And now, steampunk jewelry

I'm not always aware of the trends in beaded jewelry; while I do read several trade publications, and I attend a few shows, sometimes I miss smaller trends entirely.

Not so with steampunk! One of my good friends, Melanie from Earthenwood Studio, has been creating amazing steampunk components and jewelry for some time now. Strangely enough, I'd heard of the steampunk concept years ago, through a Neil Gaiman-inspired graphic novel about a steam-powered robot. I never read it, but I was intrigued by the concept, and when Melanie began exploring steampunk, I remembered it.

My own style has always been beads, wire, flexible beading wire, and sterling silver or goldfill components, so when I started to notice steampunk jewelry appearing in Etsy shops and blogs, I didn't see how I could adapt it to my own style. The use of found objects and copper and brass was a bit daunting.

After some thought about it, and some encouragement from a couple of designer friends, I decided to take a trip down the steampunk path. I picked up an assortment of jump rings, headpins, French hooks, and gear stampings in brass and copper while I was in WI for the Bead & Button Show. I've been so busy that I didn't have time to experiment...until yesterday.



At first, I assembled the basic components for several different earrings. French hooks, a gear or two, and jump rings. Fortunately, I've done chain maille before, so working with jump rings was familiar.



After I had the basic components put together, I began to embellish them. This was the fun part; I could match different stones to the look of the metal and bring together different, larger jump rings. I changed things around as I was making them, adding elements and subtracting elements, exchanging colors of jump rings, until I had a fun set of earrings.



It was a very fun experiment, and I look forward to creating more steampunk jewelry!

The organization continues

I am in a state of flux.

A few months ago, I began a rather ambitious project. I decided that I was not happy with the way my office was organized. I literally got up one morning, sat down with my cereal, and was so overwhelmed with the need to change that I just...did it. At least, the big part of it, which meant moving nearly everything in the room.

(For those of you who need a bit of a mental image, I have four desks, a set of storage cubicles, a couch, a coffee table, a rack full of beads, a low cart with a TV, and a round table for shooting pictures, all in my office. Not to mention two floor lamps and three desk chairs. Thank goodness the room is big enough for all of this; in the apartment, I used to have to climb over the couch to sit down at my jewelry desk.)

I realized that my business was important to me, and that I needed to really invest in it with more than just money or time. I needed to invest brainpower. I needed to decide to make improvements based on efficiency. That's when I moved the desks and the bead rack. Certainly that was the most pressing need, and I'm glad that I did it.

However, I've realized that I need to do more. My old jewelry desk, which became the printers-scanner-bills desk, is just not adequate for this task. And I've run out of room in my chief organizational system, which is comprised of my twin Mini Stackables from the amazing Best Craft Organizer company.



I need a new desk system. I need more space. I've already checked out Ikea's website. I will be organized; this is my new battlecry. I'm getting busier and busier and I just can't do it without a good system in place.

My new Mini Stackable is on its way, and hopefully this is just the beginning of a new, more organized me!

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.

A quick update...

I haven't fallen off the face of the planet, I promise.

First, I was here:



(San Francisco, Lombard Street in particular)

And then I was home in Michigan for a week, and now I'm in Wisconsin, awaiting the arrival of the Bead & Button Show. I'll be helping at a friend's booth, like I do every year. It's a huge show and a very hectic time of year for me, so updates will be few and far between, I'm sorry to say.

I've put notices on my Etsy, ArtFire & eBay stores about being gone, and I've paused all of my online advertising until I return. I am focused on working hard...oh, and buying beads! I'll be looking out for the amazing and awesome. I've already bought some fantastic Swarovski rondelles.

I am also considering taking this blog back to Blogger. I really like WordPress, but I've started to realize that most jewelry/bead friends are on Blogger, and it might just be easier to interact if I go back there. I'm not sure yet; I'll be talking to other bloggers at the show to find out their thoughts on the subject, too.

Hopefully I'll have time to check in again; if not, see you on the 18th!

The show must go on

I leave tomorrow for an actual vacation!

I know, it's hard to believe. I'm always leaving, right? But those aren't vacations; they're business trips. This is an honest-to-goodness vacation in San Francisco. No beads, no pliers, no work of any kind. Just me, some sourdough bread, and a cable car. I'm so excited!

When I leave, I have two choices. I can either put the online business on hold, or not. If I put everything on hold, that means I shut down my online venues, put up a banner on the website, and make myself look small. Online, that is, because it certainly doesn't work in real life.

If I don't, then it's up to my very dear, sweet husband to take care of things while I'm gone. He gets to pack orders, send emails to people, and wear my Laurel Moon hat for a week. Which is what I'm doing this time. I hope he doesn't get too frazzled.

In the meantime, here's a sneak preview of the next set of auctions:



I wonder who'll win these pretty cabs? I'm just finishing the listings right now, and they'll start on Sunday.

I'll be home around the 14th. Hope you all have a great week! See you when I get back.

And now...semiprecious stone

I've sold vintage beads and cabs and glass gems on eBay and Etsy for a few years now, and I always hesitated about selling semiprecious stone. I mean, everyone else is selling it, right? You can get everything you want at any time and at rock bottom prices, right?

But then I took a good hard look at the things I can get, and the prices, and I realized that I have access to a lot of funky semiprecious stone that most people will never ever see. Amethyst slices, ammonite beads, gorgeous rhyolite and fossil coral...why not share? Sure, there will always be someone who will have something cheaper. But they won't ever have that exact bead, and if I choose the really standout stones, and I have them for a good price, then it could be something great!

So I went out on a limb and picked up a few strands of yummy beads. Smoky quartz handcarved rounds, rhyolite and fossil coral disks, lodalite quartz, some fantastic ammonites...and guess what? I took them to a couple shows, and they sold! Beaders liked how unique they were, and they liked buying just one or two instead of a whole strand.

Now I've decided to try this in my Laurel Moon eBay store and my Laurel Moon Beads Etsy shop and see how it goes. I've already sold a few lots, which is exciting, and I just put a few new pieces up, including this standout ammonite bead:



Can you see the opalization at the center? Just fabulous. I love sharing these awesome beads!