The Blame Game - and new earrings.

steely2
Originally uploaded by ensojewelry

I love using these vintage lucite beads as a base rather than the customary painted wood - where there is some show-through you can really get interesting color effects.

I'm getting testy about the tendency of people on etsy to be so much more worried about what everyone else is doing and trying to find some locus for blame whenever they're not selling.

If I'm not selling it's because there's so much vintage and supplies, or because someone has a lower price point, or because of foreign resellers, or batman, or bananas or the government --- enough already.

Take a look at your own shop and do something about it. Put a tenth of that energy into refining your work, your marketing, your promotion, and you won't have to blame anyone but yourself.

That's a good theme, actually. I did a craft fair where I really tanked lately - I did not do what I expected.

I could easily have blamed the fact that I was next to someone with lower priced merch and blame the shoppers, but no - I wasn't prepared, my stuff was not presented NEARLY as nicely as the seller next to me, I didn't go in with as much stock as I should have . It was me, all me, and an object lesson rather than something to beat myself up over! When I told my mother her first instinct was to ask "oh what was her work like" about the person next to me who was rocking - I told her no, that's not the issue, it was nice and it was all beautifully carded and displayed - I had fallen down on my job of making my stuff look its best and I was paying for it.

That's the only blame game I'm interested in, the one which makes me do better next time.

David Yurman, Eat This

It's beyond hectic here. I am gearing up for the No Coast Craft O Rama with my other line, and I've been selling heavily on that side of things, so I haven't had as much weaving time as I'd like with that going on.

However, I did finish up this major piece today. Ondine is just kyanite and sterling. The beads are wireworked. This is my new thing, as I've been struggling with the idea of cleaning/maintaining sterling jewelry on thread or fiber in the long term. It's not the the thread doesn't work at all, I just wanted the integrity of a piece which is just metal and stone. Yes they take forever and yes, they are priced as high quality bridge jewelry.

David Yurman eat this. Ha.

Showpieces

I've been throwing myself into making some larger and time consuming necklaces, made from hefty amounts of sterling silver.

I love chain, but I don't like wimpy chain. That said, I also don't like signing my life away for a foot of chain. The silver market is scary. Luckily I found something I like in a good weight that doesn't hurt too much at a local store. It was on sale. I think I'm going to have to hunt down something similar in larger quantities.





















I've also taken a JOB at my local bead store. I like this place and it seems they're short so this may be mutually beneficial. It's an odd thing, though. I haven't had to show up to work beyond rolling out of bed and hitting the computer or the bench in well over 2 years, not including the year I was laid up. This will be interesting. Discount is good though, basically wholesale pricing.

Winners Garnets and Ginger

The September challenge was fun - I wound up with a pretty good showing, but didn't end up voting for myself - there was some work which really blew me away including this, the winner, from Manek Lady.

Isn't it just amazing?

In local news, I've found the best scone in Minneapolis. It's at Cafe Maude which I just can't say enough great things about. Whether you opt for the buttermilk, or the blueberry ginger, you will find it has a palatable texture, something most scones totally fail, amazing flavor that only actual butter and good ingredients will give, and best of all, an appropriate size, so you can feel momentarily naughty and not like you are indulging in the dietary setback from hell. No overinflated Starbucks sawdust packet - this is a thing of beauty. Get the blueberry ginger (yes ginger, just the right amount, too) and pair it with the chai teabag and go stroll in the southwest metro rain by the creek.

I did.


Now that I'm warm and dry, I've been playing more with those garnet marquise beads:




Rhodolite garnet, 24K plated delicas, a little goldfilled clasp. Something elegant and quasi-ancient looking.

Chartreuse

Chartreuse
Originally uploaded by ensojewelry

Here's my September Challenge entry. The theme is "show your colors." Well, being someone who works mostly with sterling, showing a color was about as close as I can get, and I picked this vibrant and autumnal Chartreuse.

Did you know it's a drink and not just a color? I didn't till my mid-20's.

It's the kind of drink you fall in love with the wrong person over and sing songs loudly in public for the first time in your life.

This is a little more staid, but not too much.

Teamin' up

I'm a member of the Etsy Beadweavers street team - between a very active yahoo group, a flickr group to show off our designs and this great blog, there's a lot of great beadweaving unity to go around.

I've been an admirer of Bev Herman from noeasybeads for a long time - Bev is one of the celebrities of the beadweaving world, and it really tickles me to no end that I'm in a group with her. I'm not sure that everyone else in the group is really aware of this fact, and I'm not going to really make that much of a big deal about it, but seriously, I have to suppress squeals of fangirl.

Today I added this to the shop:




I had the most inspiring nugget of chrysophrase to work with, and wanted to make a more slender goldfilled cuff. It's kind of a watchband design. I'm pleased with it.

Revival

It's been a shameful interval since I started this up. Hopefully that will change.

Beadweaving is not fast. That can't be overstated.

I needed a break from metal and stone, I suppose, and wanted to go back to glass. A simple afternoon spent learning dimensional right angle weave from my beading mate Lisa had me excited all over again with the potential of this stitch. I think a lot of people shy away from it because it is a little harder to master than other stitches, and you can have many more thread-tugging accidents than with other stitches, but it's so -- plastic. Geometric, logical.

"Modern Thought" is inspired by listening to lots and lots of Shins, and denim, and Iolite chunks, and ancient Rome and Greece. I'm going to do another iteration, as well, because I have enough iolite and blue beads to do so.

Hippies eat your heart out

Today I made these using citrine, goldfill, vermeil hoops and garnets.

And the technique?

Brick stitch!

That sound is the sound of a million horrid pairs of fringey hippie earrings screaming.

I hope I've redeemed the stitch a little from its usual fate.

The Milky Way

So I dragged a very dear friend to a bead shop the other day. I think he surprised the bead store people because he's
1. not my husband
2. totally not the bead store demographic - start off with the male factor and go from there...
3. could tell me what not to buy so fast it'd make your head spin (I need eyes other than my not so great ones to say "yes that's eye clean")

"Bead Shops? Hasn't this girl heard of wholesale?"

Yes, but there are times you do not or cannot do a 240 dollar strand of beautiful tourmaline droplets, even though it would be ideal and it's what you and all your customers would love.
I was out of clasps and I needed a one-off stone.

What I re-learned the other day is just how beautiful the highly underrated can be. While I was looking at chalcedony - admittedly pretty in its soft blue color, but just somehow not totally exciting, my friend found this banded agate.

"Did you know the vast majority of those are from Minnesota? Some from Russia, but most are local."

I'm terrible about the opaque stones. I find myself overlooking them often in favor of something sparkly, but often not as high a quality as I could get for the same price if I paid more attention to agates, better jasper, carnelian in its best form.

I loved this stone and knew it would be much more at home in my designs than a mediocre chalcedony. I loved it more because he told me about picking these up as a kid, his parents polishing stones for him in a rock tumbler when he was really little, the fact that this stone may possibly have been found, cut, and polished in Northern MN.

I think the top banding looks like a faint galaxy in the night sky. I added the ring for just a little fussy extra interest. And I re-photographed it this morning and added it to etsy. I wish I could drag him along every time I look at stones.

I've got my eye on these green garnets next, they'll look incredible with gold filled beads.

About Ensō

So I'm probably better known for my costume jewelry line, Bombalurina. It's a fun, vibrant, and fabulous romp through design history, but it's not where I started and it's not all I do.

Beadweaving was my first introduction to jewelry, and my first love.

I spent the better part of a year doing nothing but beadweaving - learning and mastering the major stitches, making huge meandering freeform items, losing myself in the cheerful and eccentric color palettes of seed beads. I still love that kind of work.

Only I don't wear that kind of work.

I have infinite appreciation for intensive elaborate beadwork, and I've made my share of outsized collar necklaces. Even won at the Minnesota State fair - second place - not bad for a relative neophyte up against the likes of various people who have written many a book on how to bead. (Minnesota has a freakish claim to many of the major artists in the bead world - Nancy Eha, Diane Fitzgerald, Bonnie Voelker, need I go on?)

But I don't wear this type of jewelry.

I don't know what exactly motivated me to start weaving with small, expensive, little bits of metal on silk, and I strongly doubt that this was something no one else had thought to do, but if they have I don't know about it. Maybe it was the realization that my 2mm crimps are about the size of a delica bead. Maybe it was fretting over the fact that those plated delicas are going to rub free of plating if you wear those pieces every day (not that you would, but what if you could?)


My goal with Ensō is to create something modernist, minimal, elegant and more upscale, in complete contrast to my enjoyment of inexpensive and vintage materials as expressed in my costume line. Something modernist, minimal,timelessly chic, something I would wear without irony, to my best outings or my serious dinners.

This is jewelry I wear.

I never could reconcile the latent modernist in me with the junkhound. So I'm not going to try. This line has a wonderful specificity to it and I'm proud to put my name on it. This is my art.