Busy Bee

Like this month's vintaj theme, I have been quite the busy bee. Not only has the month of August been the busiest this year (or even longer) in my day job (Real Estate), but it has also been my highest grossing sales month since I started my jewelry business. Of course you have to take the bad with the good, so I wasn't surprised when I shredded a tire and had to get 2 new ones, or when the hot water heater that was 30 years old finally gave out in my kitchen!  
I finally made my way down to the athens area council for the arts this last week and was so relieved and happy when the director was very pleased with my work and immediately approved me as an opening weekend vendor for the new downtown Athens Art Market. I am so excited, it is happening this Saturday from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. Don went and bought me this cool ladder shelf that folds up to display my jewelry.

I would have begged my dad to make me something, since he does beautiful custom furniture, but unfortunately he cut off his right pointer finger last Saturday and is recovering, but is pretty much down to 1 arm at this point until its healed up and all the gauze removed.  I thought he was going to puke when I told him I bought this shelf for $90. It would probably cost him about $300 in materials alone to make one, but it would last a lifetime and be incredibly beautiful!  Definitely worth the cost, and once I have caught up a bit in my self investment and am profiting, I'm definitely putting orders in.

Meanwhile, I'm taking the week off of bpos to bang out as much jewelry as I can. Im trying to focus on "lines" and not have quite as big of a variety. My jewelry styles are super varied because I want to try everything, but I'm trying to keep it to steampunk, riveting, handmade beaded chain work, butteflies/dragonflies, and resin/polymer clay. I have a lot to do just in editing, pricing, blocking, and in general figuring out my set up. Come see my booth on Saturday at the pavillion in downtown Athens to see what it ends up looking like, or just stay tuned to the blog if you are out of town b/c I will be posting pics!  I have also been printing out and laminating these awesome cards for my earrings...I think they look so cool!

 Here are the newest wings

 blue/purple wings, now glazed

 Cool Vintage earring cards

 Love this one!

 Alice in Wonderland Cards as well

The design dream

I've been making a lot of custom jewelry lately, and I always spend a long time during my design process, but its even worse for custom orders, because I'm so anxiety ridden over everything being perfect. I'm not sure what is normal as far as time goes, because I've never watched anyone else in the design process before. I know mine can be frustrating at times, but it can also be inspired design, and sometimes I even exceed my own expectations, which probably aren't as high as they should be, because for some reason my brain seems to be programmed with a cap on what success I can achieve or what goals are even appropriate. I suppose this is because of the fact that there are many artists in my family who have struggled, so it was as if growing up, to want to be an artist or anything in the arts industry would be a huge gamble and a waste of money, an unattainable pipe dream, and therefore I just wrote myself off as not quite talented enough. Which is really sad. Because now I look at some of the things that I created, on my own, designs born 100% (or at least 90%)  from my own imagination, and I practiced everyday in being creative, to think outside the box, to do something different, and I think maybe that worked pretty well for me so far. I haven't had the opportunity to get any training at all yet. I have design ideas coming out of the wazoo, but I don't have the tools in my toolbox yet that are needed to execute them...when I do have them...watch out cause I'm going to be taking the jewerly world by storm!  In the meantime, I'm going to just keep plugging away and doing custom orders, and maybe one day my higher aspirations will be realized and maybe they won't be, but this design dream is mine to own now, and I'm not going to be hanging it on the shelf anytime soon.  : )

Butterfly Frenzy

Over the last week or so, I've introduced a new line of jewelry, mostly earrings so far, incorporating my husband Donovan's buttefly wings, made from polymer clay.  They are a very lengthy process! His 3rd cane of blue and purple wings took him a good 2 hours to finish, but the result is so gorgeous and amazing! So far he's made me pink, blue/green, and blue/purple versions. I am going to request standard orange/yellow monarch colors next, and after that...who knows? I may get really crazy! I have so far given away 4 pairs of these as gifts, and my models have been showing them off, and now I have orders in for 6 pairs of earrings.  I also have been told that Reflections salon here in Athens would love to have them for sale in their shop, so I need to get as many made as I can in the next few weeks, because I have a feeling they are going to sell very well!  Here is a photo of Donovan at work during the cane making process, the end results of all 3 types in earrings, and a larger double version of the new blue/purple wings used in a larger pendant on a necklace.

 

The Boy

Well school has officially started for my little 2nd grader. He is growing up so fast. Some of that I'm thankful for due to his rather difficult personality at times. He takes after both his father and I in those ways...lol. In all seriousness, Jaidon is so incredible in so many ways, but he is also quite the little head butter. He's a true Taurus in that way, and we butt horns when it comes to things like getting him to eat his dinner, picking up his bedroom, doing homework, etc.  It can be any little thing really, that's the thing with him. I've learned over the past 7 years how to approach him with various things and have less conflict than he does with dad on those levels...but he still knows how to push my buttons!  Needless to say, I'm honestly glad school is back in session, because admittedly I was going a little insane having both him and my 3 year old Keller at home all day every day...and my housecleaning sessions were beginning to unturn things like 2 month old apple cores under furniture, rotten cheese, basically food and juice spills and all sorts of complete nastiness all over my house. Not to mention that with 2 little boys and 1 nearly blind husband, my bathroom totally smells like a truckstop urinal 24/7, no matter how often I clean the toilet and floors. (Although daddy would argue that none of that is his fault, and he's right, I'm only joshing him) Its entirely the boys, they truly are disgusting, and I really don't get it, because up until I absolutely couldn't keep up with them, I've been a pretty big neatfreak, and I've basically been yelling at them to clean their rooms their whole lives...taking toys away, timeout, the whole deal...but it just doesn't seem to work.  So...having 8 hours a day to catch up on what they have used, abused, trashed, or peed on in the other 8 they are home and awake is nice, because I would literally NEVER get any work done if I were expected to keep up with them. Even my mother is beginning to realize my plight after keeping the boys a few hours here and there during the last few weeks...they are a handful, so if you see me out an about with them and I'm looking like a hot mess, well don't say I didn't tell you so!

Anyway, I'm thinking about starting a little youtube channel for Jaidon to do weather forecasts on...what do you think about that? He's a little weatherman, ask anyone who knows him! Lol  Here's the picture he drew from the first day of 2nd grade. Notice at the bottom he has a little cloud showing the whole rain to evaporation process, with the rainbow on top? And that's a tornado on his shirt. Jaidon, Lord of the Weather!

A Day in Knoxville with Don and the boys

We went to Knoxville today to pick up the porcelain tiles we purchased from Rail Salvage, and then took the boys up to the Norfolk Southern Hump Yard to see if we could show the boys the trains and huge roundabout and such, but really weren't able to get that close. We stopped by the old depot though and checked out the exterior of the museum trains, because it was open by appointment only. We walked around downtown for a bit and then took the kids to Zuma, which I'd heard was cool, but we found it to be quite disappointing, and nearly half of the games were out of order.

Overall it was at least a day without typical boredom being at home, and both the boys, as well as Don and I, were happy to have a break from the normal routine, especially since the first full day of school is tomorrow for Jaidon! Here are some pics from Knoxville that I took.

Weekend Plans

Its been an extremely busy work week for me with the day job. This whole entire year I've cut down my work load in order to concentrate on building my jewelry business, but due to those fun, unexpected expenses life throws our way, I had to pick up the bpo work for a bit. This week since Monday I've been assigned a whopping $925 worth of bpo orders, and I'll certainly take them! In the past, a busy week has been about $200-$300 worth of work, so this is pretty much unheard of for me, at least as far as this year has gone. I have finished all of 3 of them, and the rest aren't due until tomorrow and Sunday, so I'm taking the rest of today off to hopefully get my house clean and maybe spend some time with my family for a change!!  (shocker!)  In the meantime, here's my latest creation...  very simple, earrings that are super pretty...

Work Work Work

I spoke too soon (or I should say blogged too soon) because I ended up being assigned 12 bpos and 2 mtrs Monday! Its been a busy few days and I still have 6 orders to finish up somehow, hopefully by tomorrow night!!  I also had the joy of having a flat tire about 45 minutes away from home on Monday. I ended up having to get 2 new tires at the price of $298 after tax.  Guess the work came at the perfect time!!
Meanwhile, Monday I entered a contest at the vintaj blog. It was a contest that involved leaving a comment. They chose their favorites and are letting the public vote. The winner gets a nice package of beads, that I really really want and need. Please vote for me and share the link! My comment is #3.
http://vintaj.com/wpblog/?p=12855


 Even though I've been super busy, I still took a little time last night to make my sister a necklace that I promised her I would. I'm submitting it to Bead Trends as well. Here it is:

Enter the Vintaj monthly bead giveaway here!

http://vintaj.com/wpblog/?p=12834

So even though I am supposedly getting slammed with bpos today, so far I've only had one come in so I'm still being somewhat lazy...and although I said I'd stop designing to clean up, I couldn't help but make just one necklace last night...  here it is.  Happy Monday!!