encourage grounding both with the earth and reality. Dalmatian Jasper not only increases loyalty and beneficial in long term relationships, it also brings a sense of fun to one’s life.

Physically Dalmatian Jasper can help to purify the blood, it is also a stone of protection from nightmares, depression and negative thinking. It is particularly beneficial for healing people who have trouble relaxing and having a bit of fun. And it’s super eye-catching. 

Now I don’t know how true all these metaphysical and healing claims are but my experience with the pyrite made me a believer. After all, these gemstones are alive and come from the earth so there has to be some transference of energy going on there.

If you like my latest creations and want to see more, pop on over to my store, Accent Gem Designs.  You’ll find the prices as appealing as the jewelry!

Christmas isn’t that far off. Get a jump start on your holiday shopping. Each purchase comes with an information sheet that details all of the healing and metaphysical properties of the gemstones used in the pieces.

Thanks in advance for your support! And my little store could sure use some support…so be sure to share my website with your friends. Reblog this too, if you want to help me reach some new folks. I could use all the help I can get!

 

Long week with an unexpected laborious job!

Some of you know that I have an online jewelry store (Accent Gem Designs). Well, I got an email last week that my shopping cart renewal was up, which of course I expected because it’s been a year since I launched the store. What I didn’t expect was the price tag: $599!

I did a double-take when I read that. Yep, that’s what it said. $599. And I said No fucking way! That’s absurd! Last year when I bought the store, I got in at an introductory price. You know how that goes…

So I called Godaddy to discuss the issue. First of all, I LOVE Godaddy. They have the absolute best customer service I’ve ever encountered. I’ve been working with them for years on various domains and websites. They are available 24/7, their agents are super friendly and really go the extra mile to answer your questions or solve your issues.

I get this guy Neil on the phone and told him there was no way I could afford a $600 renewal. He said, “Yeah, that’s pretty outrageous. Let me take a look and see what’s going on.” Well, here, the shopping cart store program that I bought last year was their OLD system. I bought it last October. Three months later they came out with a new shopping cart store program. He recommended that I transfer to that platform because it was so much cheaper and so much easier to work with…and it had built-in perks that I paid extra for last year with my old shopping cart (the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer encryption) certificate, (which by the way I just renewed at $70 a few days before I got the $600 email notice) and Search Engine visibility: I paid $35 for that last year). With the new version, those are packaged in so there’s no extra expense for these necessary add-ons.

How much cheaper is the new version, you ask? A LOT CHEAPER! I only had to pay $255. That’s a far cry from $600!! Plus they refunded me the $70 that I just laid out for the SSL certificate. Nice!

So that’s great, right? Yeah, BUT … I HAD TO REBUILD MY ENTIRE STORE ALL OVER AGAIN!

Noooo! I can’t do THAT! It took me weeks to build the last one! OMG, I was freaking out. Plus, extra pressure: I only had ten days until my shopping cart renewal would come due. The thought of having to upload every single item, all the pictures, the descriptions, setting up the credit card bullshit, the shipping, the search engine optimization…Oh my God, I was overwhelmed. But it had to be done.

So I rolled up my sleeves and for the last five days I been working day and night on the rebuild. I actually think it’s better than the other store. It looks much cleaner.

Now I’d like to invite you to check it out: Accent Gem Designs.

Take a look around, shop till you drop. And let me know what you think.

Thanks in advance!

A New Direction

After a year of fairly disappointing shows, I’ve decided to go a different route with my jewelry business. No more shows! Instead, I’m going to sell exclusively through my online store Accent Gem Designs. The store has been up and running for about a month now and I’ve had a few decent sales. It takes a long time to get noticed out here in the big bad world of internet commerce! But rather than throwing my money at shows with table and booth fees, I’m going to invest in online advertising and see how that works toward achieving my goals.

The other thing that is new as of this past September is that I’ve gotten back into jewelry design and creation. Years ago I was making gemstone necklaces for dogs (they were really cute: each necklace had a little St. Francis medal attached to the collar ring) and I sold them primarily via ebay and at a few dog shows. Now I’m back at the jewelry-making table, only this time I’m making the designs for people.

I’ve been busy making Bracelet & Earring sets. Here are some of my latest creations:

Lapis Lazuli & Pyrite

Riverstone & Obsidian

Ruby Zoisite

Porcelain tiles

Jade & Amber

I’m also doing commission work with the beaded gemstone jewelry so if you want something special designed, let me know and I’ll see what I can come up with. Additionally, I also have gemstone and sterling silver pendants, solid sterling silver chains, necklaces, rings and gift items.

To purchase, please visit my store at http://www.accentgemdesigns.com. I ship anywhere! And will even gift-wrap and have it delivered directly to your gift recipient. Buy a unique handcrafted gemstone jewelry set for your loved one or do something special for yourself!  Your business will be very much appreciated.

Happy Holidays, my blogosphere friends!