Seat heaters and fun errands

Living in the Indiana suburbs of Chicago, a seat heater in the car is a must! Typically running errands isn't a fun activity, especially when it's 10 degrees outside with an even colder windchill. However, a seat heater makes it all so much better! :) And yesterday was fun errand day! Fun errands + seat heater makes the cold bearable.

First stop, Wrights Flowers and Gifts in Michigan City, Indiana (gotta plug Wrights as often as possible, they carry Hopie-Jo afterall!) Look how good our display looks in the store:



Our display was just restocked with our newest bottle cap designs. We love how full and colorful the board looks!

Second stop, Hobby Lobby. We love Hobby Lobby and we love that something we need is ALWAYS on sale. Paper, stickers, unfinished wood products, and sequins filled the cart. Rummaging through the aisles of Hobby Lobby always causes fun and creative ideas to play delightfully through the brain. It's easy to lose track of time.

Third stop, Michigan City Antique Market. Losing track of time is easy to do here as well. No wasting time yesterday, went directly to the booths with the vintage jewelry to see what bargains were waiting. Not a wildly successful trip, but a precious pair of silver flower earrings with a purple stone in the middle will soon find themselves upcycled into two fabulous bottle cap charms.

With a toasty warm seat and bags of treasures, it was a successful morning of fun errands. Look at all the great stuff we have to make more charms and charm holders:




Today is a creative work day. We love work days...bottle cap making work days anyway. We want to thank all our fabulous friends who have already become fans of Hopie-Jo on Facebook. We just started the fan page on Wednesday and we already have 50 fans!! AND, on top of 50 fans, we received one custom order and 2 other orders!! Thank you Kristy, Robyn, and Amy for your encouragement and support! And one more thing, Wrights Flowers and Gift Shop also has a Facebook fan page. We love Wrights Flowers! Not only do they do gorgeous work with flowers, they have an awesome gift shop! Check them out on Facebook and become a fan!

Who are we? What do we do?

Simply, we make magnetic bottle cap charms. Super cute, one-of-a-kind, bottle cap charms. The charms are worn on either a nylon choker or a ribbon necklace (those are the 2 types of necklaces we currently sell.) A magnet on the back of the bottle cap connects to a washer on the necklace. SO CUTE! This is what our choker necklaces look like:

Everyday can be a new necklace, just pop off one charm and pop on another. Easy!

And we have so many to choose from! These are some new ones we just finished working on.

Currently, we mainly use paper, stickers, and cute embellishments to create our charms. It's always something new and different. We don't often make the same charm twice. We have, on occasion, used vintage costume jewelry, beads, and earrings that we find in antique shops and tag sales and reuse them in our charms. We really want to do more with vintage in creating our charms. We are looking forward to hitting tag and estate sales this spring in search of usable pretties for our charms.

Although these charms make the cutest necklaces EVER, (at least most elementary school aged girls we've talked to think so) they can also be used as refrigerator magnets. If your refrigerator looks anything like ours do in our homes, magnets are a must for holding up notes, reminders, and pictures. Our charms are so strong they can easily hold up pictures and notes. Take a look:

Functional art is so fabulous!

Or, for the older girls (and guys too of course, we can make manly charms) they also make great magnets for school lockers. A fun way to hold up photos and decorate the otherwise boring interior of school lockers! Genius! Possibilities endless!

So, that is what we do. And we have so much fun doing it! We plan on launching our Etsy shop within the next couple weeks. Once that happens we have all sorts of ideas for cute and stylish ways to display and organize charms. Here is a sneak peak at a shelf display:

Oh yeah, we've got lots of ideas!!!

You really want to buy a couple charms now, don't you? Don't fret, even though our Etsy shop isn't open yet, you can still buy our charms! Our charms and necklaces are available at Wrights Flowers and Gifts in Michigan City, IN. Stop in and take a look! It's a fabulous store. If you aren't local or want something custom made, email us at hopiejo@gmail.com. We are also on Facebook, so swing by and become a fan of Hopie-Jo!