Blog

Jun 20, 2022

Who is your competition in this world of jewelry making?  Is it the other jewelry artist in the local art gallery?  Is it people who post their creations on Instagram and have infinity number of followers?  Is it the person who has a "shop update" once a month and everything sells out in five minutes?  Is it the people who use cheap labor to make cheap jewelry that always undercuts you?

I'm here to tell you you shouldn't be worrying about any of them.

First of all,…

Jun 20, 2022

Getting up at 5am has its advantages.  I was finished with my enameling experiments by noon.  That's a good thing because I don't leave my kiln on without me being there (other than for a minute or two at a time).  So on days dedicated to enameling, I'm pretty much in the studio all day long.  No leisurely lunch in front of the TV, no checking out posts on Facebook, and no answering the phone because I'm using the timers on my phone.

But I really enjoy enameling days.  There's…

Jun 20, 2022

Today was “sorting the books” day.  Although I did a big purge of my books a few months ago, today I decided to organize what I had decided to keep.  I have a lot.  A lot of reference books… mostly on jewelry, of course.

What’s the point of having a book collection if I don’t reference then frequently?  So I am moving almost all of them over to the studio so I can have them on-hand.  I will also take some time to start (gradually) looking through these books to see what’s in them.  I…

Jun 20, 2022

Let's see how long I can keep this up.  I'm a fan of New Year's Resolutions.  I'm a fan of starting anything.  I love starting projects!  It's so exciting with the potential and the expectations, the lists, the organizing, the research, etc.

What I'm not overly brilliant at is the follow through.  Therefore, I go into this thinking I'll be providing a couple weeks (months if I'm amazing) of these weekly posts.  But time will tell.

I have a very dear friend who tries…

Jun 20, 2022

Sorry... no real musings this week.

First off, I'm two days late.  Apologies.

I have three custom orders on my plate and I'm procrastinating.  Anyone else feel huge pressure when it comes to custom orders?

Anyway, to get this out of the way, yes, I did meet my weekly goal of making at least 10 pieces of jewelry.  As a matter of fact, I made 14.  Twelve of the 14 were more of the hammer textured gold-fill earrings.


Jun 20, 2022

I want to make another resolution of sorts.  I want to try to get a photo of every piece of jewelry before I take it to one of the galleries.  It's rather nice having a record of my work.  I go back and reference things quite a bit.

There.  Now that I'ver written it down, and in public no less, does that make it official?

So I did manage to hit my "10" this week.  I had eight, but I figured if I'm going to the gallery anyway, I should make it worth my effort so I made…