A very late first post

...You know how it is. I have class. I have homework. I am struck by sudden beading inspiration and nothing else counts until I'm done. I'm doing this because I managed to put "blogging" in the same category as "beading" in my mind. Let's hope it stays there.

So, exciting things have been happening on the Letterbox Lion front. Today was a landmark day in lots of ways, which is probably why I have such an urge to blog about it. I mailed my tenth online sale - of course, it's not my tenth sale, only the tenth that happened over etsy, but still. I started experimenting today, too. This was the first time I have worked with gold (!) ever (!), and since it wasn't as snobbish to work with as I'd imagined, I'd like to put it out there that I'm more than willing to do it again. I don't have much, since for my first ever gold project I didn't order much, but I'd be happy to have an excuse to acquire more, and use up the rest. ALSO TODAY I got my first gemstones.

Okay, let me stop to talk about that. I've always been wary of using gemstones, in the way of a little girl in awe of horses. Swarovski crystals are so consistent, and I shouldn't buy gemstones, I won't know what to do with them, they don't come catered to my order, they won't match with anything I have, blah blah excuses blah. If I want crystal, I can get it in practically any plausible (and some not-so-plausible) combination of color and tint and shade and coating and sparkle and opacity that I could POSSIBLY want. Gemstones, however, do what they want. They are all different. They are whatever color the earth formed them in. It's intimidating. It's exhilarating. I am having SO much fun.

I don't know why fusionbeads.com is discontinuing sodalite beads. They are gorgeous. I am so glad I bought them, even if it was because I wanted to try gemstones and those were the ones on clearance sale. If I had been updating this regularly, you'd already know that I have a weird fixation on dark blue beads...most of my inventory is some form of dark blue or something to complement dark blue. While I have been trying to branch out, I thought when I ordered them, hey, I lucked out - sodalite is blue, too.

Shockingly, though, it is ACTUAL blue. It's not some subtly purpley green shade of off-blue. It's not metallic or matte-coated iris shiny whatsitcalled. It's blue. It's unadulterated, I think I'll be light blue! I think I'll have a white band! I think I'll be this awesome stormy dark grey with blue flecks! Ooh, ooh, and I'll be deep ocean never-seen-light-before blue. (Spoken by individual 6mm beads). That kind of blue. I've already got big plans for these beads, not only because my crazy metallic-shiny-and-or-matte-possibly-sandbblasted-slightly-purple-or-green-or-both blue beads often go well with blue, but because I also have green. And honey-colored, and dark red, and more green, and amber. I have crystals and spacer beads. I have not enough spacer beads, as I discovered only halfway through my sodalite-induced beading delirium. I made a sweet earring with a design I'm very proud of, incorporating a lot of dark blue symmetry and silvery sparkle, and oh, I'm so happy with it. I am 6 spacer beads short of making the other one in the pair. And off to order more!



And here is a sad note, to explain my near-total lack of activity, as though anyone out there on the internet knew about it:

So, almost all of the pieces I have sold so far have been my flocks of cranes. I'm all right with that. They are excellent. They are my babies. They are cheap to make and cheap to sell. They are cute and rather awesome, they get lots of compliments, everyone likes them. I have a pair for every mood, and somebody comments almost every day. I was the only person on the whole internet (!!!) that I could find who would sell more than one crane on a single earring - nobody else seems to have thought of a flock. Too bad I can't patent the idea.

But they are a LOT of work. Like I said, they are cheap, but they take a very long time to make, and then I have to seal them with varnish because, come on, I'm not the kind of person to sell something that I would expect to fall apart immediately. They're made of paper, they're not in it for the long haul, but I still want to give them an advantage, and so I double- or triple-coat them in whatever the best varnish is that I can find. It takes FOREVER.

See: Even at five minutes per crane (a lowwwww estimate) 8 cranes per pair makes it 45 minutes JUST TO FOLD THEM. Forget measuring and cutting the paper into neat little squares, forget measuring the head pins and eye pins and making them all hang together. THEN the varnishing, which in itself takes a huge chunk of time because they need to dry between coats. And then, as if that's not enough, I have to photograph them in attractive poses (cranes are not meant to lie down) and resize those pictures and make them square and post descriptions...

I guess I've made my point. The whole process bogs me down. I feel the pain of poor Tessa Stone, the writer of the most excellent comic in the world, who just got absolutely killed by con season. It's all the extraneous stuff that takes you away from your art that ends up killing your inspiration. I really don't want that to happen to me...but since I lost my job, this is my sole source of income at the moment.

I am actually losing money on making those...that is, they do not get me enough money for all the time they take. If I didn't like making them and enjoy seeing other people like them so much, I couldn't do it anymore. I end up folding them in class, at lunch, in the middle of social events. Add to that the fact that I am losing money on shipping, too, since I've been needing to buy boxes in which to mail them, and I really don't make anything on this. I am praying that the word gets out that my work is good, and that soon I'll be able to start selling my higher-class items, the ones that cost me more and are triggered by artistic inspiration, not by ooh-that's-neat impulse. Not that I am expecting to make a living on Letterbox Lion just yet...but I need another job! So sad that what you're good at, what you like to do, and what make enough money to pay off your college loans don't always coincide.

END SAD NOTE. This has been a very good day.


And a big thank you to my boyfriend who gives me encouragement by sitting there and saying "I like it" when I hold things up at him.