Saturday, March 3, 2012

Gymnastics Jewelry Sale

We owe any success of our business to the gymnastics community.  That's how we got started.  Over the past four years we have added to our selection and have fun designs and colors for our hard working gymnasts.  We even have a couple of designs for our Gym Moms and Grandma's!

As a thanks to all of you, we have put all of our gymnastics jewelry on sale.  Necklaces are only $5.99.  If you need 15 or more, contact us through our website and we will sell them for only $4.99.  They make great meet bag gifts.  

Want something special for your team?  We can put your team name or level on the design.  They make special gifts for the state meet. All our items are handmade at our business to ensure the best quality, so please allow us extra time for special orders.

Monday, February 6, 2012

New Young Womens designs-Wish there were more hours in the day :)

Running a business on the side can be a lot of fun, but when ideas are flowing through your head for new product faster than you can make them can be frustrating.  My sister Crystal works with a special needs young man in Kindergarten by day and makes jewelry by night.  I teach school by day and blog, Facebook, and network by night.  I'm learning Quick Books right now which is stretching my wee little brain.  Thank goodness for patience accountants who loves me just the way I am.  Thanks Laurica!

I have a lot of ideas for jewelry, but am not very good at creating them.  I wish I could get what's in my head to be a real product, but that doesn't seem to be my lot in life.  My sister and Dad however come up with wonderful things and there wouldn't be a GC GEMS without them.

Here are a few of the Young Women designs.  Please comment and let us know what you like or if you have other ideas.  We love input from our friends and customers!

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Valentines tradition

A VERY SPECIAL FRIEND (I'll have to find a pic of the two of them and post it later)

My mother grew up in the small town of Safford in Eastern Arizona.  President Spencer W. Kimball was her stake president and she even lived in a home that he once owned.

I'm not sure if it was there or in Glendale that my mother made her lifelong friend,   Each year, without fail, for the past billion years :), they have always exchanged cards and gifts on practically every occasion.  They were never ordinary gifts, they were always gifts from the heart.

(Taken at my mother's 70th surprise birthday party, just a few short months before she passed away)

Kathryn LOVES the color purple, so I know that that was always taken in consideration when choosing the perfect gift.  Well, Kathryn was our first customer in buying the Valentines cards.  I highly doubt she bought them to even pass out to anyone, but she loved my mothers art.

As we prepared her package, my sister remembered their tradition and had the feeling that my mother would desperately want her to have something on this special day.  Crystal thought and thought and then created this little remembrance.  It was taken from one of my mother's drawings.
Making the jewelry and coming up with the designs has been so fun.  I guess that is where our little saying, "Turning passions into precious Gems" came from. 

Our goal is to help you put your passion or love into something special.  Send us your custom design or photo.  Make it a square (or we can do it for you).  If the item does not take any adjusting, the design fee is free.  Send us your favorite photo!  We would love to make it into a precious gem!

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

My Mother's Art

For those of you who don't know our family, we lost our sweet mother 2 years ago to inflammatory breast & ovarian cancer. 

My mother was an amazing artist and her creativity was evident in everything she touched.  Wrapping presents was a creative adventure to her.  Her packages were so pretty that you wouldn't want to open them.



A few years before her passing, she and my father started a business.  She created a line of scrapbook paper that was loved by everyone who saw it.    Her characters were cute little bears named Muffy & Dusty.  She LOVED bears.

As we started up our website a couple of months ago, we realized that my father's greeting card business would be a perfect match for our jewelry business.  Ideas started flowing and we started putting cards on the site as fast as we could.

About a week ago my father ran on to all of my mothers art.  He started colorizing them on the computer.  We realized that her art was perfect for greeting cards.  Here is one that my father was working on last night.

We miss our mother dearly, but we are so excited to have her art continue on.  We hope you like our designs.  We would love to hear your ideas for the words for our cards.  Please feel free to comment on this post and share your thoughts. We would like to have different caption options for people to choose from on our site.  A BIG thanks to our dear friend Bonnie for this cute idea.  We will be posting more cards soon and would LOVE your help.  Please check back and add your ideas.  We really appreciate them!!!

We love and miss you Mom!

Monday, January 23, 2012

Gymnastics Valentines

I remember a few years ago when my daughter was young and was just starting in gymnastics.  I was looking and looking for Valentines that fit her love for the sport.  Most of her close friends were gymnasts too.  I finally found one design online.  It was then that I realized there was a real need for gymnastics Valentines.

Here's our first attempts at creating something special for those little gymnasts out there. We aren't real creative with our sayings yet (we would LOVE your suggestions). We hope to have a lot more to choose from next year, so please check back!

You can order them on our website at: http://gcgems.net




(this design has been edited and the actual card has no ? after Valentine)

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Our beginnings-GC GEMS

Today I decided to change directions for our blog.  Instead of just posting our new items I thought I would write our adventures of starting a family business.  You can learn more about our business at: http://www.gcgems.net/about-us/, but this is probably more than you would ever want to know! :)

I'm actually a high school teacher by trade.  I have been teaching for almost 30 years.  Presently I teach math to students with disabilities, but have also taught deaf and deaf/blind children.  I LOVE what I do.  My family (hubby and 4 children) are my first love though.  Teaching part-time has been a great opportunity to have the same schedule as they do and also to be at school with them to be a part of their lives.  It's been perfect.

Well, in 2008 this crazy thought came to my mind.  I need to preface this by saying that one of my children is a gymnast and there was virutally no place to find the clothing and equipment that she needed.  Back to the crazy thought.  I really wanted my daughter to be able to feel like she was contributing to the cost of her gymnastics (all her siblings had to pay for half of their activities), so I thought about having her help me make gymnastics shorts and we would sell them.

I toyed with how to market them, sell them from our home, online.....I wasn't quite sure what to do.  Shortly after that, I was talking with her coach about it and he offered a little space in his gym for me to sell our shorts.  It wasn't long and we added grips, leos, and more.  My daughter helped me for a little bit. Over the next couple of years the business took on many changes.

It has provided a place for my teens to work during a recession (yes, even my big football/soccer player son:), and is now providing a training ground for my daughter as she prepares to get her business degree so she can open her own salon.

  Later we were asked if we had gymnastics jewelry.  We looked online and only saw cheap stuff that was made in a factory.  It all looked the same.  My sister showed me some things she made for a friend and I asked her if she could make some gymnastics designs.  We took the necklaces to meets and they were a HUGE hit. 

Meanwhile, my father and mother were busy with their own ideas.  They took beautiful nature photos and started a website (http://wildflowerbill.com) to sell them as cards and prints.  My mother also had a scrapbooking line that was darling.  She was a wonderful artist.  We recently lost her to inflammatory breast cancer.

Well, about a year ago my father approached me to see if he could pay someone to create a website for us.  It launched in November of 2011.  We have combined the talents of all of us to start our GC GEMS business (GC comes from GymCheetah-our gymnastics business).  My Dad does our photography, my sister Crystal makes the jewelry, and well I'm......the crazy cheerleader behind it all.  Actually, I love technology and love to work on advertising, blogging, tweeting, and website stuff.  We are the perfect team.

Our dream is to provide specialty jewelry and cards for those special moments in our lives.  Right now we have SO MANY ideas running through our heads that we can't create product fast enough.  We all have regular jobs and family, but have loved having this creative outlet.

Our business is slowly growing.  We've get excited with each order and try to give each one the person attention it deserves.  Please comment on our blog.  We LOVE to hear your comments and ideas.

Friday, January 20, 2012

New young womens necklace

We hope you like our new Young Women's necklace.  It is a great gift to welcome a new Beehive to the group.

We would love to hear your ideas for more Young Women jewelry.  We are working on making our inventory grow.