Mixed-Media Bracelets?

So lately I've been thinking (and the thought won't leave my mind) -- I rarely wear bracelets anymore (except for my awesome geisha charm bracelet that I traded to a customer for some item descriptions), because I spend my day writing and typing and digging in the dirt and it's a very rare bracelet that doesn't impede my work. However, I love the look of a big, rattly, gorgeous bracelet (not a cuff, a bracelet-bracelet).

I also have a whole lot of single-strand bracelets that I've made to sell from a bowl at shows ... and have never sold a single one in person.


Lots of 5 at a great low price available here.

Since those are adjustable bracelets made with nice beads, here's my plan: I'll add one to three strands to the original (parallel, wrapped, or braided), then secure a cluster of unbreakable/break-resistant charms, buttons, and beads to the lobster clasp so that both sides (strands and clasp) can serve as a focal element.

Some methods I'd like to try:

1. Braiding some of my massive overstock of vintage pendant chain to make up a strand (this may be too stiff; we'll see).
2. Strips of cloth/lace/ribbon secured to a base cord with a wrapping of fine wire, as shown in winter's Belle Armoire Jewelry.
3. Leather cord -- which I've never done a thing with, ever, and feel a vague responsibility to try.
4. A wirework element making up one strand.
5. Interactive elements, like sliding beads and similar worry stones.
6. Handmade wire chain (another Belle Armoire project I've been itching to try).
7. A chain made of two-hole buttons (which shouldn't be too fragile if it's not especially load-bearing).

A linklist, which should really be one word

... this spammy blog (is there a term for this?) uses an article I found while trying to discover M's Ratemyprofessor rating, and it is just about the funniest damn thing I've ever seen.  M and I did dramatic readings to each other.

Is this a thing now?  Seriously someone -- is this a thing?

On a more relevant-to-anything note, here are two of the many cool things I've turned up while doing the copywriting for this lovely site, Keys of Paradise:

This mellifluously written essay on musk is fascinating, informative, and a truly beautiful piece of online writing which is a superb example of structuring lengthy content for the Internet reader.

There is an loa in the Voodoo tradition who protects abused women and lesbians, hopefully not always in combination: Erzulie Dantor.

And everything I ever wanted to know about alchemy can be learned from these sites: Alchemy-Works, which does sell some of its products but is more valuable for its wealth of information, and <"http://www.alchemylab.com/guideto.htm">a page on which I have wasted hours which  gives the alchemical properties of hundreds and hundreds of ordinary foodstuffs.

On a vaguely related note, many props to the makers of the Mystery Case Files games, available from Big Fish Games and on disk at many fine department stores.  They're a combination of hidden-object with item-adventure games; they capture the essence of the greatest old-style text adventures in their snarky humor, intertextual references, and complex plotlines, but are also absolutely state of the art in graphic rendering and in the incorporation of live-action film with digital art scenes.  They have a smoother and more graceful user experience than their imitators as well.  And, as I was playing the latest entry, "13th Skull," between pages of my novel-sized list of item descriptions, I realized they also apparently have a really excellent cultural consultant.

"13th Skull" has a few problems in terms of atmosphere, notably the fact that while the previous games, "Return to Ravenhearst" and "Dire Grove," had an engaging and incredibly atmospheric creepiness, this one had sort of a hokey Scooby-Doo ghost feel.  I'm quite willing to believe that this was deliberate (M was not so kind about it), but it's a little startling -- perhaps it's the lack of a well-developed and sympathetic victim to save.  Or the fact that there are about four actual Southerners voicing the Louisiana residents.  Anyway, the point is, despite the oddly built atmosphere, every depiction of voodoo and hoodoo spells is, as far as I can tell in my admittedly amateur experience, perfectly accurate.  Right on!

Crap, this post has no subject.  Unrelated photo time!


Available here.

Seven Weird Colors and the Sellers Who Love Them

As may have become obvious to everyone, I have a massive thing for color names.  Here are some colors from Wikipedia's list with cool names, cool backstories, or both, and the Etsy items that are tagged with them:

The color: International orange, which appears in a number of service organizations' marks and on World Football League balls.
The item: Seven sellers have tagged eight total items as International Orange.

This hand-braided Maharan wool rug by mrsginther, who also has a great profile page, warns your friends of narrow stripes of high-atmosphere conditions.


The color: Fallow, one of the oldest color names in the English language, referring to the sandy soil of a fallowing field.
The item: It took some manual counting due to synonyms and misspellings of "follow," but there about 26 handmade items tagged with this color.

The porcelain Lucitano horse ornament by SandrasShop reminds your equestrian of his equally old and proud tradition.


The color: Mountbatten pink, invented as a naval camouflage color that only worked part of the day.
The item: Only one item tagged with this!

This crocheted poncho by HEraMade lets you blend in with crocheted naval sunsets.


The color: Fulvous, which chiefly describes birds and means "kind of tawny rufous burnt reddish orangish yellowish grayish, kind of."
The item: Seven sellers tag one item apiece with this color.

This print of an original acrylic breastfeeding painting by h0neyburn uses the name to describe the color of the outline of a well-fed toddler.  h0neyburn uses a lot of these color names; I keep seeing her stuff pop up as I search.


The color: Isabelline, apocryphally named after Isabella I of Castile, who vowed not to change her underwear until her husband had broken a seige; victory unfortunately took eight months, at which time her small-clothes were understandably no longer snowy white.  Isabelline or Isabella palominos, the very pale-colored specimens of cream-gene horses, are named for this tint.
The item: A whopping 39 items are tagged with the color name isabelline.

This plump crocheted heart by Sabahnur looks nice and clean against your hair on a headband, and if you have a cream palomino, you can match!


The color: Falu red, which is after a paint made of starch and very finely divided hematite, and is used to paint traditional Swedish homes -- a bit like haint blue here in the South.
The item: Five sellers use this color to tag a total of 11 items.

This set of twelve organza blossoms brings traditional Old World color to your modern garment.


The color: Urobilin, named for the organic pigment responsible for the color of urine (yum!).
The items: Four sellers win the "I didn't note the Latinate root" award, and perhaps ironically, all four items are so lovely I couldn't pick just one.

The elegant vintage-style glass and dyed jade necklace by thebeadedhound will have part of its proceeds donated to coonhound rescue.  The set of 8 shabby chic hairpins by hbs1406 are stunningly photographed and would be gorgeous for a fall wedding.

A shopping guide

If you have a bit of back-to-school shopping left to do, or (like us) you work in education and the first paycheck after Starvation Summer is burning a hole in your pocket, check out the shops of some of my recent Etsy copywriting customers:


Is liberal guilt about brown-bag lunches setting in hard yet? Reusable bags from SeaCute Designs, whose profile page I wrote, are surprisingly affordable for the category, and appear nicely made and rhapsodically cute; the very professional shop owner donates a portion of proceeds to Feed the Children.


For playing after school, tutus from avasmommy07 are made with lots and lots of US-made tulle so they're soft and poofy like the imaginary fairy princess gown you had when you were little. That isn't the item I wrote the description for; I just love that picture, which balances posing and naturalness so well, and which has a very nice contrast of background and foreground.


This purse hanger and similar ones from talented Etsy graphic designer Topview are great; original artist design, and those things are massively useful when there are narrow aisles between desks (one particular classroom in the anthropology department at UCR, in Watkins Hall, was pretty much where we shoved all the spare furniture so they wouldn't take it away before we were able to lay claim to another room. We guarded our classrooms jealously so we could keep artifacts and posters in them. But that room was hell on earth in the summer).

Topview also does very cool Etsy banners -- and, as you can see, very crisp professional photography. She's one of my absolute favorite customers so far; I edited the content for her very useful website for international students hoping to apply to colleges and universities in the United States, which I'll link to once it goes live.

Steampunk Skills

In my heart, I still really prefer a steampunk that is a lot more "punk" than "steam."


Available here.

I don't think that things need to be dripping in gears (or octopi) to be steampunk.  The "purist" view is that it's not steampunk unless it's functional; I'm not sure I ascribe to that either.  I like the William Morris standpoint on the technology vs. aesthetic thing: "Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful or feel to be beautiful."  To me, it naturally follows that either is good but both is best.

Nor is steampunk just a "look" to me, though there's definitely some level of know-it-when-I-see-it going on here with the clothing and accessories.  As an iteration of punk, it's a mindset and an aesthetic.

Primarily, the mindset is characterized by the oft-calligraphied Japanese phrase "onkochishin": "Honor the past to create the new."  It's a looking backwards to solve the evils of now and recreate the present; it's looking at the world and saying, "You know?  We don't have to break this to remake it.  We can have science and responsibility and wonder.  They can become the same thing again.  We can save the world by changing our ways, not by eschewing them."

(Please allow me a moment to be a Lord of the Rings fanatic: "He who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of reason," Gandalf advised us.  And while Papa Tolkien is no doubt revolving in his grave to have me say it:  That applies to the technological lifestyle too.  We don't have to destroy either the ways of the past or the ways of now to understand them, nor to improve them.)

The steampunk culture looks to the past and incorporates it in order to celebrate it  -- which is almost universal; the only reason it's settled on neo-Victorian is because that's where/when our society's cultural memory says, "This is when science and beauty and romance and heroism and practicality could all be realistic concepts at the same time."  It's really not about a particular time period.  It's about recreating the useful and the beautiful in one another's image to create a world that both looks and works well.

This isn't to say there isn't harsh, gritty steampunk alongside the elegant gleam.  The wisdom of the culture lies not in its settings but in its meanings -- in what it takes as its heroes.

Consequently, while I can't mod my technology and I don't drive a steam-powered hovercraft, these are the things I consider my "steampunk skills":

Five errors to avoid in your descriptions

This belongs in the word-choice-for-sellers series, I guess, or at least in the vicinity.  Why can't it go there?  Because I'm about to be spiteful and negative and not pull punches and Rena is lovely and sweet and generally a national treasure.

If you are trying to maintain a Positive Day, I happily invite you to scroll down and look through my tag list, there in the right column under my contact links, to look for something that looks interesting to read.  I'm not usually this nasty.  But I'm getting it out of my system today.

Still with me?  Okay.

Read on for a list of things never to do in an item description.

My Old South Carolina Home

So we got here juuust in time for a massive snowstorm, so the car is still packed because we were afraid of the steps, but we've hung pictures and installed the Wii my parents gave us for Christmas (it's RED), so life is good.  The Etsy shop, consequent to the weather, is still closed, but should be returning shortly.

It's a stunning day, clear and crisp and exactly one degree above freezing at a quarter to noon, and I'm watching the snow melt slowly off the pine trees from where I'm curled up with Frosted Flakes and a lap quilt on my orange loveseat.

Things I have learned both on the trip and since I arrived:

1. I now understand why so many people refuse to leave New Orleans.  Under the tourist crap and the heavy dusting of powdered sugar, in a way that somehow incorporates both, that city is alive.
2. Unsurprisingly?  The company on New Orleans vampire tours is a.) young and b.) freaking scary.
3. People look at you funny when you genuflect before the altar even in a minor basilica.  I have mentioned I'm a weird fusion of pagan and Catholic, right?
4. Crawfish.  Oh my GOD crawfish.  Fried.  Etouffee.  Gimme.
5. Texas is really freakin' huge.  It constituted well over a third of our trip.
6. Much of the upstate used to be prairie.  Seriously.  Who knew?
7. If the cheese, milk and bread in the local Ingles are down to "Cheasy Product," whole milk, and hoagie rolls, it's not because it's Sunday.  Check the weather.

M is off teaching Business Writing and I need to clean the kitchen and start some laundry before she gets back (housework is so much easier by oneself than with a partner at home), so off to put on my frilly apron!  And clean my kitchen.  Mine.

Squee.

Style contemplations once again!

Today, I was setting out to do something with my shop announcement on Etsy that would give people some framework to experience the stuff I make.  As I'm sure I've said before, my style is sort of all over the place and you have to view a couple dozen pieces before you see the common threads.

I wound up with "Here you'll find handmade jewelry in an eclectic style that includes organic freehand wirework, found objects and (mostly) symmetrical glass-bead designs. Steampunk assemblage and bright vintage-inspired pieces are my particular forte."

*inspects it*

That looks pretty accurate to me, right?  "Vintage-inspired" is such a vague term that it does pretty easily net everything that's not covered by "steampunk assemblage," "organic freehand wirework" or "found objects," right?  Of course, I just wrote an article explaining why people shouldn't use blanket terms, but I was talking about individual descriptions.

Other style elements I contemplated noting but tossed out:

Medium-length earrings.  I don't make a lot of short ones but these are the longest I've ever made, bar the ones intended for belly dancers, like the tassels and those sweet shell and pewter leverbacks I made for M's tribal-gothic-fusion outfit for the Azkatraz ball last year, which were eight inches long and laid on her lovely collarbones.

Available here.

These are more standard for me, though still a little longer than average:


Available here.

My fondness for brass and copper.  It's still unfashionable to genuinely like these.  This is partly because everyone is now convinced that they are allergic to everything.  That's not actually the case.  Unfortunately, antique and gunmetal brass treatments do contain enough nickel to irritate some people -- but usually that's not the case in a necklace or bracelet.  I had to (stop reading if you are, M) have a crown replaced a couple of years ago and the dentist called in his entire staff to show them what a really severe nickel allergy inflammation in the mouth looks like.  I wear nickel-containing brass treatments all the time.  I just can't handle them as earwires for lengthy periods.

I'm not saying people aren't really allergic to jewelry metals.  It happens.  It's just that everyone thinks they are and it's really not the case for many of them. 

More to the point, I like brass and copper.  They weather beautifully.  All metals tarnish, people, with the sole exception of gold.  All of the metals.  All of them.  The copper-brass-gunmetal spectrum does so with a beautiful old-world grace that, in my opinion, is better than looking like it was just made forever.


I do, however, use a germanium sterling on my coral and such, because I don't want my white coral branches to stain.

Sparkle!  This is weird, because most of the other designers I really like oxidize the shit out of everything.

Really bizarre interpretations of other styles.  Even if I try to do Southwestern or Cutesy Chic or Meaningful Assemblage or something, it all comes out looking like me playing with elements of those styles.  And there's no way to put that in a description without sounding like a narcissist ("Tee hee, I'm SO unique!!!") but, on balance, I think that's something to be proud of.


And a final note.  I didn't set out to do any of this.  It just happened to be the way in which I do things.  Maybe that's my early materials influencing everything else I've ever done, maybe it's that the beads and components I pick contribute to it, maybe I'm influenced by my grandmother's crazy 60's jewelry she let me wear, but -- all those "develop your style" posts had nothing to do with this.  So anyone who's landed here by Googling "how to develop a personal jewelry style" or some such -- just do it.  It happens this way.

But if you're like me you'll have to make a blog post three years later before you get a firm idea of what your style is.

If I were a rich man ...

... I would use a lot more of the following.

1.  Cloisonne.  I love cloisonne.  I've recently discovered that this is a passion I share with my maternal grandfather.

Available here.

2.  Ruby.  I've discovered how much I adore this stone.  It can be purply or deep true blood red or pink and has the whole range of opacity.

Available here.

3.  24k gold.  I love to use copper and brass in my jewelry, but I'd love to occasionally use real gold just because it's so hard to find in unique handcrafted pieces, being much more common in traditional fine-jewelry designs.

Available here.

4.  Vintage buttons.  They're so beautiful ... and often so pricey.


Available here.

This, of course, is the nice thing about custom orders; I know the initial outlay for such fine materials will pay off.  Which is so nice.  *sighs wistfully*

A Last Quarter List

1. Dear God, I haven't had my jewelry stuff out in weeks.  It's a darn good thing I have such a backlog of photos to post.  It's just ... see, I have this issue where when I'm staring at things to do, I get incredibly overwhelmed very very quickly.  So pulling all the stuff on the shelves and then having to put it all back to get it off my mother's table does not currently feel like an option.  I'm told this can be a sign of Tourette's or ADHD.  Ya don't say.
2. Assuming I don't manage to do it again in the next month-and-change, the total number of times in my undergraduate career I have locked my keys in my car is 2.  I'm pretending this is an excellent final score.
3. I've developed a weird habit.  Rather than have a key dish like a normal person, when I get home and tear my clothes off to change into representatives from my growing collection of Threadless tees and gypsy skirts with pockets, all the stuff from my pockets -- the Pilot G2-07 ink pens I insist on, five-dollar bills, loose change, two kinds of chapstick and my cell phone -- are filed carefully in a shoe.  I actually now have a shoe I don't wear but reserve solely for this purpose.  It's a left Croc knock-off with fleece lining.  It goes on the floor under the window.
4. If I don't make 50 sales by the end of the year I am going to drown myself.  Please don't consider this a guilt thing, O Gentle Reader.  I've just been sitting at 49 since spring.  Mind you, I'm getting more attention than I used to, treasuries and blog-offers and such, and once the front page, so I assume this is just the summer-fall sales slow-down.  I'm writing this way ahead of time, mind (almost all of my list posts take a few weeks to slowly compose), so I might hit that goal by the time I post this thing.
5. On a vaguely related note, my favorite line from a Shakespeare play remains Roderigo's "I shall incontinently drown myself" from Act I in Othello, just because in modern parlance that's a great freakin' metal image.
6.  One of my shirttail cousins, Roland's girlfriend D, loaned me a book called The Girls Who Went Away which is several case studies of adoptions after the first Great War but before Roe v. Wade.  It's brilliant and heartbreaking and reads as smoothly as fiction.  I was desperately in need of a book to relax with, having read my way through Discworld again, and this fits the bill beautifully.
7. Why, why in my final quarter at UCR have I finally started making undergrad friends?  Surely these cool people have always been here.  Where were they?  Where were all the other socially awkward/steampunk-loving/lunch-packing/vintage-shopping/sexually-liberated/too-loud/Twilight-hating/anime-watching/any-or-all-of-the-above Anthro majors for the last three years?  Have I just been missing them?  Actually, this is horrible but I think what happened is half have graduated and the other half have moved a few places down their people-to-talk-to list to me.
8. I think I might start posting links to more of the treasuries I make.  Treasury used to be a nightmare, but now it's wonderful.  Easy to do and easy to get a spot and wonderful relaxing fun.  Great for a nice positive way to connect with other Etsians too.  As I believe I've said before, the forums depress me, so this is nice. 
9. For the first time in years, I didn't dress as anything recognizable for Halloween yesterday.  I was all set to wear my LOLcat costume from two years ago, but I forgot that I was working at the time and I designed the costume to go under my apron.  It doesn't work without the apron.  And all the other costumes -- my RAF uniform, my Gibson Girl dress, my Ren Faire stuff, all the ones from the Azkatraz con last year -- went with M to South Carolina in my cedar chest.   Now, mind you, I RP, so it's often recognizable to M which of the various characters I play were allowed to pick my clothes on a given day -- black and red and poet shirts and a short chain necklace is one person, skirts and heels and a lot of green is another, brown boots and a brown leather collar is yet another -- but this isn't detectable to anyone else.  Hence, I threw on the hand M and I made and my combat boots and called it a costume.
10. I like to refer to this day as All Saints' Day.  It makes me feel educated.  I generally manage to resist spelling Halloween as Hallowe'en.
11. I shall now resist the conventional list-of-ten format by making this very statement.  Aha!

Culture Shock: some things about the South

• People really and honestly are ... surprisingly friendly.  It's not that there aren't lovely chatty clerks with senses of humor, and neighbors who want to hear all about how you're doing now you moved in, in California -- but here it's almost everybody.
• The weather is much nicer than I was expecting.  When we flew back to house-hunt, I thought it was miserable beyond belief.  But it turns out I was not admitting to myself that I was really, really sick so it seemed worse than it was.  Also, it was in the middle of a heat wave.
• The hurricanes that hit the coast in North Carolina cause even nicer weather to happen in upstate SC -- we get nice cool dry breezes.  I feel vaguely guilty about this.
• I sort of expected to go through ethnic-food deprivation, especially because the girl at one of the visitor's centers said that we'd just have to get used to fried-and-barbecued everything all the time.  But they've got a lot of stuff.  Everything I'm accustomed to eating and much, much more.  They have Asian food brands at our local Ingles I've never seen before -- including some culinary soup broths I can't wait to experiment with.
• Nobody sells 4x6 recipe cards anymore.  Admittedly this is not really a thing about the South but a thing about everywhere, but what is up with that?
• It was worth moving just for Hobby Lobby.  They carry everything.  Jewelry supplies I usually have to special-order, at great prices.  And then there's a leathercrafting aisle and a doll house aisle, which always makes me salivate over the charm potential.  Relatedly, apparently M has always wanted a dollhouse.  I think one day I'll get her one of these.  Anyway:  Hobby Lobby.  Awesome.
• Cracker Barrel's idea of vegetables pleases me.
• Geraniums seem to do well here, judging by other people's balconies.  The landscaping up by our loan office/community center heavily features impatiens and lavender.  We have full northern exposure on our deck, but I have been researching native woodland species that won't mind.  Next spring, when I'm here for good and the frost (they have this thing called frost here) is mostly past, I intend to plant Jack-in-the-pulpit and wood anemones and probably some fennel.  I wanted a Passiflora but they're invasive in Georgia and we're all of twenty minutes from Georgia.  I am passionflowerless.  This is a source of sorrow.
• Our milk has a slightly stronger flavor.  It's not just one brand, either, it's pretty much all of it.  It's tasty, just different.
• In and near Anderson County, you can easily get hand-gathered eggs, giant jars of dark rich honey from bees kept by a dad and his two daughters, blue cheese made in Clemson University's dairy thirty minutes away by slow truck, and more local preserves than you can shake a slice of bread at.  Squee.
• Oh, God the bugs.  They're everywhere.
• They refer to cockroaches as "water bugs" in the South.  I could have gone my whole life without knowing that.
• Life just generally happens a little slower.  It's nice.
• My upstairs neighbors are generally quiet, but today they're either autumn-cleaning or moving furniture.
• Beadless and shoeless and chairless and at loose ends as I find myself, I am so, so glad to be here.

Things I have accomplished in the last three days

-yard-saled away most of August's SC rent's worth of stuff
-made 20 eBay listings
-made nearly 40 supply/destash listings on Ballet Llama
-gotten my wisdom teeth emergency-removed(to anyone near San Bernardino, I hugely recommend Dr. Baugh's office)
-sorted all our quilt fabric into a single dresser
-picked a paint color for our new kitchen

Things I have not accomplished in the past week
-listing anything on my own Etsy shop
-sleeping through the night

You win some, you lose some.

Strawberry Mugs Forever

M and I are going to be doing our new kitchen in strawberries. My parents bought us a bunch of cool strawberry stuff as a congratulatory gift and I've been scouring Etsy for something that will tie our strawberry kitchen to our "Spoils of the British Empire" rest-of-the-house.

Favorites I've turned up in the hunt:
I am in love with everything about this listing from MelissaSue. They're these little strawberry-with-legs felt creatures. Wonderful wicked whimsical story photography ... and the product is awesome too!

M says I can't have cannibal strawberry birds. *sigh*

And this is AWESOME in a memento-mori sort of way, though somehow I don't think it'll quiiite work in a kitchen or dining room. Can't imagine why I have that impression. It's lovely lovely art, though. Maybe M will let me put it in the hall.

Speaking of cool weird art: this. It doesn't fit anywhere, but it's neat.

I love vintage book prints. And prints from vintage books, too. And collage and ACEOs too.

In this one I think it's mostly the irony of the background I'm in love with.

From the supply side: THESE are SO COOL!

And this woodblock print would be MINE right NOW if we didn't have, y'know, a cross-country move to pay for. I love a subtle pun ... and Asian-style woodcuts are a bit of an obsession for me ever since my middle school art teacher let me use his fish print equipment and inks. I have an especial fondness for the very late ukiyo-e from just-post-shogunate Japan that depict the change and blending of cultures -- there's a few prints of Japanese beauties in tinted spectacles and English-style bustle gowns that I would love to own copies of. I also have a soft spot for shunga. Don't google it at work. :p

Insert actual conclusion to this ramble here.

I defy you, Etsy!

Unofficial "rules" of Etsy success that I am cheerfully breaking:

1. Develop a presence in the forums to draw in customers.  I spend almost no time there, for two reasons: One, people are really, really catty there.  They're way nastier than their enemy Regretsy, they just frost it in sugar.  Two, I'm still having trouble seeing the point of dealing with it in terms of sales.  I am in a very saturated category.  If I sold one-of-a-kind poodle warmers or something, then it might be worth it, but frankly?  I kinda doubt it.

2. Views are the most important thing ever.  Nope; customers are the most important thing ever.  I love to have my work appreciated, but views are a number.  If I got to talk to everyone who viewed me, that would be something else.  This is more a philosophical mindset than an action, but nonetheless, I defy it!

3.  Put your shop policies in your descriptions.  I'm resisting this one.  I'm resisting it hard.  Those who have been around for a while will notice I've recently added a little blurb at the end of "all orders ship USPS First Class, allow two weeks," etc., but honestly?  That's more to give the descriptions an obvious stop-point ... the same reason you put strong-colored binding on a quilt ... than as a policy advisory.

4.  Create a unified product line.  I frankly cannot imagine how people do this without going mad.  I would be utterly insane if I tried to make all my stuff match a theme.  I'm going a little crazy trying to make stuff that I can put in Flickr sets, fergodsake.  I love the steampunk assemblage stuff, that's really sort of my home now that I have developed sufficient skill to execute it the way I picture it, but trying to confine myself to that style would result it truly unmarketable bizarrities.

5.  Put your best item in your avatar.  Mine has been and remains my little orange dancing pig.  I hand-drew that logo when I first got started and I plan to use it forever.  It stands out a lot more than most of the jewelry-business avatars, which are all, y'know, jewelry (and occasionally cause me to go ... "Yes, I have bought pendants at WalMart, too, I recognize that which is the sole thing in your image").  And because of the above, my goal has to be to build business and name recognition, not style recognition.  My style is very different from others', but also occasionally from itself, and you have to see the milieau of work over time to see the common threads.

6.  Use a solid-color background.  Oh, god, I am defying this one hard.  But I love my broken-pottery-and-raw-silk background.  I have occasionally contemplated switching the background color behind the ivory pots to orange, but a.) this would require rephotographing the whole shop and b.) I wouldn't be able to use my brother's T-shirts anymore (seriously, worn jersey-knit is the best fabric for photographing jewelry on).


So maybe it's killing my sales, but I have been a stubborn mule approximately from birth, so this is my business model and I'm stickin' to it.

Statement necklaces done well

I have a love-hate relationship with bib necklaces and other pieces usually marked "statement." I think they can very easily be done badly ... and often are. The exceptions, though, can be really fantastic. I've favorited a few around Etsy and Flickr and thought I'd share them today:

Wonderful details. This is a great piece of sculpture that also functions as jewelry. See how the color blending reflects the story as you follow the sculpted figures across the necklace? Gorgeous.

Well-used brights. Yellow is a hard color to use well. This is the lemon-lime palette done right.

Perfect lines. This one manages to get a wonderfully organic look because all the components are arranged so they flow into each other. No odd breaks. No staring stand-out objects. No garish work-ins. Just a fluid composition.

Perfect balance. This one proves that a symmetrical piece can still be interesting and eye-catching.

Imbalance done well. And this one shows that it doesn't have to be symmetrical ... and also, it's a great example of that whimsical rarity, colorful steampunk.

Framing the face. A beautiful example of large style that flatters instead of overpowering.

Just chunky enough. This one's definitely big and bold, but there's a sensible restraint in the color palette that keeps it bright without being too-too-much.

Wearable art. This puts paper collage and handmade beads into the necklace and makes it contribute to the harmony, not take away from it. A personal favorite.

Artistic assemblage. And this one shows that a found-object creation doesn't have to look like a collection of afterthoughts: it can be eclectic and exquisite at the same time.


And what qualifies me to judge whether someone has interpreted a style well? Why, absolutely nothing! ... except that I've been doing this a long time, and I know the good stuff when I see it. Those are the good stuff.

Random List of the Week

1.) It's raining, but not yet pouring. Apart from wiping rain off my glasses, this is an awesome thing.

2.) I discovered there are electrical outlets on the balcony in the building where M teaches her last class. Since I necessarily have time to kill during that period, this now means I can sit outside and watch the rain while I update the shop and talk to any friends who happen to be online.

3.) A particular student in one of my classes threw a fit because she decided that a neighboring student's laptop's fingerprint ID check was recording secret films of her. She stormed out. After a long silence, someone else in the class suggested we pass the hat to buy the "perpetrator" a nice present.

4.) I have a D'Anjou pear and an Aero bar. Both are tasty.

5.) My high school friend A, who is deployed on the front lines in Afghanistan, emailed to let everyone know he's alive and celebrate his weekly shower.

6.) M has health insurance again. We found out last week, though she's had it since October. Without revealing details, we've needed it. Now, the university never bothered to tell us she had it or submit her paperwork, but that's a whole nother story.

7.) I have discovered this awesome webcomic called Something Positive. I've been reading through the archives all week. It's a very intelligent, dry work -- think Peanuts with late-twenties characters who drink a lot to fuel their biting verbal wit. It has touching moments, and a tendency to batter the emotions every three months or so, but it's worth it, and hilarious. The story so far will be pretty clear from the cast page.

8.) My Bio 40 professor's favorite phrase: "Patience at once!"

9.) I'm almost done with my custom-order forms for a consignment line.

10.) And I have one more commission to finish up tonight, which makes me break even nicely for the month. I think this may be the first time.

ETA: Oh, and I almost forgot!

11.) There's a rock album based on Tolkien's Silmarillion. It's by Blind Guardian and it's called "Nightfall in Middle-Earth." It's not bad. Not groundbreaking, not Metallica, but not bad. I really like the voices they cast as Sauron and Morgoth, and the singer who does Maeglin's part is pretty good too. I've been listening to it pretty much nonstop.

Ends and Means

I've noticed my posts often seem to trail off rather than actually ending.  To hopefully break myself of this, I challenged myself to compose a bunch of different endings to blog posts.  I came up with the following:

"So I learned that I should be more careful of my companions if I wish to avoid being eaten."

"I'll never do that again unless my need for a block of beeswax is really pressing."

"So that's how you solve the problem of a component requiring a half-millimeter bead size, and I shall call it the Liverwurst Method."

"In this way, though Marx's model breaks down under thoughtful scrutiny with the mores and values of the twenty-first century in mind, it would be a disservice to a great thinker to say that Das Kapital is anything but a landmark of social science."

"Parakeet dive-bombs toddler.  Tune in at eleven for the evening news."

"I'm glad we've solved the aardvark problem.  Onward to tackle the zombie defenses!"

...

I don't think I'm very good at this, guys.

Some Christmas Eve thoughts

1. Just got back from a Christmas Eve afternoon trip to Wal*Mart. Once upon a time I refused to shop there, being fiercely pro-labor, but that was before I discovered poverty. :p Hypocrite? Who, me? Anyway. Was actually surprisingly fun -- M and I flirted with a cheerful and very attractive sales associate with skin the color of dark French roast who was kind enough to show us where the matchbooks were (hint: they're not next to firelogs, candles, picnic stuff or toothpicks) and then the very speedy checkout girl had an electronic singing Santa hat. Christmas kitsch for the win!


2. I read all three volumes of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen yesterday. I'm ... I'm sorry, I'm just not that impressed. I probably would have been if I'd stopped with the first one. I mean, they're blindingly racist and cheerfully misogynistic, but this is deliberate, a genre-savvy sort of thing, and even though Captain Nemo is perpetually referred to and addressed with cringe-worthy racial slurs, he's also probably the most noble and most effective character in the series. I can deal with that in the same way I can deal with Huck Finn. What I can't deal with is the crazy mood whiplash in the second volume (spoilers ahead). You can write a very good comic that's sarcastic and self-parodying. You can write a very good comic that includes a graphically detailed scene in which a woman is brutally beaten to the point of vomiting. Possibly you can even do them in the same comic. But not within a few pages of each other. Even to someone who plays violent and disgusting video games with happy abandon, I found that part deeply shocking and unsettling. And then there's the fact that the characters change their character between novels. I mean, Mina and Allan in vol. 1 wouldn't even have a nodding acquaintance with Mina and Allan in the Black Dossier. Though I have to say, I really enjoyed Hyde and the complexity of his relationships and motivations.

It's ... I'm about to turn in my geek points. There were things that the movie did better. There. I said it.


3. If anyone needs lovely little personalized keepsakes, I highly recommend SweetScarlett. She did a wonderful little set of vintage-graphic owl-and-magpie bookplates for me to give to M. Free customization, too, since it was originally a crow. She's across the pond, but speedy and lovely and I highly recommend her.


4. If anyone needs T-shirts or decals, I highly recommend Broake & Thumb Studios, especially if you love Vikings. The artist did a custom-sized Viking Navy T-shirt for me. Their decals are also great, and quite sizable, and their dice bags are lovely high-quality pieces.


5. I've been reading up on blacksmithing. It's fascinating.


6. I just found out the the Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie is slated for next December. I am very, very excited as that was my favorite Narnia book (though in close competition with the horse one, me being a seven-year-old girl at the time). Also, dragons. Also, ships. Also, Ben Barnes and his Sultry Accent. Did you know he based it on Inigo Montoya? This makes the (spoiler if you live under a kiddie-lit-free rock) "you killed my father" scene in Prince Caspian rather entertaining.


7. Yesterday:

"Ooh, do I get street cred?"

"M, I have read Prisoner of Azkaban over thirty times. I know who Tuor killed at the Fall of Gondolin in The Silmarillion. I own a d20. I am not qualified to award street cred."


8. And of course, a Merry Christmas and/or Yuletide to all! We sort of celebrate both -- ritual on Yule (M's an ordained priestess), Christmas Eve with her half of the family and Christmas Day with my half.

My favorite Christmas song this year is, by the way, Bing Crosby and David Bowie's Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth mashup. Usually it's something by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, but I've bought their Beethoven's Last Night album since then, which is a non-Christmas rock opera, and am still having trouble not going "Why is Mephistopheles singing about chests of toys and old letters? What's in that chest?"

Now, mind you, I hate the Little Drummer Boy, I think it's vapid and excessively saccharine. But that dual song is about what ... well, what it's about. About giving more love than you receive to make the world a better place. Gives me warm fuzzies quite beyond the aesthetic tingle of a really good counterpoint duet.

So whether it is Christmas Eve or just past Yule, or Die Natali Sol Invictis, or early Kwanzaa or belated Hannukah, have a happy one.

Some thoughts for the ... morning? Noontide?

* I would really like to know what I'm doing right with Alchemy bids.

Seriously. I've had tons of interest and two commissions in the same number of weeks. What gives? What changed?

* Wire wrapping is AWESOME.

I've always loved heavily wire-wrapped pieces -- the ones that have that woodlandy, chaotic beauty with wire wrapping in on itself in layers and layers -- and yesterday, with some brass ring bases I got on clearance and leftover silver and brown copper wire, I think I got the hang of it. I'm wearing one of the rings right now (a piece of what I think is agate and fluted antique brass rounds, with a spiral of goldtone and wrapping in silvertone wire, on a wide antique brass ring base) and it gives me a little flutter of joy every time I look at my left hand. I also did a pendant with Czech pressed glass blossoms and leaves over a leftover square glass bead, and it has a WONDERFUL fairy-garden look. I feel like an artist.

* Condescending people suck.

I understand the need to distinguish between art and assembly, but this leads to a certain ... attitude in the Etsy forums. Technically under the Etsy rules putting a purchased pendant on a purchased chain qualifies the result to be sold as "handmade." And I understand that putting beads on a wire doesn't sound any more "handmade" to someone who hand-solders recycled metal, or some such. But statements like "Even the beader does SOME design work" make my hackles rise. Quilters select fabrics to go together in a pattern, I select beads and components to go together in a pattern, if you look at my pieces you can see I'm not just putting stuff together randomly or putting the same bead on the wire thirty times, don't dishonor my art form. *sigh*

* The average high school graduate has no understanding of tone.

I judge this by my own students. They're bright, bright kids, and they think they know it until I ask them to identify it, and then we both suddenly realize the kid has no clue what I'm trying to point out.

* I saw an EXcellent play last week.

"Doin' Time in the HomoNoMo Halfway House: How I Survived the Ex-Gay Movement," by Peterson Toscano, is a phenomenal show. I share an office at work with the performer, Vincent Cervantes, and he's as kind, funny and wise in person as onstage. Also, he's got enough acting talent to make you both laugh out loud and get a lump in the throat within the same three-minute section of the show. Anyone who has acted knows how hard it is to make a mood whiplash like that effective. If you have a chance to see this, run-don't-walk to get tickets. It's both roaringly funny and touchingly meaningful.

* I have GOT to be more careful about cutting chain.

I have a charm bracelet I may have to remake tonight because I misjudged and clipped it too short by one. Freaking. Link. It's a fun charm bracelet, though; 60's music flower-power themed with some I *heart* NY stuff. So not as bad as it could be.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...

On the "best" side of things:

-I love my new job to death. I have one student who refused to sign up for his appointment before and now wants to meet a nine in the morning (not. Happening.), but the rest of them are bright, interested kids and I am having a great time working with them.
-My girlfriend loves me.
-Sales have picked up this month; four of them!

On the "worst" side:

-I am horribly, horribly sick. It's not swine flu. All the cool people get swine flu; I get a sinus infection. For those fortunate enough to have no had them, sinus infections basically cause your entire head and neck area to fill up with thick, sloshy glue.
-I dumped soup on my laptop. And my thigh, but the blisters healed; the power port didn't. Brodie (our Malinois) left a dog toy where I would step on it. I have to get a student loan now so I can get a new one.


More good than bad, mind you, but the bad is ... draining. Consequently, I'm largely MIA. So until further notice:

- Go read this webcomic strip. You will thank me.

- I'm too disgusting to be creative, so, have a free pair of earrings with any purchase. Discount code "walrus." You're welcome.