Priorities

I've been trying to find time to make jewelry for the past week. My jewelry desk is covered with crystals, headpins, jump rings, and gears in copper and brass. Everything is ready for me to try my hand at steampunk jewelry.

Only...I haven't found time to do this. Instead, I've been putting together eBay listings like mad. I have a huge drawer full of items for Etsy that have yet to be photographed. I have international verbiage to add to a hundred eBay listings.

In short, this has been a busy week, and I don't see it getting any easier.

Even so, the light was so beautiful this week and my clematis vines are blooming, and I had to grab a few photos while I had the chance.







I'm glad I took the time to capture these flowers; they don't last very long, after all. It's good to remember to pay attention to the beautiful things around me, even when I'm crazy with work. Taking a moment just to breathe, to look at fireflies, even to enjoy a sunset...it's the little things that make life richer and more wondrous.

My beads overfloweth

I have been frantically adding new items to the Laurel Moon eBay store. I brought home so many goodies from my trip to the Bead & Button Show - and I want them all in my store now!

I've managed to get 60 new listings into my eBay store over the last few days. Now I'm shifting focus to the Laurel Moon Etsy shop so I can get that restocked, and add new beads as well.

This is just half of what needs to be listed on Etsy:



I know what I'll be doing this weekend!

Watch for all sorts of new stone in my online stores, as well as some new vintage headpins and beads I've never stocked before.

Bead table Wednesday!

I'm just barely getting my entry done in time for this! This has been a hectic hectic hectic week. I came home from the Bead & Button Show with so many new things. I've been photographing beads and setting up listings, and trying to find time to make new jewelry. My day job asked me to come in a little extra this week and that kind of put a bit of a wrench in my plans, and to top it off, my internet connection is being goofy again. Grr!

Enough of that--there is a messy desk to marvel at!



I'm trying to get some of the new things processed so I can list them, hence the beads and bags on the right side of the table. You can also see the headpins and foil cabs I still need to bag (as well as the remote control to my DVD player, grin) and my new bag of goodies from Green Girl Studios. I can't wait to start designing with these!

Okay, back to the grind. I have new eBay listings to finish!

Back from Bead & Button!

And WOW have I found some delicious things.

The show was hectic and amazing as always, and I found some absolutely fantastic stone strands and unusual vintage beads. I went overboard this year and bought a little more than I normally would. You see, the semiprecious stone in my Etsy and eBay stores has been doing well, so I thought I should get even more. And then I couldn't stop.

So let me show off the stone beads. First up:



From left to right: fossil coral (dyed; this is totally gorgeous and YUM), lodolite quartz, Peruvian opal (I'm sure this is chalcedony that is dyed, but it's still very pretty), lavender agate, fossil coral (undyed), opal quartz, more Peruvian yums, laguna agate, dendritic agate

And since that just isn't enough, here are more:



From left to right: agate, agate, gorgeous golden rutilated quartz, turitella agate (it contains tiny shell fossils!!), rutilated quartz, botswana agate, agate, fossilized ammonites, agate, ocean jasper.

The rutilated quartz is unbelievable. The golden rutile inclusions are absolutely dynamite:



And last, check out the amazing look of this Botswana agate close up:



I'll be adding many of these to the store over the next few days. I can't wait to share these incredible stones!

Moments of doubt

We all meet people in our lives. All kinds of people, with a broad spectrum of personalities.

One kind of personality has always fascinated me; the self-confident person. I often lack self-confidence, and I'm intensely fascinated by those who have it. Especially those who have it in spades.

Sometimes I think confidence is a matter of perspective. I am a hypercritical person, and I often reduce the things I create into nothingness, smashing them down into their most basic atoms until they seem like the least interesting things that have ever existed.

Sometimes later I look at the same thing, and I can't understand why I was so unhappy with it.

Here's a good example. Happy cloud picture, right?



Sunset, nice colors, pretty clouds. As I look at it, I immediately wonder if I could frame it better. I think that perhaps I could darken it a touch in Photoshop or crop it somehow. I wonder if I could have cut out the dark silhouettes of the trees. I wish I had tried another angle.

Within seconds, I have deconstructed the photo and completely dismissed it as any sort of creation whatsoever. I feel bad, and then I try to console myself. I think, oh, but I took this with a camera phone, so it's good for a camera phone. And then I say, but my camera phone is pretty good, so it's just that I didn't do it right. And so on and so on, until the simple act of trying to record the beauty of the sunset has been reduced to a disappointment.

Later on I'll look at the photo again and think, hey, that's not so bad! And the spiral down will start again as I begin to deconstruct it once more. Unless I'm in a good mood, in which case I might be able to bypass the spiral.

I do the same thing while designing. I think, oh, this has been done before. Or I think, oh, this is too simple, no one will want to buy this. Or what was I thinking when I sat down to make this, because this is not going to change the world and bring tears of wonder to anyone's eyes.

Sometimes, though, it doesn't have to. I think perhaps confidence comes from balancing the inner critic with the needs of the soul. Sometimes a piece of jewelry doesn't have to change the world; sometimes a photo of a cloud doesn't have to reduce one to tears. Sometimes it's okay to just take the picture, and enjoy it for what it is, flaws and all.