Archive: January ’09 on The Fresh Daily

Until this morning, I actually had myself fooled into believing that “spring was almost here” – then I woke up. The weather forecaster said last night that only people close to the Ohio border needed to worry about heavy snow. We’re not really that close, so I felt relieved. When we woke up to fresh snow on the ground and more falling heavily from the sky, I just laughed. What else can you do? Luckily I can look to the Fresh Picks created by you all for some solace. By looking over the top picks I can really see some beautiful spring colors. They remind me of the end of March – soft flowers poking up, blades of grass showing through as the snow thaws and of course…mud.

Here are the top 10 most viewed Fresh Picks for the past 2 weeks:

• Warm Breezes by A Golke
• Egyptian Nights by Mirjam E
• Cherry Blossoms by Sandy S
• Butterfly Nets by CAS
• Pistachio Ice Cream by Debbi C
• This Just In by kampearls
• Serenity by Sandy S
• Black Ice by Melanie m
• Violet Orchid Romance by Luv2bead
• Spring Inspiration by Gretchen S

Warm Breezes by A Golke

Warm Breezes by A Golke
I’m lying in a hammock on my deck in the summer and I just close my eyes as a warm summer breeze brushes past. Ahhhhhhhh. Very smart choices in this pick. I feel like you were selecting beads that would all work together in a necklace rather than just selecting beads that look cool together. The combination of champagne & gold freshwater pearls, brown rhodochrosite, amber, hessonite, lemon quartz & rutilated quartz faceted nuggets, silver moonstone, smoky quartz and serpentine with banding is fantastic. These colors & patterns work so well together without being obvious. I love the Vintaj pieces you selected — they really add that breezy feel. Great job A Golke!

This entry continues: Read the rest…

We have a winner! Mademoiselle M had the first correct guess with Copper Green Opal Diamond 12mm. She wins a $25 gift certificate.

We’re going to give this another try. Since the last one was solved in the less than an hour, we’ve tried to make this one much harder. The “one guess per day” rule still applies, but for those of you who guessed in Mystery Bead Part I, you may also guess today for this new contest . If you’re not familiar with the last Mystery Bead post, you may be wondering what that blob is directly above. Well, it’s a zoomed in photo of a gemstone bead…

The success of our How Many Beads in the Jar? post got us thinking about other ways to have fun contests and give our customers free stuff. In one of our brainstorming sessions, I came up with the idea that we should take a product photo from the website, find some way to make it unrecognizable, and have our customers take a guess at what it is.

This entry continues: Read the rest…

We have a winner — already! Jennifer A had the first correct guess with African Chrysocolla Tumbled Nugget 10×15-15×20mm. She wins a $50 gift certificate. She guessed it so quickly, that we missed it at first!

Because this contest ended so quickly (thanks a lot Jennifer!) – we’ve decided to have another one. It’s going to be a little more difficult. If you want to play, check out Mystery Bead Part II!

This entry continues: Read the rest…

I have always wanted to “save”. In elementary school, my favorite T-shirts were “Save the Rainforest” and “Save the Whales”. Even as a child I knew that the world wasn’t fair and I had to stand for something. I wrote a lot of letters to elected officials, but whether or not they took a 10 year old seriously, I’m not sure Lima Beads has given us a unique opportunity to help.

Lima Beads customers have been helping us support charities since 2004. When you place an order at Lima Beads, you’ll notice the option to choose a charity at the bottom of your shopping cart. Lima Beads will donate a portion of the profit from your order to the charity you select. This does not add any cost to your order — we just like to let our customers decide where our charitable donations should go. You are the reason we’re here and the reason we’re in a position to help others. Thank You!

The list of charities has been the same since 2004 and we feel that it’s time to change them. Below, we’ve chosen 11 local and regional charities. With this new list of charities, we hope to support some causes close to home — places where we can combine financial assistance with our time to truly make a difference. We’ve also chosen some large national causes in which we believe very strongly.

There are 11 charities listed below. With your help, we’ll narrow this list to 5. These 5 charities will be the 2009 Lima Beads Giving Back charities that will appear on the shopping cart. Starting this year, we plan to select 5 new charities each January. Please vote for your 3 favorites in the poll below.

This entry continues: Read the rest…

Meet the man behind the mittens in our exclusive interview with the Lima Guy on The Fresh Daily. I sat down with Lima between photo shoots for a candid chat–check out the transcript below, and ask your questions in the comments!

Steve: Thanks for joining me today.

Lima: No problem, I was in the area.

Steve: The world wants to know… what have you been up to lately?

Lima: Have you seen our ad schedule this Winter? Yeesh, it’s been photo shoot after photo shoot. Have you seen me on the home page? We’ve got a lot lined up for the new year!

July 2005

Steve: Yes, yes we do… can you tell me a little more about your early career with Lima Beads?

Lima: I started in July ‘05 for the fall promotion that year. As you can see in the picture, I sure had a lot of fun playing in those leaves!

Steve: OK, tough question: gemstone beads, or freshwater pearls?

This entry continues: Read the rest…

I hope everyone enjoyed time with family and friends this past holiday season. Unfortunately, it had to end and we find ourselves in the middle of January already. Luckily we have Fresh Picks to save us. I need to apologize to everyone for not staying on top of the Favorite Fresh Picks posts. I am very excited to see how much everyone is using the fresh pick comments. Now all we need are more images of our customers’ work to get uploaded in the Fresh Pick comments – we love seeing the creativity!

These are the most visited Fresh Picks from the past 2 weeks:

• Snowflakes Like Butterflys by CAS
• Turquoise Smoke by Peggy A
• Snowflake Lace by AnnMarie H
• Gingko [my cat] by A Golke
• New Space by JewelsbyJill 
• BytheLightoftheSilveryMoon by Debbi C
• Shades of Montana Winter by KarenDe H
• Turtle Crossing by Sandy S
• Year of the Ox by Cuban Queen
• Copper Rose by Gretchen S

This entry continues: Read the rest…

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been in the process of trying to replace one of the founding members of the Lima team. Being responsible for photographing every product photo on the site over the past 5 years and every bead in our magazine ads, we thought that a formal retirement was well deserved. I’m talking about the smallest member of the Lima team — our digital camera.

Old Camera

Before I give an introduction to its successor, let me give you a quick history of our old camera. After college graduation, Ali had an internship with an interior designer. Rather than being paid, she asked her boss to just buy her a digital camera. She chose the Olympus Camedia C-720 from Circuit City and it was the first really nice thing that Kevin & Ali ever owned.

The Photo Room

They set up a “photo studio” in one of the closets of Ali’s college apartment so that she could photograph her jewelry and eventually, beads for a new web site they were thinking about starting… When the camera wasn’t in the photo studio, it was in downtown Ann Arbor snapping pictures of Ali’s friend Heather modeling Ali’s most recent jewelry designs. Needless to say, these were not the most professional of photographs, but she was proud of them

This entry continues: Read the rest…

Today we’re making the official announcement about some things that have been in the works for the past month at Lima Beads. Some of you have already discovered (and used!) a few of these features, but there’s more to announce, and I hope you’ll read on.

Commenting on Fresh Picks

Today is the official launch of Fresh Pick Comments. When you’re browsing any of the Fresh Picks on Lima Beads, you can add your comments and questions at the bottom of the page. Already we’ve seen conversations flourish about design ideas, color usage, our pets, the weather, and just about everything else! You can even upload pics of finished jewelry that was inspired by the Fresh Pick. To quickly browse all the conversations, just click the Fresh Pick Chat topic on the right side here in the blog. Or, follow along under “Recent Chatter” on the main Fresh Picks page. We hope you like it!

New Snapshots page

With our growing collection of Fresh Picks (thanks to YOU!), we knew we needed a better Snapshots page to browse the picks. We’ve organized it with tabs to make it easy to see the latest picks from the past few weeks. And we added the “Who’s Picking” area to feature the designers that create all these great ideas! Check it out, and let us know what you think!

This entry continues: Read the rest…

Christmas is over. New year’s eve and new year’s day are over. Now, it’s just cold and snowy for the next 8-10 weeks and glimpses of the sun will be few and far between. In Michigan, we call this period the grind. I must admit, I occasionally have a hard time keeping a positive attitude during the grind. As Ali can tell you, every year I start talking about how we need to move to northern California where my sister lives or to Florida where her sister lives.

For those of you that live in colder areas, the midwest in particular — what do you do this time of year? Does anyone else experience the annual desire to seek a warmer climate? I’ve messed around with various winter sports, but nothing too serious. I’ve always thought that if I were to ski or snowboard on a regular basis, I might enjoy the winter more. I used to love playing pond hockey, sledding, or having snowball fights when I was younger, but I haven’t done those things on a regular basis for quite some time.

This entry continues: Read the rest…

The beginning of 2009 already feels different than the beginning of years past. I feel more hopeful and more curious about the future than ever before. This is sure to be a year full of surprises.

For the Lima team, new year’s resolutions never seem to hold. Frankly, they’re kind of a joke. We’re determined to make this year different. We’ve decided to come up with realistic resolutions for ourselves.. things that we actually have a chance of maintaining.

Ali

Normally, my new year’s resolution is something like: “go out to eat less and use that YMCA membership more often” — but, every year these things fail. This year, I’m going to try doing those things as part of my normal life and not necessarily a resolution and see if they last longer. My actual resolution this year is going to be focusing on my family and my creative aspirations, so I hope to:

This entry continues: Read the rest…