New year and new goals for 2013

I hate to resort to the old 'my how time flies' frame of mind but it has been exactly one month and one day since I last had a chance to write.  And let me tell you this past month has been packed with exciting things.  

My original goal for last year was to have enough stock to hold a 'Pre-Etsy' sale in October.  Anything that wasn't sold at the public sale would then be placed on ETSY.  I had my first sale event on November 10 at The Barrymore Theatre in Manhattan.  What a huge success!  I had about seven other vendors from various Broadway theaters and the whole event was an hour and a half of selling and laughing and sharing!  My stock was depleted to less than half of where I had started and people were very excited about the pieces I had to offer.

The idea caught on and three other theaters hosted holiday sales and by the time Christmas actually got here I had so little left in stock that the transfer to ETSY never happened.  So in some way I feel that I went around the corner but met and exceeded my goal for 2012.  

So what is ahead for 2013?  Dream Bigger!  I took the money earned over the holiday season and have reinvested in my business.  After careful shopping and some amount of hesitation I bit the bullet and ordered a grinder from Santa Fe Jewelry Supply.  This will enable me to make the kind of jewelry that I have studied this past year.  It is a CabKing, six wheel, wet grinder.

Since the whole process involves water, my shop is simply too cold to run it up there so I spent last week re-working my basement and it will live down there until the weather breaks.  I was more than a little nervous to flip the switch today but I managed to play around with one of my Greek stones and working free hand came up with a little heart.

It is really exciting to daydream about the possibilities of this machine and what I can create by having it in my toolbox!

This is the latest of my pendants.  It's a wonderful story actually.  I was working up in the shop, listening to WNYC and they were interviewing Robert Duane Ballard who (quite by accident) discovered the wreckage of the Titanic.  He had many fascinating things to say but something that struck me was his thoughts on why we should not be spending our resources exploring space but rather exploring the ocean and learning what we can about what lies beneath us and how to keep it healthy.  It is his belief that the notion of going "up" is believed to be going toward something heavenly and the notion of going "down" is somehow connected with evil and hell which is why, subconsciously we spend more time going up than down in our explorations.  As so often happens, what I hear gets translated in what I do.  I had these two stones that seemed to represent the sky and the earth.  I explored the signs of the Navajo and in my original drawing incorporated the sign of the sun and a simple directional symbol  of the arrow for down.  As is usually the case the piece has strayed a little from the original drawing but I'm happy with where it is heading.  I am going to attempt a new technique in the finishing process to give it a more aged and weathered look.  New Toys for the New Year!!!

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