Spooky Skull Jewelry

My Skull Bracelet

In honour of the big day tomorrow, I thought I'd toot my own horn a bit and highlight some of my "scariest" jewelry.

As you may know, besides my knitting, I am an avid bead weaver.  I really enjoy making seed bead rings and especially bracelets.  I do make the occasional necklace, but I sometimes lack the patience to complete them.

Seed bead jewelry is a very time consuming process.   I use nothing more than a very fine beading needle, some thread and seed beads.  There is no base material or fabric.  Each bead is sewn to the bead before, in some cases, beside it.  You can think of it as drawing pictures and creating patterns one pixel or dot at a time.  The time it takes to create a piece depends on the complexity of the pattern, width and length of the piece.


Skull Ring

For example, a piece like the multi-skull bracelet above can take anywhere from 3-4 hours to create.  A ring like this with a single skull on it would usually be about an hour.  A ring with multiple skulls will usually take a bit longer if a certain ring size is required.  It takes a bit of trial and error with the pattern to know how many black seed beads I'll need to leave between the skulls.

I also like to use a cool or unique beads as focal points in my work.  A great example is when I stumbled across these fantastic skull beads online.  I absolutely LOVED them and had to have them.  For what, I wasn't sure at the time, but like may things, I can always find a use and a space.  Eventually.

The bracelet shown here is actually an example of a bead weaving technique that I developed over the years.  It is a pretty easy technique to learn and I do offer the tutorial online in a variety of ways.  The easiest would probably be through my Etsy shop or as an instant download through PayLoadz.  In both instances it's a *.PDF file you can open on any device or computer.

On a whole, this process is much less time consuming than the other style of bead weaving I do.  A bracelet such as this one would take usually under a couple hours to complete.

Self-Publishing Your Patterns and How-to's (Pt. 6)

This is for those who are publishing through Amazon and Smashwords and DO NOT have US bank accounts.  As a Canadian citizen, I only have bank accounts here.  What this means, is that by law, because both of these companies are operated in the United States, they must retain 30% of my earnings to remit to the IRS.  This sucks since I'm not American.  I already have to pay the taxes on my earnings to Revenue Canada and I'm getting dinged twice.  Let me tell you how hard that sucks!!!

There is a process, that as a foreigner, I can go through to get this money back.  It involves filling out forms, providing notarised id, and an awful lot of patience.  I haven't started this myself yet but I have started doing some basic research on it.  I'm assuming that this is the same process regardless of the country you live in be it UK, Mexico, Australia, etc.

Two places that I found invaluable information are on the Smashwords website at the following link.  It's under the heading: Are there tax withholdings on my earnings if I reside outside the United States? in their FAQ section.  The link should take you automatically to the right spot on the page.




Another page that I found very helpful was written by a lawyer and the link was posted in the Amazon KDP forums.  It's called How to Obtain a U.S. Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) - By Richard P. Clem, Attorney .  It's very easy to understand and gives great insight to the process and the article links to all the places that you need to go like the IRS pages.

I'll keep everyone posted on how I make out on my claim to my tax withholdings.  I'm going to start once the Christmas rush is over some time in the new year.  From what I understand, and I may be wrong, you can make a claim for your tax withholdings on the previous years, so I'll be out nothing if this works.

To see the previous instalment of my self-publishing information, please see this article Self-Publishing Your Patterns and How-to's (Pt. 5)

Self-Publishing Your Patterns and How-to's (Pt. 5)

Ok.  So this posting isn't so much about self-publishing but more like how to go about generating a little more revenue from your patterns.  The way to do this is through affiliate programs.  Now there are lots of websites and blogs out there that can give you a whole lot of information about this topic, but here's the jist of it.  You can make money from generating sales through your blog or website.  You get a percentage of the sale as long as the purchase is made within a given period of time.  It usually is a few days, but depending on the company could be longer.  Each affiliate program is different and you'll have to read their TOS (Terms of Service) for the details. 

So here is what I'm doing...I joined the iTunes affiliate program to promote my patterns even further and make a little extra on each sale.   See this link

on the left hand side? That's a direct link to my patterns I'm selling through the iBookstore. Pretty cool huh?

Now also with this I can promote other people's patterns too.  According to my blog stats, the majority of folks are coming to my site to see my knitting patterns.  Therefore, it would serve me well to add a widget where all sorts of knitting patterns and how-to's are listed.

And there it is!  It really is super simple to do.  iTunes gives you the code and all you need to do is copy and paste it where ever you like on your blog or website.  It takes care of itself from there.

So how did I become a member of the iTunes affiliate program?  First I had to join LinkShare.  Once I was accepted into their affiliate program I could then pick and choose what companies I would like to work with.  They work with a bunch of companies selling all sorts of stuff online.  LinkShare then compiles everything into one place. It makes it easy to work with and collect the money that I earn.



And what's even more cool, if you click that box right above here and join their affiliate program, I can make money from your referral! You can do the same on your blog or website too! It's just the gift that keeps on giving.

And it's not just iTunes that has affiliate programs. Amazon does the very same thing though they run their program themselves and not through any other partners.  If you're interested in joining that one you can try this link...become an Amazon Associate.

These are the ones that I've signed up for but you may want to look for others.  I would love to get a little feed back on this and if you have any suggestions to other programs, by all means, let all of us know!  Give your suggestions in the comments section.