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I seem to have fallen off the wagon in terms of The Year of Jewelry...moving, the beginning of summer, traveling and starting work have all thrown my jewelry under the rug, so to speak. But I've got three, count'em, THREE custom orders going right now, so expect to see some catch-up work posted soon. Okay, that's not as many as the weeks I missed, but they'll get me back on track for the rest of them. That's the plan!

And here are some lovely, lovely people who have blogged about my work! The giveaway's already over, sorry folks, but I'm posting the link anyway. Stephanie from BabesRockinMami got a lovely custom set for her review, gave me some new perspective on colors and gave me a great birthday present a month ago when she posted a glowing review. Daffy from BatCrapCrazy, the second link, was the winner of the giveaway, and just LOVED the My Fair Lady earrings...they weren't originally on the table for giving away, but she was so nice about it and liked them so much, I didn't see a reason to say no. After all, every artist wants her work going to a happy home. She even likes them enough now that she has them, and is fantastic enough, to blog about them!

The feedback both from them and from their readers and commenters is really encouraging, and if I can get my butt back in gear, I'm beginning to think maybe this dream could be viable after all. If people like my work that much, then really I just need to get the word out so that people KNOW they like it that much. And these two lovelies have just kickstarted that process. Thank you SO, so much, you guys. It really means a lot.

http://babesrockinmami.com/?p=3920

http://batcrapcrazy.blogspot.com/2011/06/flight-of-fancy.html


I'm planning to participate in some more review/giveaways soon, (and post them while they're still active,) so uhh...keep on the lookout, my friends.

Whoosh

My work is beginning in earnest in about, oh, 9 hours, so I kind of (really) need to sleep, but I just wanted to post an update so all three of you guys know I'm still here. :]

So, I'm now about 4(? 5?) weeks behind on...oh, pretty much everything related to Letterbox Lion. Including the Year of Jewelry Project...this could take some effort to recover, but I'm sure I'll manage. (GOT SOME STUFF UP MY SLEEVE.)
This is for a few very specific reasons: travel, work, and SLACKING OFF. I spent a lot of time packing up and moving stuff (while taking exams) and then immediately went home for a week's vacation, not taking any of my jewelry-making supplies. I came back for about two days and then went off to my lovely boyfriend's house for another week-and-change...and I've been trying to figure out how to live in a place with a kitchen since then. Buying for oneself is very...fulfilling, in some ways, but scary in the way that I don't know anything about nutrition. To be safe I'm eating as much protein as I can because I still doubt that I'll end up getting enough. Also, I learned to play Settlers of Catan. It's great! Enough about that, though! Jewelry!

I'll be starting up again soon. I have two custom pieces in the works...one for a housemate, a very manly soccer player who likes shiny things (oh man, I love my housemates) and one for the review/giveaway I did at http://babesrockinmami.com/ - (Congratulations Daffy!) - so hopefully that will be the kick-in-the-pants I need to get me back on the beadin' path, as they say. They do, I swear. Oh, man, I need sleep.

....And I just realized I never posted here about the review/giveaway. OOPS. That was a full day, I'll blame it on that...it was my 20th birthday. Oh yes, I turned 20. I know, I know, don't tell me I'm young, I already heard it from about 20 people.

Also, this place I'm living: I'm not religious, but now that I'm staying in a Jewish neighborhood, the food is all amazing. Cheese blintzes, the taste of my childhood! Kichel, ruggulah (sp?) and every kind of bagel! Matzah ball soup just like mom used to make, quite literally! I'm hoping to drag my boyfriend over for visits as often as possible so I can expose him to all the foods I loved (and hated...gefilte fish? blech.) growing up. I LOVE this town!

Bed time for Leo. Please forgive her her incomprehensibility.

A Grand Unveiling!

So, I finally did what I should have done months ago, and opened another shop...on Etsy and Artfire. They're not fully stocked yet (okay, not even my normal shop on Artfire is fully stocked, and my new one there is not stocked AT ALL...) but I finally got a jump on it on Etsy...say hello to The Winged Lion, my new shop for the selling of all things upcycled. I have new pages on my website, too.

In the coming (insert period of time, in the plural), I'm going to be transferring my upcycled pieces from Letterbox Lion to The Winged Lion. I'm also going to try and fully stock my Letterbox Lion shop on Artfire, possibly before I get to posting anything in The Winged Lion there. I know it doesn't sound like I've done much, but given that I have a final exam in 8 hours (OH SHOOT) this is really quite a lot what with finals season, packing and everything all up in the air for my research position for this summer. I've been slacking off way more than I should have and I still haven't made anything for the Year of Jewelry Project for this week! OH NO. I tell ya, man...life's crazy around this time. Maybe I'll get something made by tomorrow...but I guess you can play catch-up with impunity on that site so maybe I'll have to be lame and skip a week for the sake of tests and moving out.

Weeks 17 and 18 are Custom Crane Earrings!

So I didn't post last week because I just had one custom order and the picture was terrible, so hopefully posting both pictures at the same time will make up for how awful the pictures are.

One of these is for a review/giveaway that is in the works, and the set of five is for a customer who bought a similar pair from me and liked it so much that she decided she wanted to give some away as gifts! As always, they take a long time to make, but I'm excited to have so much jewelry to make, so much in demand. So...*pant*...much...*pant*...work...Just kidding. Actually school just ended (finals still to go, though, but who's worried?) so I'm doing well...though, I did cut off a chunk of my little finger at work today. Oops! I have been assured that it will grow back, by my coworkers, who I'm sure would know.

Anyway, toodles! I'm in such a good mood!

YOJ Entry for Week 16

SPECTRUM - this is a short entry and I don't have that much to say about it, not because I don't like it as much as my other stuff, but because...well...it all happened so QUICKLY! It's like somehow managing to date a guy for only a week and then afterward trying to reflect on the relationship...it happened, I don't know what to say. This is what came out of it, anyway. It took me less than an hour to make and until it was done I wasn't sure what exactly I was making. It actually started out as a bracelet, true story.

Picture Jasper in a muted rainbow pattern suspended on hammered copper. When the pendant is hung, it balances itself out so that both sides have stones in a curve...how to explain it? The center is where it should be, where it was designed to be. I can't describe that any way other than "I might have been afraid it wouldn't work out, but it did." Maybe I ought to call it Harmony instead.

Something awesome for YOJ

This week's theme was "double-duty" - I hadn't really had any intention of following the themes, but this one piqued my interest. So I made a pair of bracelets that transform into a necklace.
The pictures are terrible...the copper looks like brass in them...but in person, it's very coppery and lovely and warm. Sigh!

You see, I made one big chunky bracelet out of fire agate, and one light and delicate one from handmade copper chain and carnelian. I made two different sets of toggles...one fancy clasp and one simple clasp. Then I put one fancy and one simple half on each bracelet so that they could be closed; the fancy one on the light chain is the whole point of the bracelet, being the biggest and only notable thing on it, while the fancy toggle bar on the chunky bracelet just goes with it and adds a touch of fanta carnelian to its fire-agatey glory. But when you match up the halves, fancy bar with fancy loop and simple with simple, they make a necklace with two neat clasps to transition between sections. And the delicate part of the necklace can go behind your neck where it won't bug you, and the chunky part can go in front where it was always meant to be. Lovely!

My pictures are terrible and taken with terrible lighting against a terrible background, but please bear with me.

I'm rather proud of these pieces.

However, the bracelets are very long and tend to fall off (though some bracelets are just designed that way), so I may do some reworking, taking out either a bunch of the smaller findings or a whole section. We'll see, I haven't decided yet...but right now the length is about right for a necklace, so I can't make them THAT much shorter. Regardless of the length, I'm happy with my work, here. I got bruises on my hands, though. Gotta toughen up.

A new aspect of business

I was recently approached by Bloggerdise, which is a free site where bloggers interested in doing product reviews and people who have products they'd like to have reviewed can sign up and contact each other. They simply offered me (as a small business owner) basically some free publicity. I haven't looked around on it much, but I posted up an ad with a picture of some of my crane earrings (the people on the site are very nice, by the way, and will create an ad for you if you'd rather not make one yourself...they did for me, but I made one because I wanted a specific picture in it and such). But it's really, really easy, and free, so there's no reason not to if you've got a business. What they wanted in return was for me to spread the word...so here's MY review. Five people have already contacted me, and it's been like two days. If you've got a business, it's massively worth the two seconds it will take you to sign up and make a little ad thing for free and see where it takes you...and you can make more later if you like how it turns out. Go to www.bloggerdise.com.

I've been contacted by so far, one offering me paid advertising on her blog (not up my alley at the moment, nor probably ever, I've gotta say - if I want to pay for advertising I'll pay Google or someone) but the other four wanted to do review/giveaways. That is, I send them a product and they talk about it on their blog (hopefully raving about how awesome it is) and then one of their readers can win a similar one (or in my case, I'll probably offer custom orders, since my most unique pieces are my origami ones, those are the ones people will want and they're the ones I can afford to give away anyway). The reason I'm doing this when it will be a LOT of work for me (5 minutes of folding per crane plus prep (cutting into squares) time and sealing time...I've got a full workday's worth of work to do on these already) is that in order to win the item, the readers have to do things like "like" me on facebook, or "heart" my etsy shop...anyone who enters, not just the winner, will do these things, and if they really like the prize enough, the non-winners might just buy one. Not to mention the fact that just getting my product seen by more people, even if they don't enter, and sending more of them out to more cities where people will see them on the street, will drastically increase my visibility online and in the real world. Basically, like all advertising, this is my losing money hoping to gain it in the long run...that is, hoping to gain money and a chance for jewelry to be a bigger part of my life, and a chance for my business to stand on its own legs.

Honestly, if I had a reliable way to know I could sell my silver and copper and gemstone wire-wrappings, I would want to make them more, because they're more fun, though less unique. I probably wouldn't be able to do giveaways just because my pieces would require so much more overhead...I would need to gain something tangible in return. But I don't know how often my peers enter such things, and since my angle at the moment is "eco-friendly" (emphasis on friendly) I need to be as friendly as I can. I wonder where this all will take me. It's getting very exciting (and time consuming).

Speaking of which, some future update will have to detail how awesome my summer is going to be. On a related note, next Monday is Marathon Monday here in Beantown, and I have a DAY OFF. Where I don't have to be ANYWHERE or do ANYTHING. I haven't had one of those since I got my part-time job. I am almost embarrassingly excited for the chance to do whatever I want...don't expect productivity, it will probably be spent reading.


Also, I am continually astounded by what colors people pick for custom crane orders. Yellow and purple and teal and green just don't look good to me as a combination, but I've gotten more than one order for such a pair...I guess that's why I OFFER custom orders, because I would never dream of making what those people would want. At least I'm getting to the stage where I can look at my creations and not think "gross, she's going to hate it" - to see it from the buyer's point of view, and not judge it based on my own color preference.