In acknowledgement to my prolonged absence

It has been brought to my attention that I finally need to bite the bullet and turn my jewelry making hobby into an all-out, honest-to-goodness business. The fact that complete strangers keep asking me if I make jewelry to sell was a pretty good clue, really.

"Make a business," you ask? "But you can barely maintain a blog!"

And right you are!

The problem is that I have an inherent fear of accounting (it's a numbers thing... I don't do numbers), and anything remotely related to a decent business plan requires quite a fair bit of taking a long hard look at the numbers and making sure the business is on target to make the profits required to keep the business viable. I should also point out that I do carry a full-time job, which I like pretty well, and there's very little time in my life for a second full-time job.

Q: "What does this mean?"

A: I HAVE NO CLUE. Ideally, following through on the commitment for this blog would be nice. I don't expect to be 'viral,' as it were, nor do I want to deal with the hassles of advertisements and making a profit off of the blog itself. I just want to show people beautiful artisan jewelry, and maybe give a couple tips along the way.

Hopefully I'll be doing more of that in the coming months.

Seafoam lullabies

Hello, 2013, and hello especially to my poor neglected blog. 2012 brought a lot of changes to my life, primarily for the better, and now that the dust is settling I have more time to devote to jewelry again. The above necklace and earring set was the result of about 8 straight hours of labor, start to finish. Materials are chrysoprase, freshwater pearls, dyed coral, and an assortment of findings ranging from silvertone who-knows-what to actual sterling silver, with 49-strand wire and clear stretchy cord as the stringing material.

What I love about this necklace, in terms of functionality, is that the bottom four strands are detachable, leaving a single-strand choker and a lot of options in terms of style and complexity. 

Design-wise, I like the seafoam color of the chrysoprase and knew that I wanted pearls to accent the oceangoing feel of the piece. The coral was something of an afterthought, since I ran across it while digging through my boxes of jewelry supplies for the stuff I actually wanted (part of the 2012 adventure was moving ten hours away from my previous place of residence, and a shameful amount of my stuff is still in boxes).

I'm always a great fan of using up stuff in my stash, especially since the coral was part of a grab-bag I got some time ago. I also don't usually go for pink, but it complements the green chrysoprase so well and I wanted the stuff gone!

Getting the strands to sit right was the biggest challenge I faced with this piece, since I'm usually really bad at anticipating how different lengths will play with the other strands. The chunkiness of this necklace works in my favor on this one! I could have made the earrings symmetrical... but what's the fun in that? I wanted this piece to be playful, and few things say "playful" more than mismatched earrings. It definitely dresses down what could be an overpowering necklace.

I think this is a great start to 2013!