Year Seven: prices and how to order
WE HAVE STARTED TAKING YEAR SEVEN BOTMO ORDERS as of Friday, November 6.
Welcome to Beads of the Month! It's pretty simple: you send us money and we send you beads. Want just a few beads? Order some Little Bitty Magpies. Want a glorious lot of beads? Mother Of All Magpies is your ticket. Want a nice bunch of beads, not too many and not too few? Try the Great Big Magpie package. You can mix and match months as you choose, too, so don't feel you have to buy a whole year's worth just to get the seven months you really want. (But if you do want a year's worth, we'll help by giving you a discount with our multi-month packages.)
Three kinds of magpies for three sizes of beady fun are available:
Little Bitty Magpie - A small selection of interesting beads, just enough to whet your creative appetite for more, shipped in a padded envelope.
1 month - $12.50 plus shipping
Great Big Magpie - A medium-sized selection of interesting beads, usually containing between 20 and 100 beads, and sometimes more. This is the package for someone who wants more than just a sample. There are usually some paired beads for earrings in each package, and at least one interesting focal bead as well as the other goodies. The Great Big Magpies always include some larger and/or more fragile beads than those contained in the Little Bitty Magpie packages, because we ship these in a sturdy box. 1 month - $25.00 plus shipping.
Mother Of All Magpies - The big package of beady goodness! This is the deluxe box of goodies, usually containing between 25 and 100 beads, and sometimes many more. These beads include some of the biggest, fanciest, most interesting things I can find. In past years, we've had things like beads made from meteorites, silver-mounted ammonites with opalization, handmade lampwork beads, and some very fancy stones. We ship these in a sturdy box. 1 month - $50 plus shipping
Here are the monthly themes for Year Seven, with notes on some of the beads I already have and others that I'll be looking for. There are the usual three sizes of package: Little Bitty Magpie at $12.50, Great Big Magpie at $25, and Mother Of All Magpies at $50, and each level has a different mix of beads, so please be aware that not everything mentioned in the month is in every kind of package. (I'll try to tell you what's going to be where, at least with the fanciest beads, and I hope to post some photographs and links to information as well, to help you decide whether you want certain packages. Info sheets on the beads will be posted for each month in the Beads of the Month LJ as we go.)
February 2010 "Stand Up On It!" - It's something rock-climbers say to each other, and this month's focal bead is a lizard climbing a rock face. They're completely endearing! The larger ones (for the Mother Of All Magpies) are long-tailed lizards; I thought the smaller ones, being tailless, were frogs, until Emma corrected me, but now I know they are heroic lizards*. There will be other incredibly nifty beads inspired by characters and episodes of the show mentioned below, but don't worry if you don't watch it -- I promise to pick beads that are nifty even without the bonus associations-with-the-stories. (Note: MOAMs are now sold out for February.)
March 2010 - Jasper and Agate - They're too beautiful for me to pass up, so I have some gorgeous specimens to offer. I am pretty sure we'll do this one, though I don't know which of the jaspers and agates I'll choose for which packages yet. (I have stashes of Owyhee, ocean, Imperial, Willow Creek, poppy, Saturn, Hami, fancy, and porcelain jasper of various types, and some stunning jaspers that came to me without names, so I have a lot to choose from; in the agate realm, there's even more to pick from. You should see the Botswana agate stash in the workshop. Mmm! Choosing is going to be difficult for me, though, since it's all so tempting.)
April 2010 Astronomy - Every single package will hold at least one drilled piece of the meteorite designated NWA869. Little Bitty Magpies will get a quintet of little polished chips, Great Big Magpies will get a polished 10mm round bead, and the Mother Of All Magpies packages will hold two 10mm rounds and a 12mm round. Getting meteorite beads is pretty amazing in its own right, but everyone will also get a tektite from the Australasian strewnfield. (LBMs get little fragments; GBMs and MOAMs get larger and more beautifully shaped tektites suitable for wire-wrapping as pendants. You can see the little holes and marks from ablation when they whizzed through the atmosphere. They are really cool.) There will be augmented by a few other goodies like star and planet beads, lampwork that looks like nebulae or UFOs and so forth. (As always, LBMs, GBMs and MOAMs have different beads, and the fancier and more fragile lampwork will be found in the larger packages only, since LBMs are shipped in padded envelopes while the others are shipped in boxes.) (Note: MOAMs and GBMs are now sold out for April.)
May 2010 The Waves and the Shore - These beads speak of tide pools and sunlit shores, of the moods of the ocean and the colors of the land. I'm fascinated by coastlines, waves, the colors of ocean water, and the beauty of the strand. Maybe it's because I live so far inland. Whatever it is, I believe there are lovely possibilities in this theme, including some evocative lampwork.
June 2010 Imaginary Friends and Imaginary Places - This one came about when I was looking through some strands of opalite glass bear beads and gemstone bear beads, and thinking about how many people had liked the bear earrings of 2009, so everybody gets at least one pair of bear beads, and some get eight or more. Then I found some intricate lampwork with swirls and swoops of dreamlike colors, definitely images of imaginary places. Also, the MOAMs will get some great big carved bone horse beads, because some of us had imaginary horse friends when we were little.
July 2010 Roses, Honey and Fire - Carved rose beads, rose-colored beads in many shades (hey, besides the whole lavender/pink/red/orange/yellow/white range, I have seen blue roses, and those of you who got the tigereye roses a while back know that I like finding them in non-rose-colored stones, too, so there may be unexpected colors), honey and bee-related beads (with a little gorgeous amber if I get lucky), and fiery goodness. Look for dragonscale carnelian beads in these packages.
August 2010 What the Lioness Likes - August is my birthday month, so I always show you a selection of things that I think are especially beautiful, interesting, new, or all three. It's easy to choose -- I just go to the workshop and check the inventory for whatever I have way too much of because I can't resist buying it -- but it's hard to let go of the beads, so you may find claw marks on some of the ones I tried to hold on to. (This is the hardest package to put together, because I really do choose them from my personal favorites.)
September 2010 Pirates! - This isn't educational, matey, this is LOOT! A wonderful random selection (OK, not totally random, because we do try to balance things) of goodies from all over fills these packages. You may get findings along with the beads in some packages, or charms, or the odd cabuchon, or who knows. All year long we say, "Hmm, there are only three of those amethysts left; guess we should put them in little bags and throw them into Pirates." This is the month you get the benefit of that.
October 2010 Dinosaurs and Stromatolites - Yes, I really do have beads made from dinosaur bones, and everybody will get at least one. (MOAMs get seven!) The dinosaur bone beads are similar to these, and yes, the price listed there is two hundred and twenty five dollars per strand. I think the ones I've got for you are very cool, and I'm going to match them for you so you can make earrings if you like. (That's something you can't get buying randomly on-line!) And stromatolites -- well, they're cool beads, they're fossils, and they are lovely scientific geekery. I think you'll enjoy them a lot. More info as we get closer to the month itself, but this is going to be really, really neat. (Additional info: each Little Bitty Magpie package holds a pair of matched rondelled of dino bone; each Great Big Magpie has a pair of matched dino bone barrels, and I picked all the ones that had black or red in them, and almost every one has both, though some of the black goes to a deep charcoal grey in one pair; MOAMs, which are sold out at this point, have seven dino bone beads coming. More info as I get it.) (Note: MOAMs are now sold out for October.)
November 2010 - Treasures of the Ancient World - Roman glass. Yes, real glass from ancient Rome, and every single package will get at least one piece. (They are small but beautiful. I'll take some photos to show you.) Egyptian treasures: enameled beads in the shape of frogs for the goddess Hequet, and enameled lotus beads. Symbols: spirals, winged hearts, and more. Also, native copper from Michigan, which is definitely a treasure of the ancient world as far as I'm concerned; five thousand years ago, people were working Michigan copper into items traded along routes stretching as far as Florida. (These copper pieces are not beads, but I will choose ones for GBMs and MOAMs that are suitable for wire-wrapping as pendants. They are lovely, and their structure is fascinating and gives much geological insight, as they have not been re-formed or re-shaped. My supplier tells me they have been sprayed with a light finish to prevent tarnishing. Everybody will get at least one piece, though the Little Bitty Magpies will get tiny ones that might have to be held in bottles or something... but that could look pretty neat, no?) (Note: MOAMs and GBMs are now sold out for November.)
December 2010 - From Sunset To Sunrise - Charlotte and I were sorting beads a while ago, and we noticed a gorgeous juxtaposition of strands, and that's where the idea for this theme came from. Wonderful vivid ranges of color, plus subtle beauty. There may even be a little blue goldstone glass in here as well, for the starry sparkle of midnight in between the glorious setting and rising of the sun.
January 2011 Tricks of the Light - Lampwork with sparkles, with shimmers of foil. Labradorite. Rainbow moonstone. If I can find nice hawkeye quartz, you'll see some here, along with tigereye. (I already have blue tigereye rounds for this, and they are lovely.) Also, I got some spectacular opals, and the Mother Of All Magpies packages are likely to have some of it, if Charlotte can pry it out of my hands to sort, that is. Chances are good, though. More light-tricks as I find them; watch this space!
** I was sad because the very first beads in the batch I got last year for pendants had tails, but the subsequent ones were tailless. "They were just frogs!" I mourned. But Emma corrected me, when I mentioned it in connection with this BotMo project. "The last ones weren't frogs. They were lizards who'd escaped from peril by sacrificing their tails. Which grow back. All of which is highly thematic**. *g*" Make of that what you will; I like it a lot.
** It's thematic because this particular set of beads is inspired by Shadow Unit, the best non-existent television series ever. Shadow Unit is the Anomalous Crimes Task Force. They take cases too weird for the rest of the FBI... and there are some things it's better that the rest of the Bureau not know about. The first two seasons of Shadow Unit can be found here, but make sure you scroll down to Season One instead of starting with Season Two. (And the last episode of Season Two is linked from the homepage until the next ep comes out.) Season Three's opening episode will "air" in February - check the Shadow Unit homepage for a link to it when Season Three begins. Enjoy! (OK, enjoy while shivering, but hey, it's big fun if you like that sort of thing, which it turns out I really really do.)
Individual months can be ordered at any time at the prices given above, but you can save money by purchasing several months at once -- and you can skip around among the months to get the themes you're interested in. Or order a whole year, because we've made whole-year packages cheaper than they were last year.
Order several months at a time at the following rates:
Little Bitty Magpie (LBM)
3-5 months, $12.00/month plus shipping
6-11 months, $11.50/month plus shipping
12 months, $11/month plus shipping (full year = total of $132* plus shipping)
Great Big Magpie (GBM)
3-5 months, $24.00/month plus shipping
6-11 months, $23.00/month plus shipping
12 months, $22.00/month plus shipping (full year = total of $264* plus shipping)
Mother Of All Magpies (MOAM)
3-5 months, $48.00/month plus shipping
6-11 months, $47.00/month plus shipping
12 months, $44.00/month plus shipping (full year: total of $528* plus shipping) NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR YEAR SEVEN, AS WE ARE SOLD OUT OF FEBRUARY, APRIL, OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER MOAMS. (However, if you want to get on the waiting list in case somebody doesn't pay, send us email to the botmo@lioness address. )
Please note that multi-month orders must be paid in full at one time to qualify for the discounted rates. If you pay for a year's worth by December 31st of 2009, though, you get a bonus bagful of beady goodness! (Please note that the beady goodness bags only happen if you're getting a whole year's worth. And they really will be bags. I crocheted 'em myself.)
Feel free to build your own mix-and-match packages using the amounts above, or contact us if you'd like us to play with the math for you. For starters, here are some of the common combos:
6 Great Big Magpies and 6 Mother Of All Magpies: 6x$23 plus 6x$47 = $420 plus shipping
8 Great Big Magpies and 4 Mother Of All Magpies: 8x$23 plus 4x$48 = $376 plus shipping
If you choose to buy a bunch of packages (like, buying a year at the discounted rate) at one rate and then upgrade selected months to larger packages as the year goes on, as many of our members do, here are the upgrade rates:
From Little Bitty Magpie to Great Big Magpie: $12.50 plus the additional shipping cost
From Great Big Magpie to Mother Of All Magpie: $25.00 (no additional shipping cost)
From Little Bitty Magpie to Mother Of All Magpies: $37.50 plus the additional shipping cost
Shipping costs:
SHIPPING COSTS HAVE CHANGED, EFFECTIVE 10 MARCH 2010. (If you paid before that date, don't worry; you're covered.)
Little Bitty Magpie shipping is $3.00 $6.50 per package in the US or Canada, and usually $5 elsewhere; please check with Daniel (available at stitchandlioness@gmail.com) for an international shipping quote. for our standard Priority Mail shipping. For international shipping costs, please see the note below, and I'm very sorry about having to do this, but there it is.
Great Big Magpie or Mother Of All Magpie shipping is $6.50 per package in the US or Canada, and usually $8.50 elsewhere; please check with Daniel (available at stitchandlioness@gmail.com) for an international shipping quote. PLEASE NOTE: WE MAY NEED HAVE NEEDED TO GO TO PRIORITY FLAT RATE SHIPPING FOR INTERNATIONAL PACKAGES, INCLUDING CANADA. IF THIS HAPPENS, WE WILL WORK THINGS OUT WITH YOU TO YOUR SATISFACTION, OK? MOST LIKELY, IT'D BE $10, AND YOU'D GET DELIVERY CONFIRMATION AND TRACKING, WHICH HAS BEEN AN ISSUE LATELY. We have needed to make the change, and the info is as follows. Please note that this will only affect people who buy packages after March 10, 2010.
New shipping costs for international packages, effective March 10, 2010:
International shipping, alas, is changing. It pretty much breaks my heart to do it, particularly to my beloved Canadians, but other e-tailers are going to this change for sensible reasons, namely that they can't afford to do it the old way any more, and we're in the same boat, so there it is. From this point on, international shipping will be by International Flat Rate. Shipping for most packages to Canada will be $12.00, unless it won't fit in that Flat Rate box, in which case it jumps to $21.00 for the next size up. Shipping for all other international orders starts at $14; the rate jumps to $29.00 on orders that won’t entirely fit in the small Flat Rate box. (Those of you who are getting Beads of the Month and have already paid your shipping are taken care of, though if you want to combine sale items or other shiny purchases with your Beads of the Month package, we'll be looking at the Flat Rate for the combination. As an example, if you live in Finland and paid the $8.50 for a Mother Of All Magpies package and are buying a sale necklace that you want to ship with your BotMo, the additional shipping due for combining them would probably be $5.50.)
The upside of this for you, we're told, is that the packages should arrive more quickly, and you'll get your Customs number emailed to you by the U.S. Postal Service just like all the domestic customers do. The domestic customers are already all Priority Mail, so we've actually been lagging behind in standardizing the international shipping... and it's gotten significantly more expensive for us to do so, given the extra time doing customs paperwork by hand rather than using the Click-and-Ship online service, as well as the rising costs of boxes. And that's the upside for us, because it was usually costing us more to ship internationally than we were charging. We held off as long as we could, and you know we wouldn't make this change unless we really had to. I hope you understand the spot we're in, and I apologize for the unpleasant necessity of this change. (Wah. I can't treat the Canadian customers as domestic customers any longer. Puhey, as some of my Dansker relatives would have said. But there it is.)
You can always combine shipping with purchases from Lioness, so if you want something from Current Shinies or a sale and you already have a Beads of the Month package ordered, please ask us for a combined shipping rate so we can save you a few bucks, OK?
Two addresses? Yes. One for email, but the other's our (only) payment address.
Orders and questions go to botmo@lioness.net, and PayPal payments go to elise@lioness.net.
(Payment can also be made via check or money order; ask us for the mailing address.)
Multi-month orders must be paid in full at one time to qualify for the discounted rates.
About the rosters, the wishing list, and buying more than one package:
NEW POLICY: Daniel has spoken to me with the voice of reason, and I am in agreement that we will not be able to reserve far-future BotMo packages any more without payment. We've had several cases where a reservation for a whole year that was to be paid month-to-month never got paid, and this prevented someone else from getting packages, and it's just not fair to the hopeful ones. If you order a BotMo package and something happens and your payment is going to be delayed, email Daniel immediately. He will be clearing out unpaid names periodically, so if you want a package that's sold out, do check back and see if a spot has opened up.
Once you've paid, please check the roster to make sure we've marked you as paid within three working days if it's PayPal. (Sometimes PayPal hiccups and does not notify us of a payment, so we very much appreciate your checking on this and nudging us if we've missed something. If you do not receive an email confirmation of receiving payment from either Elise or Daniel, let us know right away!) If you're paying by check or money order, please let us know you've mailed it, and if you don't see a confirmation within a reasonable amount of time, please poke us to see if something went astray. Thanks.
Orders must be paid for before they will be shipped.
After the month is finished, unpurchased packages will go into my general stock of beads and I will shriek with delight and make stuff with them. (Your beads and my beads come from the same strings; I don't buy anything for you that I wouldn't use myself.) In other words, there are no leftovers from previous months... well, unless I put them in a Really Safe Place and forgot about them, which happens now and then. *blush* But it's not supposed to.
Oh, about multiple packages: you can get as many Pirates packages as you want, but the other months are one to a customer, until the last three days of the month, when you can buy more if there are some left. We call this the feeding frenzy.
Thanks, and we hope you enjoy this year's Beads of the Month. Don't forget that there are monthly prize drawings for posting photos of your BotMo creations.
* That's lower than last year's price. Yay!
Welcome to Beads of the Month! It's pretty simple: you send us money and we send you beads. Want just a few beads? Order some Little Bitty Magpies. Want a glorious lot of beads? Mother Of All Magpies is your ticket. Want a nice bunch of beads, not too many and not too few? Try the Great Big Magpie package. You can mix and match months as you choose, too, so don't feel you have to buy a whole year's worth just to get the seven months you really want. (But if you do want a year's worth, we'll help by giving you a discount with our multi-month packages.)
Three kinds of magpies for three sizes of beady fun are available:
Little Bitty Magpie - A small selection of interesting beads, just enough to whet your creative appetite for more, shipped in a padded envelope.
1 month - $12.50 plus shipping
Great Big Magpie - A medium-sized selection of interesting beads, usually containing between 20 and 100 beads, and sometimes more. This is the package for someone who wants more than just a sample. There are usually some paired beads for earrings in each package, and at least one interesting focal bead as well as the other goodies. The Great Big Magpies always include some larger and/or more fragile beads than those contained in the Little Bitty Magpie packages, because we ship these in a sturdy box. 1 month - $25.00 plus shipping.
Mother Of All Magpies - The big package of beady goodness! This is the deluxe box of goodies, usually containing between 25 and 100 beads, and sometimes many more. These beads include some of the biggest, fanciest, most interesting things I can find. In past years, we've had things like beads made from meteorites, silver-mounted ammonites with opalization, handmade lampwork beads, and some very fancy stones. We ship these in a sturdy box. 1 month - $50 plus shipping
Here are the monthly themes for Year Seven, with notes on some of the beads I already have and others that I'll be looking for. There are the usual three sizes of package: Little Bitty Magpie at $12.50, Great Big Magpie at $25, and Mother Of All Magpies at $50, and each level has a different mix of beads, so please be aware that not everything mentioned in the month is in every kind of package. (I'll try to tell you what's going to be where, at least with the fanciest beads, and I hope to post some photographs and links to information as well, to help you decide whether you want certain packages. Info sheets on the beads will be posted for each month in the Beads of the Month LJ as we go.)
February 2010 "Stand Up On It!" - It's something rock-climbers say to each other, and this month's focal bead is a lizard climbing a rock face. They're completely endearing! The larger ones (for the Mother Of All Magpies) are long-tailed lizards; I thought the smaller ones, being tailless, were frogs, until Emma corrected me, but now I know they are heroic lizards*. There will be other incredibly nifty beads inspired by characters and episodes of the show mentioned below, but don't worry if you don't watch it -- I promise to pick beads that are nifty even without the bonus associations-with-the-stories. (Note: MOAMs are now sold out for February.)
March 2010 - Jasper and Agate - They're too beautiful for me to pass up, so I have some gorgeous specimens to offer. I am pretty sure we'll do this one, though I don't know which of the jaspers and agates I'll choose for which packages yet. (I have stashes of Owyhee, ocean, Imperial, Willow Creek, poppy, Saturn, Hami, fancy, and porcelain jasper of various types, and some stunning jaspers that came to me without names, so I have a lot to choose from; in the agate realm, there's even more to pick from. You should see the Botswana agate stash in the workshop. Mmm! Choosing is going to be difficult for me, though, since it's all so tempting.)
April 2010 Astronomy - Every single package will hold at least one drilled piece of the meteorite designated NWA869. Little Bitty Magpies will get a quintet of little polished chips, Great Big Magpies will get a polished 10mm round bead, and the Mother Of All Magpies packages will hold two 10mm rounds and a 12mm round. Getting meteorite beads is pretty amazing in its own right, but everyone will also get a tektite from the Australasian strewnfield. (LBMs get little fragments; GBMs and MOAMs get larger and more beautifully shaped tektites suitable for wire-wrapping as pendants. You can see the little holes and marks from ablation when they whizzed through the atmosphere. They are really cool.) There will be augmented by a few other goodies like star and planet beads, lampwork that looks like nebulae or UFOs and so forth. (As always, LBMs, GBMs and MOAMs have different beads, and the fancier and more fragile lampwork will be found in the larger packages only, since LBMs are shipped in padded envelopes while the others are shipped in boxes.) (Note: MOAMs and GBMs are now sold out for April.)
May 2010 The Waves and the Shore - These beads speak of tide pools and sunlit shores, of the moods of the ocean and the colors of the land. I'm fascinated by coastlines, waves, the colors of ocean water, and the beauty of the strand. Maybe it's because I live so far inland. Whatever it is, I believe there are lovely possibilities in this theme, including some evocative lampwork.
June 2010 Imaginary Friends and Imaginary Places - This one came about when I was looking through some strands of opalite glass bear beads and gemstone bear beads, and thinking about how many people had liked the bear earrings of 2009, so everybody gets at least one pair of bear beads, and some get eight or more. Then I found some intricate lampwork with swirls and swoops of dreamlike colors, definitely images of imaginary places. Also, the MOAMs will get some great big carved bone horse beads, because some of us had imaginary horse friends when we were little.
July 2010 Roses, Honey and Fire - Carved rose beads, rose-colored beads in many shades (hey, besides the whole lavender/pink/red/orange/yellow/white range, I have seen blue roses, and those of you who got the tigereye roses a while back know that I like finding them in non-rose-colored stones, too, so there may be unexpected colors), honey and bee-related beads (with a little gorgeous amber if I get lucky), and fiery goodness. Look for dragonscale carnelian beads in these packages.
August 2010 What the Lioness Likes - August is my birthday month, so I always show you a selection of things that I think are especially beautiful, interesting, new, or all three. It's easy to choose -- I just go to the workshop and check the inventory for whatever I have way too much of because I can't resist buying it -- but it's hard to let go of the beads, so you may find claw marks on some of the ones I tried to hold on to. (This is the hardest package to put together, because I really do choose them from my personal favorites.)
September 2010 Pirates! - This isn't educational, matey, this is LOOT! A wonderful random selection (OK, not totally random, because we do try to balance things) of goodies from all over fills these packages. You may get findings along with the beads in some packages, or charms, or the odd cabuchon, or who knows. All year long we say, "Hmm, there are only three of those amethysts left; guess we should put them in little bags and throw them into Pirates." This is the month you get the benefit of that.
October 2010 Dinosaurs and Stromatolites - Yes, I really do have beads made from dinosaur bones, and everybody will get at least one. (MOAMs get seven!) The dinosaur bone beads are similar to these, and yes, the price listed there is two hundred and twenty five dollars per strand. I think the ones I've got for you are very cool, and I'm going to match them for you so you can make earrings if you like. (That's something you can't get buying randomly on-line!) And stromatolites -- well, they're cool beads, they're fossils, and they are lovely scientific geekery. I think you'll enjoy them a lot. More info as we get closer to the month itself, but this is going to be really, really neat. (Additional info: each Little Bitty Magpie package holds a pair of matched rondelled of dino bone; each Great Big Magpie has a pair of matched dino bone barrels, and I picked all the ones that had black or red in them, and almost every one has both, though some of the black goes to a deep charcoal grey in one pair; MOAMs, which are sold out at this point, have seven dino bone beads coming. More info as I get it.) (Note: MOAMs are now sold out for October.)
November 2010 - Treasures of the Ancient World - Roman glass. Yes, real glass from ancient Rome, and every single package will get at least one piece. (They are small but beautiful. I'll take some photos to show you.) Egyptian treasures: enameled beads in the shape of frogs for the goddess Hequet, and enameled lotus beads. Symbols: spirals, winged hearts, and more. Also, native copper from Michigan, which is definitely a treasure of the ancient world as far as I'm concerned; five thousand years ago, people were working Michigan copper into items traded along routes stretching as far as Florida. (These copper pieces are not beads, but I will choose ones for GBMs and MOAMs that are suitable for wire-wrapping as pendants. They are lovely, and their structure is fascinating and gives much geological insight, as they have not been re-formed or re-shaped. My supplier tells me they have been sprayed with a light finish to prevent tarnishing. Everybody will get at least one piece, though the Little Bitty Magpies will get tiny ones that might have to be held in bottles or something... but that could look pretty neat, no?) (Note: MOAMs and GBMs are now sold out for November.)
December 2010 - From Sunset To Sunrise - Charlotte and I were sorting beads a while ago, and we noticed a gorgeous juxtaposition of strands, and that's where the idea for this theme came from. Wonderful vivid ranges of color, plus subtle beauty. There may even be a little blue goldstone glass in here as well, for the starry sparkle of midnight in between the glorious setting and rising of the sun.
January 2011 Tricks of the Light - Lampwork with sparkles, with shimmers of foil. Labradorite. Rainbow moonstone. If I can find nice hawkeye quartz, you'll see some here, along with tigereye. (I already have blue tigereye rounds for this, and they are lovely.) Also, I got some spectacular opals, and the Mother Of All Magpies packages are likely to have some of it, if Charlotte can pry it out of my hands to sort, that is. Chances are good, though. More light-tricks as I find them; watch this space!
** I was sad because the very first beads in the batch I got last year for pendants had tails, but the subsequent ones were tailless. "They were just frogs!" I mourned. But Emma corrected me, when I mentioned it in connection with this BotMo project. "The last ones weren't frogs. They were lizards who'd escaped from peril by sacrificing their tails. Which grow back. All of which is highly thematic**. *g*" Make of that what you will; I like it a lot.
** It's thematic because this particular set of beads is inspired by Shadow Unit, the best non-existent television series ever. Shadow Unit is the Anomalous Crimes Task Force. They take cases too weird for the rest of the FBI... and there are some things it's better that the rest of the Bureau not know about. The first two seasons of Shadow Unit can be found here, but make sure you scroll down to Season One instead of starting with Season Two. (And the last episode of Season Two is linked from the homepage until the next ep comes out.) Season Three's opening episode will "air" in February - check the Shadow Unit homepage for a link to it when Season Three begins. Enjoy! (OK, enjoy while shivering, but hey, it's big fun if you like that sort of thing, which it turns out I really really do.)
Individual months can be ordered at any time at the prices given above, but you can save money by purchasing several months at once -- and you can skip around among the months to get the themes you're interested in. Or order a whole year, because we've made whole-year packages cheaper than they were last year.
Order several months at a time at the following rates:
Little Bitty Magpie (LBM)
3-5 months, $12.00/month plus shipping
6-11 months, $11.50/month plus shipping
12 months, $11/month plus shipping (full year = total of $132* plus shipping)
Great Big Magpie (GBM)
3-5 months, $24.00/month plus shipping
6-11 months, $23.00/month plus shipping
12 months, $22.00/month plus shipping (full year = total of $264* plus shipping)
Mother Of All Magpies (MOAM)
3-5 months, $48.00/month plus shipping
6-11 months, $47.00/month plus shipping
12 months, $44.00/month plus shipping (full year: total of $528* plus shipping) NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR YEAR SEVEN, AS WE ARE SOLD OUT OF FEBRUARY, APRIL, OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER MOAMS. (However, if you want to get on the waiting list in case somebody doesn't pay, send us email to the botmo@lioness address. )
Please note that multi-month orders must be paid in full at one time to qualify for the discounted rates. If you pay for a year's worth by December 31st of 2009, though, you get a bonus bagful of beady goodness! (Please note that the beady goodness bags only happen if you're getting a whole year's worth. And they really will be bags. I crocheted 'em myself.)
Feel free to build your own mix-and-match packages using the amounts above, or contact us if you'd like us to play with the math for you. For starters, here are some of the common combos:
6 Great Big Magpies and 6 Mother Of All Magpies: 6x$23 plus 6x$47 = $420 plus shipping
8 Great Big Magpies and 4 Mother Of All Magpies: 8x$23 plus 4x$48 = $376 plus shipping
If you choose to buy a bunch of packages (like, buying a year at the discounted rate) at one rate and then upgrade selected months to larger packages as the year goes on, as many of our members do, here are the upgrade rates:
From Little Bitty Magpie to Great Big Magpie: $12.50 plus the additional shipping cost
From Great Big Magpie to Mother Of All Magpie: $25.00 (no additional shipping cost)
From Little Bitty Magpie to Mother Of All Magpies: $37.50 plus the additional shipping cost
Shipping costs:
SHIPPING COSTS HAVE CHANGED, EFFECTIVE 10 MARCH 2010. (If you paid before that date, don't worry; you're covered.)
Little Bitty Magpie shipping is $3.00 $6.50 per package in the US or Canada, and usually $5 elsewhere; please check with Daniel (available at stitchandlioness@gmail.com) for an international shipping quote. for our standard Priority Mail shipping. For international shipping costs, please see the note below, and I'm very sorry about having to do this, but there it is.
Great Big Magpie or Mother Of All Magpie shipping is $6.50 per package in the US or Canada, and usually $8.50 elsewhere; please check with Daniel (available at stitchandlioness@gmail.com) for an international shipping quote. PLEASE NOTE: WE MAY NEED HAVE NEEDED TO GO TO PRIORITY FLAT RATE SHIPPING FOR INTERNATIONAL PACKAGES, INCLUDING CANADA. IF THIS HAPPENS, WE WILL WORK THINGS OUT WITH YOU TO YOUR SATISFACTION, OK? MOST LIKELY, IT'D BE $10, AND YOU'D GET DELIVERY CONFIRMATION AND TRACKING, WHICH HAS BEEN AN ISSUE LATELY. We have needed to make the change, and the info is as follows. Please note that this will only affect people who buy packages after March 10, 2010.
New shipping costs for international packages, effective March 10, 2010:
International shipping, alas, is changing. It pretty much breaks my heart to do it, particularly to my beloved Canadians, but other e-tailers are going to this change for sensible reasons, namely that they can't afford to do it the old way any more, and we're in the same boat, so there it is. From this point on, international shipping will be by International Flat Rate. Shipping for most packages to Canada will be $12.00, unless it won't fit in that Flat Rate box, in which case it jumps to $21.00 for the next size up. Shipping for all other international orders starts at $14; the rate jumps to $29.00 on orders that won’t entirely fit in the small Flat Rate box. (Those of you who are getting Beads of the Month and have already paid your shipping are taken care of, though if you want to combine sale items or other shiny purchases with your Beads of the Month package, we'll be looking at the Flat Rate for the combination. As an example, if you live in Finland and paid the $8.50 for a Mother Of All Magpies package and are buying a sale necklace that you want to ship with your BotMo, the additional shipping due for combining them would probably be $5.50.)
The upside of this for you, we're told, is that the packages should arrive more quickly, and you'll get your Customs number emailed to you by the U.S. Postal Service just like all the domestic customers do. The domestic customers are already all Priority Mail, so we've actually been lagging behind in standardizing the international shipping... and it's gotten significantly more expensive for us to do so, given the extra time doing customs paperwork by hand rather than using the Click-and-Ship online service, as well as the rising costs of boxes. And that's the upside for us, because it was usually costing us more to ship internationally than we were charging. We held off as long as we could, and you know we wouldn't make this change unless we really had to. I hope you understand the spot we're in, and I apologize for the unpleasant necessity of this change. (Wah. I can't treat the Canadian customers as domestic customers any longer. Puhey, as some of my Dansker relatives would have said. But there it is.)
You can always combine shipping with purchases from Lioness, so if you want something from Current Shinies or a sale and you already have a Beads of the Month package ordered, please ask us for a combined shipping rate so we can save you a few bucks, OK?
Two addresses? Yes. One for email, but the other's our (only) payment address.
Orders and questions go to botmo@lioness.net, and PayPal payments go to elise@lioness.net.
(Payment can also be made via check or money order; ask us for the mailing address.)
Multi-month orders must be paid in full at one time to qualify for the discounted rates.
About the rosters, the wishing list, and buying more than one package:
NEW POLICY: Daniel has spoken to me with the voice of reason, and I am in agreement that we will not be able to reserve far-future BotMo packages any more without payment. We've had several cases where a reservation for a whole year that was to be paid month-to-month never got paid, and this prevented someone else from getting packages, and it's just not fair to the hopeful ones. If you order a BotMo package and something happens and your payment is going to be delayed, email Daniel immediately. He will be clearing out unpaid names periodically, so if you want a package that's sold out, do check back and see if a spot has opened up.
Once you've paid, please check the roster to make sure we've marked you as paid within three working days if it's PayPal. (Sometimes PayPal hiccups and does not notify us of a payment, so we very much appreciate your checking on this and nudging us if we've missed something. If you do not receive an email confirmation of receiving payment from either Elise or Daniel, let us know right away!) If you're paying by check or money order, please let us know you've mailed it, and if you don't see a confirmation within a reasonable amount of time, please poke us to see if something went astray. Thanks.
Orders must be paid for before they will be shipped.
After the month is finished, unpurchased packages will go into my general stock of beads and I will shriek with delight and make stuff with them. (Your beads and my beads come from the same strings; I don't buy anything for you that I wouldn't use myself.) In other words, there are no leftovers from previous months... well, unless I put them in a Really Safe Place and forgot about them, which happens now and then. *blush* But it's not supposed to.
Oh, about multiple packages: you can get as many Pirates packages as you want, but the other months are one to a customer, until the last three days of the month, when you can buy more if there are some left. We call this the feeding frenzy.
Thanks, and we hope you enjoy this year's Beads of the Month. Don't forget that there are monthly prize drawings for posting photos of your BotMo creations.
* That's lower than last year's price. Yay!