Come and kick it breakfast style! Galentine's Day is just around the corner. Celebrate February 13th with your gal pals. Invite your friends to breakfast. Load your plate with waffles and enjoy bottomless mimosas. Trade handmade gifts with the most important ladies in your life. Galentine's Day is a day to honor your besties. It is a day to be thankful for the bond of friendship and the fellowship of sisterhood. Forget Valentine's Day!
Have you heard of Galentine's Day? NBC's Parks and Recreation gave us this cute holiday idea. In 2010, Amy Poehler’s character, Leslie Knope, announced the date (February 13th) as a day for joining with friends at breakfast and celebrating the love of friendship. The idea was such a hit that the holiday took on a life of it's own. It is no longer a subplot on a sitcom but is now a real and exciting way to give thanks to your favorite girlfriends. It is a day for ladies to celebrate ladies. Trading handmade gifts was one way to show your appreciation to the gals that have stood by your side through thick and thin. Honor your friends. Write them an essay about how much they mean to your or simply give them a small token of your bond. Handmade jewelry is a great way to spoil your sisters!
Did you join us for our recent Galentine's get together? We spent two nights with Jesse James Beads and made jewelry for our friends. Check out the videos. It was so fun to gather and get creative! Now that the holiday is almost here, we are prepared with finished jewelry. We also have some finished pieces from our Facebook group - VIB. Do you need wrapping paper for your gift? We have some Galentine's heart and Valentine's Day themed accents that are great for either of our two favorite days in February.
Wear your heart on your sleeve...or on your wrist, or on your ears. But don't give away the key! Your signature handmade jewelry deserves a unique charm. Tell a story or add an accent. Try it as a focal piece on a sweet necklace, or add it to a Valentine's charm bracelet.
Jewelry charms have been with us since our early ancestors first picked a treasured bone or shell from the ground. They have been trending throughout history. Iconic jewelry company Tiffany's made their name known with a charm bracelet. Charm jewelry is currently following popular culture, a movie or series tends to bring the fun back. If you know how to open and close a jump ring, you know how to attach a charm to your next design. Add a charm to an anklet or necklace. Give a friend a charm bracelet.
Charm bracelets are great for telling a story. Create a piece of jewelry with a motif or theme. Add a collection leaf charms to a bracelet with fall colors and a fall pendant. Give a friend a charm bracelet full of their favorite sports symbols - a cute football and helmet shows their spirit! Load up a charm necklace for a friend that is a veterinarian, make sure you include puppy and kitty cat charms! Have some fun creating something playful and perfect for a friend.
Finished Jewelry Designs From Our Galentine’s Jewelry Making Party
What is Galentine's Day?
February 13th is Galentine's Day. A day for ladies to celebrate ladies. Leave the boys at home! Gather your girlfriends and celebrate the joys of sisterhood. If you feel left out on Valentine's Day, celebrate a day that is about being a friend and bonding with people that share your likes. Galentine's is a day to be yourself and live without the judgement of others.
If you want to go all out on Galentine's Day, reserve a table at your favorite breakfast spot and gather the girls for waffles and love. Gift them with hand crafted goodies that lets them know how much they mean to you. If you are staying distant from friends during the pandemic, take a moment to Facetime with the gals or hold a party over Zoom. Tell them how much you love them and how happy you are to have them in your life!
If you love to celebrate the joys of a creative holiday, add February 13th to your calendar. You create the rules. Shower your best girlfriends with homemade gifts and loving odes. You do not need to spend money. Write your bestie a poem that lets them know much they mean to you.
We love Galentine's Day. Let's have fun and enjoy something different this year.
Galentine’s Jewelry Making Party! Jesse James Beads and Soft Flex Company - Night One!
Why celebrate a single day when you can turn it into a creative event? We wanted to team up with Jesse James Beads and make this a special holiday. We decided to pair up our kits again. This is the second time we have made jewelry together with complementary kits. The first beading party of this kind was a Trick Or Treat Jewelry Making Party. JJB and Soft Flex collaborated and offered two kits. Jesse James Beads featured a kit that was full of beads and sparkly things. Soft Flex Company created a kit full of beading wire and beading components. String the beads and finish with our findings! We loved the energy of two companies uniting to offer a creative class in fun.
The Galentine’s Jewelry Making Party was just as exciting as the Trick or Treat event. The videos were free to watch and full of unique jewelry thoughts. If you had purchased a kit from each company, you could make jewelry with us. Designers that bought both kits also got an invitation to an after party. It was a blast to gab with the girls and have a glass of spirits. We love that a beading party can bring people from all over the world together and nobody has to leave the house.
If you love to celebrate the joys of a creative holiday, add February 13th to your calendar. You create the rules. Shower your best girlfriends with homemade gifts and loving odes. You do not need to spend money. Write your bestie a poem that lets them know much they mean to you.
It is always fun to watch Sara make jewelry. She is our unboxing guru and master maker. She rarely plots out her jewelry before a video begins. She prefers to open a kit with fresh eyes and explore the possibilities in her head before she strings her jewelry. This might seem like a ton of pressure - a live audience, a kit full of unseen items, and a blank canvas in front of her (figuratively). But Sara thrives under pressure. She seems to be at her best when she is forced to create something magical in moments. If you enjoy her designs, make sure you check out her site and follow Soft Flex social media. Sara averages a video or two each week. If you are connected with our social sites, you will never miss a show!
We have featured Wendy Whitman's kit unboxings and jewelry making projects many times in our blog. Her YouTube channel exploded from a small collection of hundreds of subscribers to a big channel with thousands of her craft/ hobby and jewelry fans. You are sure to pick up a new technique or find an idea that inspires you. Make sure you visit her links and see what she is up to!
If you enjoyed Wendy's Galentine's jewelry, make sure you join her Facebook group, ABeadOnAWire Sales, it is a buying and selling group for handmade jewelry items and jewelry making supplies.
Visit Wendy's links:
YouTube
Website
Facebook Group
Instagram
Galentine’s Jewelry Making Party! Jesse James Beads and Soft Flex Company - Night Two!
Galentine's twice - oh so nice! We stayed up late the second night for more jewelry adventures. After this class we held an afterparty on Zoom. Sarah James organized a wine tasting with selections from Scout & Cellar. The wine was obviously optional. The high spirits and fun conversation was provided to all. It was truly a night for making new friends and learning new ways to create jewelry.
We really enjoyed the party. One of the high points of this gathering was a chance to get paired with a Galentine buddy. Your Galentine's Valentine would swap their handcrafted friendship bracelet with you. With so many of us staying in doors away from contacts and friends, this was a great chance to get paired with a virtual buddy with shared interests. We hope we were able to kickstart some new friendships with this amazing exchange.
Make sure you stayed connected. Join our Facebook community, our VIB group, and never miss out on a beading party or jewelry celebration!
Brittany Chavers is a kindred spirit if you enjoy a mix of jewelry styles. She joined us for the Trick Or Treat Jewelry Making Party with JJB and we were hooked on her jewelry! She mixed a little Halloween haunts with her Christmas jewelry and made some designs that made our hearts happy in December. We love her videos featuring Sam’s Bead Box. We cannot get enough of this up and coming YouTube designer. Follow along for a spirited journey!
Brittany's links:
Facebook Bead Group
YouTube
Facebook
Instagram
Turquoise.Street Instagram
Etsy
DashingDeStash Etsy
Twitter
Kristen is our favorite Free Spirited designer. Every Monday, Kristen films a new episode of her series. She shows us how to enjoy the process of making art and jewelry without letting perfectionism get in the way. Learn how to make mistakes and keep stringing. Don't let a flaw get you down. Turn your errors into elements. Kristen is a thoughtful teacher that shows you how to be happy with the organic results of your homemade jewelry. Nobody is expecting your designs to be perfect. Finish a frustrating design with a smile by learning how to accept the flaws you make and have the confidence to secure your work with a smile!
Look At The Amazing Jewelry Our Friends Made!
We gathered a small assortment of fun designs from our VIB Facebook group. This kit design was not like our typical Kit Day reveals. We partnered with our friends at Jesse James Beads and the finished jewelry was posted across several social media groups. We gathered a selection of designs that were posted on our VIB Facebook community.
VIB is a great place to visit. It is an online bead gathering. It is a place to chat and meet new friends. It is a great way to stay social. You can learn a new tip or technique daily. You can get inspired by the gorgeous jewelry designs other people in the community post. You can also get your own jewelry gently critiqued if you want pointers on how to make your designs really stand out. We love wallflowers and chatty designers alike. Lurk or showcase your talent. You are going to love our fun club.
Don't miss our monthly kit reveals. At the end of each month, we unbox our latest design kit and our VIB group is full of finished jewelry designs our community members have made with the jewelry kit. The real fun is how strikingly different each designer is with their creations. Since everybody is working with the same materials, you get a chance to see how wildly imaginative and fun everybody is with their jewelry designs.
Designed by Soft Flex VIB Studio Member: Robin L Oldham
Designed by Soft Flex VIB Studio Member: Shirley Marks Koch
Designed by Soft Flex VIB Studio Member: Paula Ruth Gospel
Additional designs by Soft Flex Company Employee: Kristen Fagan
Seal It With A Kiss! We Have Valentine's Cards And More For Your Handmade Gifts
Print out some Valentine's cards to add to your handcrafted jewelry. You can go to this link, on our site:
Print out some Valentine's/ Galentine's wrapping paper to add an extra touch of love to your handcrafted gifts. You can go to this link, on our site:
Don't forget a gift tag! Let your Galentine's bestie know they are special - tag your homemade gifts. You can go to this link, on our site:
Join our Facebook group – VIB. Stay in the know. Stay up to date. From our bead shows to our video shows and sales, you can stay in touch with us. The community is full of artistic and helpful beaders and crafty people. Inspire and be inspired. Share your pictures and get the beading bug from others!
Visit the Soft Flex Company YouTube Channel!
Blog contributor Thomas Soles loves Jazz Age writers and crunchy french fries. His favorite gemstones are Lapis and Pietersite. His favorite hobby is day dreaming. And his favorite mustache is Freddie Mercury's. As you can see, he has a healthy (or possibly unhealthy) sense of humor. You can write to him at Thomas@SoftFlexCompany.com