New Year Resolutions

Rowan Berries in the Snow

When I first started my jewellery-making studio I had a lot of time to make pieces for exhibitions and shows because I had no customers taking up my time! Now I have managed to build up a number of customers but I no longer have time to make exhibition pieces. Of course it would be wonderful if all the exhibition pieces I made, I sold to my customers, then I would be able to have my cake and eat it, so to speak. Sadly it doesn't seem to work that way ...yet. I still hold out hope that I can turn things around.

Meanwhile, as I do every New Year, I am making a few 'rules' for myself and my art practice:

• stop selling on consignment at places where my pieces don't sell quickly, the pieces are just languishing there
• take some 'retreat' time to focus solely on ideas
• say no to repairing other peoples jewellery - why is this so difficult to do??
• stop worrying about worrying too much
• stop spending so much time on the computer
• stop spending so much time on Etsy, it is like a time-sponge and is only a small part of my business
• realise I can't do everything I want to do, so something has to go - this year it is less downhill skiing, and less knitting-group get togethers
• spend more time just wondering and thinking with my sketch book open in front of me
• stop thinking about money and how I need more of it
• get out of the production work head space whereby it is all about time and price

Well, I expect I could think up a lot more rules but as I said I must cut down on computer time. Now I am going to the work bench to see what gee-gaws I can clear away to make room for those exhibition pieces in the works.

Christmas Rush

This blog has fallen by the wayside recently as I am experiencing a Christmas rush of people requiring jewellery! The last two Christmases have been down compared to the great years of 2006 and 2007, but it seems that things are picking up again. As a sole proprietor in a creative business, working alone, I simply take whatever comes my way, unable to predict the highs and lows of business, I simply float along with the current like a leaf on a stream. I will be back soon when I have more time.

Brain Workout

I have been fascinated by the Japanese aesthetic sense and their arts and culture for a long time, I plan to go there when I have saved up the funds. So when a series of classes in learning Japanese language was offered locally I immediately signed up. What a brain workout! I love it and I am super keen to keep going now the original series of six classes is done. However it really takes a lot of work to start learning a whole new language from scratch, not mention a new alphabet or should I say syllabary. Well three new ones in fact, since Japanese uses three different types of script - Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji - which they seem to mix up at random in sentences. I have pretty much memorized all the Hiragana syllables - I love practising them in my skinny black drawing pen. Now I am starting on the Katakana syllables, I'm leaving Kanji for last as it is the most daunting!

I don't have anyone to practice my (very limited) conversation with, so to hell with it I am just speaking it all out loud to myself, to my husband's amusement! He has at least learned two words - the word for cake (keeki) and the word for cupcake (cupkeeki) - we both laugh at that one.

Meanwhile I have bought some new enamel colours - Japanese ones of course - gorgous pinks and pale blues, deep purple and dark red. I haven't completed any pieces in the new colours yet so here is one I finished a couple of weeks ago.

Aaaagh!

I know that everyone makes mistakes and does thoughtless things in the studio but sometimes when you are on your own and make a doozy of a blunder you have the feeling that no-one else would be as stupid. Here is what I did over the weekend so you all can learn from my disaster...

By the end of Friday I had completed five new necklaces in silver and enamel. All that remained to do was to add a sterling silver jump ring to each piece and to carefully solder it closed. I have done this before quite a few times and using extra-easy solder and a very small torch flame have been successful. I have also briefly pickled the pieces to clean up the jump ring with no problems.

Saturday morning: I went ahead with the process as described but as I took the pieces out of the pickle pot I noticed the enamel was matte not glossy and pitted looking on each piece. Eventually I figured out that the pickle I was using was stronger than normal - I recalled I had made up a strong batch some time before and it was much evaporated and so even stronger. So there I was holding a bunch of ruined pendants.

I spent all saturday removing jump rings, stoning down enamel and refiring and re-soldering rings. As for re-pickling, I just poured some pickle into a small container and held the pendat upside down so only the jump ring was submerged - worked fine.

Organised Randomness

My most recent commission was an exercise in organised randomness. How to creatively arrange a group of stones so that they looked pleasingly random on top of the ring? I could have spent weeks just re-arranging the stones within the circle endlessly, never quite satisfied that they looked really random. Obviously there was a limit to how long I could spend so what did I do?

I started with 16 stones. I took out two, one was badly chipped and the other was a very strange uneven cut. Of the remainder I found two matching ones, one to go on each shoulder of the shank which I put aside. That was the easy part. I was left with one big stone, three medium big stones and eight very very small stones.

I played around with the composition of these stones for several days! I was aiming for a casual looking arrangement whereby the stones looked easily spaced out but not evenly spaced. I put aside one of the tiny stones to give me an odd number, this helped. In the end I never did really resolve the arrangement to my complete satisfaction but I had to stop and actually make the ring so that is what I forced myself to do. Even after I had soldered all the bezels in place I was still tempted to add the last little stone but I knew it would only make the design slightly different, not better, so I resisted the temptation.

Chasing Bears

Black bear in a tree in our yard

My neighbour went away for three weeks leaving me to look after the fruit trees in her yard. Consequently I have spent the last three weeks chasing bears. We have quite a large population of black bears in our area and September is the month when they wander into town foraging for food before they hibernate. They LOVE fruit trees! These animals are beautiful to look at, when their fur catches the sunlight it gleams, and despite their name they come in all shades of brown from reddish cinnamon, through chestnut tan , chocolate, and black.

Anyone who grows fruit knows it is a toss up between leaving the fruit on the tree until it is ripe enought to eat and risking a broken tree or picking the fruit early and finding it to be useless because it is underripe. Sometimes you get both - the bears will climb the tree to get a few plums or pears and a young tree or a brittle old one will break under their weight. So I have been over at my neighbours' everyday surveying the damage, dragging broken limbs away and picking underripe fruit, hoping the bear is not creeping up behind me!

In spite of all this stress I have completed a recent challenging commission. So I am patting myself on the back today because firstly my neighbour got home and didn't grumble about broken trees only thanked me for looking after them, and secondly my customer came to pick up the ring and said she loved it. Phew!

Commissions

Ring in 18k white and yellow gold with pink sapphire

I'm currently working on a ring commission at the moment using the customers old gold jewellery to melt down and the stones that were in these old pieces of jewellery. With gold so expensive now I find a lot of people are digging into their jewellery boxes and finding things they want re-vamped. I genuinely like doing commissions especially more complex ones but there are things about the work that make me anxious and I find myself procrastinating a little when I should be concentrating and trying to figure out exactly how to do a piece especially when the design is forcing me to do something I wouldn't normally choose to do.

What makes me anxious?

When I can't get hold of the customer, they don't return calls or emails and I am left wondering.

When I meet with the customer for the first time at my house - I use my kitchen to meet in as it has the best light. No one has openly said that it is strange yet, and it does make me clean the kitchen extra well.

When I have to give them the quote - someone in business once told me that if you don't have anyone saying "Oh that's too expensive" then your prices are too low.

When I have to guestimate how much gold I need for a piece.

When I have to decide on placement of stones especially if the design calls for a random look.

When I'm making a bezel for a stone that isn't round or oval.

When I am sizing the shank of a ring - I want it to fit perfectly at all times and I know this isn't possible.

In short - most of the time. I do enough ring commissions that I feel okay accepting them but not enough that I feel super comfortable with every situation. They are a good source of income in my business though and things have started picking up after a year or so of slim pickings. I have balked at the idea of promoting ring commissions on my website though because I find doing long distance work is more fraught with customer complications than working with someone I can physically meet. I'd like to hear from anyone who does though, perhaps they could give me some tips.