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Friday, February 04, 2011

What I did on my Winter vacation - Tucson

I took a couple of courses at Swarovski as the vacation part of my Tucson trip.

The first course involved rivetting large Swarovski fancy stones onto a bracelet blank. This involved the use of a new rivetting tool (which beadFX will be carrying in the near future, of course). It involves some careful measurement, but was very easy to use, especially with a table-top vise that you can get at any large hardware store.


The next course was really fun. I got to embellish the top of a plain compact case with Swarovski flatbacks. I started with an argyle pattern, but discovered that I can't set a straight line of flatbacks if my life depended on it, so I temporarily gave up on that and started another compact with a random scattering of clear crystal shapes. I'll re-do the other one after I get home and can work on it with better lighting and magnification, and fewer distractions.

Another little project I played with this evening was a kit for a new product that was just being introduced by a Japanese company. I discovered after I opened up the kit in my hotel room that the instructions were in Japanese and the English, or more accurately Japlish, translation was written on a teeny scrap of paper only slightly larger than the paper in a fortune cookie. Step one read, "Mix them well within the proper amount." Ummm, okaaay......

Fortunately, as with a lot of Japanese kits, the pictures were pretty explanatory and I was never a slavish follower of instructions anyhow. So this is what I ended up with:

Not bad, considering the abysmally bad lighting of your typical hotel room.

I'm off for some more product meetings tomorrow and then off to the Swarovski party,one of the highlights of the Tucson "season". Just hope it will be a bit warmer tomorrow as I think the party is outdoors.

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