Creativity In A Nutshell

Many people who are just starting to make their own jewelry ask me where I buy my supplies. For a long time I ordered from Firemountaingems.com . They have great wholesale prices and some fantastic deals. However, lately I have been unable to spend as much in one shopping trip as I would need to in order to make it worth while to shop there - considering the large quantity of their packages and the added cost of shipping and handling. I have been shopping around, mostly at artbeads.com and a few other places.
I needed to stock up on a few silver plated findings - since I am an idiot and left my big old container of findings at school, and I checked brightlingsbeads.com.
I recalled I had purchased several things from them before, so I thought, eh, why not? Here's where it gets interesting. Maybe I just didn't remember, or maybe I always spent more at brightlingsbeads in the past... They say they have free shipping on their page, so I just grabbed a couple things and whent through the checkout. I guess I wasn't paying enough attention, but they charged me for shipping. I looked back through and it does say, somewhere, that it's only free if you spend $25 or more. Now, this is not at all unreasonable. I was just really really annoyed at myself for not seeing that - I could have gotten what I needed from artbeads.com and not even had to worry about shipping and handling. Whatever. I got over it.
My package arrived yesterday and last night I thought I would have a go at finishing some of my new earrings. I went to bend the silver plated wire for the earrings and. it. snapped. I swear, I wasn't using too much force or something like that. It didn't bend at all -just snapped. I am sooooo annoyed now. I needed those darn eyepins for these earrings and now I can't finish them and I really wanted to get them done now! That is my rant for the day. :(