A gift guide to encourage self-care

November 18, 2016

This is my second year setting up gift guides more or less publicly, and my original plan was to do the first one this year as a guide for makers. Given the last week (and how freaking awful I and everyone around me have felt), I’m making this first one a guide to encourage self-care.

These are the little things I’ve had or used to take care of myself (and not just this past week either!). Taking care of yourself is a hard, hard thing to do…so here are five things that can make that easier!

A cuddly stuffed toy

I firmly believe that ANYONE can benefit from a snuggle with a nice, soft toy. A snuggle with a real animal can be great too, but if your cat’s anything like mine it’s not exactly an on-demand service.

My partner gave me the adorable bear in the photo, and not a day goes by that I don’t appreciate the gift. He’s available at Target. I’m also a big fan of all Gund toys, but this bear in particular is my lifelong favorite.

An excellent pillow

Along the lines of cuddling a stuffed toy, sometimes a great pillow makes for a good cuddle too. Also, a good pillow will make for great sleep, which is the foundation of all other good things.

When we moved to Baltimore this year we bought a new bed and new pillows, and I am in love with these pillows from Casper. They’re more expensive than what you might find at Target, but they are delicious to sleep on. Gavin and I have verrrrry different sleeping positions, and these work for both of us.

While we’re on the subject of sleep…

Melatonin chews

A colleague turned me on to these. We travel a lot in our day jobs and staying in weird hotels after crossing time zones makes for the world’s worst sleep. You can get them from a variety of health-food vitamin-type companies, on Amazon, or at the drug store. Mine are from CVS, and they do the job of helping me get to sleep without leaving me hungover the next day. Plus, they’re not habit forming.

A lip scrub & balm

Look, it’s winter. Our skin is freaking out and drying out and that maybe especially true of our lips. Or at least my lips. So my new favorite lip thing in the world is Clinique’s Sweet Pots, which have a sugar scrub on one side and a balm on the other. I have my mom to thank for this one — I might have snagged it out of her epic lipstick collection.

A good book

I have a run-and-hide coping mechanism, so I’ve been reading a lot of books by funny or interesting people lately. Here are three I’ve loved, and one I’m in the middle of and currently loving:

Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space, by Lynn Sherr

The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, by Amy Schumer

Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe, by Mike Massimino

Scrappy Little Nobody, by Anna Kendrick

Take care of yourselves, y’all.

So where do we go from here?

November 13, 2016

Look, I’m going to leave the political commentary to other, smarter, more eloquent writers. I’m also going to leave it up to you to go find the commentary that best suits your needs at this particular moment in time. I will say, though, that I am profoundly disappointed, more than a little scared, and somewhat paralyzed in the wake of Tuesday’s election.

It seems frivolous and dumb and futile to keep thrashing against this tiny little hustle of mine, but then again…this is the ish that makes me feel good. I literally bring a little beauty in the world. And if I can make a little extra scratch, then that’s a little more that I can use to support those who will need it in the next howeverlong.

So today I post this, I make some chili, and I take a nap…and then I get off my ass and get to work, both on this and on the rest of life. So look forward to Wait, should I be in holiday mode already?!

November 4, 2016

I’m just finishing up two weeks straight of work travel, and I’m way behind in all other things, including reading all my favorite websites. So I’m sitting here in the Oakland airport going through my Feedly and I see at least two other lifestyle/crafty-type blogs talking about being in “Christmas mode” already. I might be freaking out a little bit. I definitely have all the plans made, but as you can see…not so much with the holiday mode on this site.

I’ll get there, I promise!

Studio report: October 15

October 21, 2016

You know what’s super fun? Getting a Rio order in, and being so excited to get to work. Followed by: wanting to fabricate a series of cuff bracelets with bezel-set stones, and discovering that you’re low on medium solder, have a metric ton of hard solder, and are totally, completely out of easy. How in the seven hells did I forget to order solder? Hence two Rio orders in two weeks!

This is particularly frustrating when your studio time is limited to something like six hours a week, at the outside. I can only get to the Baltimore Jewelry Center, with its torches and tumblers and heavy-duty equipment, on the weekends, and their opening hours are 12-6. I tend to wear out after about 3 hours at a stretch, which doesn’t help.

I want to mention here that I have the most patient partner on earth: I’ve been making huge messes in our apartment, because I’ve basically turned our dining table into a workbench. I have enough hand tools in my arsenal to at least start production of some of my pieces at home, which helps me maximize my time at BJC. Every little bit helps, no?

Still, my last trip to the studio wasn’t a total wash. I ran the tumbler the whole time I was there, which some of my existing inventory REALLY needed, and I finished the series of pendants I’d been making in the Othermill. I’m working on getting those photographed and into my Etsy shop this coming week.

On holiday planning

October 14, 2016

I’m not quite sure when it got to be mid-October, but here we are — with the holiday season fast approaching. This year I decided it’s time to get serious about planning for the holidays.

I’m lucky in that previous years, I’ve had my mother pushing my line to all her friends, or craft shows to participate in. This year, I only have one show lined up, and I want to experiment and see if I can boost my online sales to compensate.

I’m working through Etsy’s holiday bootcamp, as a start. I’ve been measuring my success on Etsy by whether or not total strangers order from me, as opposed to my mom or friends, and a few have. Yay! That always makes my day. But I’d like to tip that scale even further, to where most of my sales are coming from total strangers.

So that’s the first thing.

The other thing I’m working on is really pushing through November and December — I want to do an Advent calendar of sorts, where a new discount or goodie is released every day. I spent some time yesterday sketching out what that might look like, and I think I may have some success if I promote it on Instagram. I still have to define what “success” looks like there.

Speaking of Instagram, a good friend of mine, Amber, promotes her wedding photography business heavily across social media, and she’s a big fan of hashtags. I’ve been experimenting with adding hashtags to my posts (other than #studio tag, which I use to push work photos to Facebook), and I’m seeing a very slight uptick in followers. Not sure that’s translating to orders yet, but I’ll be adding a couple more hashtags to see if I can change that.

Finally (and I’m stating this publicly as a method of accountability), I’m going to be relaunching this website. It looks awful on mobile, among other valid critiques, plus it’s a couple of years old. Maybe time for a rebrand?

I’m not even touching on the inventory and production aspects of getting ready for the holidays…that’s for another day, but the short version is: MAKE ALL THE THINGS.

Anyone else get frustrated with product photography?

October 11, 2016

I’m a one-woman show. I do it all, and that includes product photography, which at the moment is the bane of my existence. It’s never been my favorite thing, to be honest, but right now I am super, super frustrated with it.

Everything I’ve read about product photography highlights the same things: have even lighting. No shadows. A neutral backdrop that doesn’t distract from the product. The images should be fairly uniform in style and lighting throughout the shop. Try to avoid reflections in jewelry, and if you can showcase it in “in use,” so much the better.

Lighting is the thing I struggle with most — trying to find the balance between the bright images I want, and washing out the colors in the jewelry is tough. I’ve gone through several sets of LED lights, all with different color temperatures, and I always end up having to modify the white-balance in post. This is true whether I’m using my high-end DSLR, properly white-balanced and metered, or my iPhone.

Tonight I decided it’s my janky setup. I have one of those folding softboxes that you can affix a backdrop to, plus a roll of LEDs sewn across the top of the box and down the sides. It’s unstable at best, which makes delicately placing jewelry almost impossible.

The LEDs are on a dimmer, which is nice when I want to limit the reflections on the silver jewelry, but otherwise, eh. I use an old external hard drive’s power source, which tonight I spent 20 minutes looking for before going running to my partner for one of his. It is a hot mess. (Literally; the power source is too much for the dimmer switch, and it gets warm.)

There’s a single reason that my lighting setup is so makeshift: money. I decided I was going to DIY the thing instead of shelling out for a proper setup something like three years ago, and I’ve hamstrung myself with the stupid thing since. I’ve probably spent a grand total of $30 on this, excluding backdrops. Even so, I’m finding myself hesitating to spend even another $40 on another setup — but I’m going to have to get over that, real quick.

Newfound love: pre-fab prong settings

October 5, 2016

I’ve been making jewelry, off and on, for over 20 years (holy shit). I’ve been bench-jewelering consistently for maybe five years, and I first picked up a soldering torch eight years ago. In all that time, I was 100% convinced that I absolutely had to make all of my own stone settings. And so I learned how to make the foundational settings: bezel, flush, tube, and prongs.

Bezels I’ve got. I mean, I screw them up all the time, but mostly because I have a tendency to rush. I’m still learning that going slow and doing it right means saving time when I don’t have to re-make a busted setting.

Flush settings are some of my favorites; I love the look of the stone even with the metal. Of course it’s not appropriate for larger stones, which is why I love tubes. For oddly-shaped stones, bezels are my go-to.

But prongs. Oh, how I hate prong settings. For weirdly shaped stones, they can be pretty cool, and I enjoy those. But for the tiny, round, faceted stones that I love to work with, THEY ARE THE WORST. Oh my god, do I hate fabricating prong settings. But I thought I HAD to. Y’know, to be an “artist.” So that my work would be “handmade.”

And then I got. the. eff. over it. Mostly because I found these lovely lavender moon quartz on Rio. I wanted to make them into stud earrings and had absolutely no time to get into the studio and frustrate (yes, as a verb) over making prong settings. So I sucked it up and bought some. These, specifically, also on Rio. And I made myself beautiful, secure stud earrings in about fifteen minutes, including learning how to use the setting and polishing.

No regrets. I get tons of compliments on them, and I haven’t taken them off since I put them in (other than to photograph them, and occasionally slide an ear jacket over the back). I imagine that in the near future I’ll be putting them in my shop, because they are super cute and the fact that I don’t spend hours on them means I can price them reasonably.

So there. Prefab settings aren’t totally the worst things ever. In fact, sometimes they can be pretty freaking awesome.

The magic is in the making: Craftcation 2016

October 3, 2016

A couple of years ago I learned about Dear Handmade Life, an organization for makers run by an aunt and niece duo. I love their blog, and I participated in one of their shows in Oakland last year, but I’d never had a chance to go to the Craftcation conference.

Craftcation is basically four days of classes and rad people held in Ventura, CA — there’s something for the small business owners, the aspiring small business owners, the hobby maker, and everyone else in between. Attendees can take business classes to shore up those skills, or maker classes to learn new techniques.

I remember I missed the opening of Craftcation 2015 registration by something like two weeks, and of course by the time I discovered it it was completely sold out. So I did what any rational maker would do: signed up for the newsletter, and stalked the site obsessively for any news of 2016’s registration. I bought my ticket within hours of it opening, and booked my hotel — despite not knowing if I was going to even be in California anymore, or if I could afford to go. I felt like I needed to go, for my creative self — and for whatever business I hope to build.

In the time between my registration and the event itself, I got engaged, moved across the country to Baltimore — incurring a metric ton of debt –, looked for and started a new job, and generally turned my life upside down. Craftcation 2016 fell five weeks into my new job and overlapped a business trip to Argentina. I vacillated on whether to go, posting my ticket for sale on the conference’s closed Facebook group and looking into canceling flights and hotels. A big part of me felt like I couldn’t justify the time and expense, given everything else that was going on.

As you may have guessed, I did end up going. I missed the last day in order to get to Argentina in time for work, which I wasn’t thrilled about, but the three days I was there were 100% worth the time and effort to get there. I met so many amazing, encouraging and inspiring people — too many to list! I ended up focusing mostly on the making classes, instead of the business ones, which gave me a moment of pause: was I screwing up by only taking the “fun” classes? (No, no I wasn’t.)

I took a bunch of block-printing classes, which introduced me to my newest obsession and left me with some great fabric to play with. I kept all the stamps I made, along with a list of other supplies, so that when I actually have some free time I can get back to it relatively quickly.

I also took a sewing class, where I immediately saw why Bernina sewing machines sell for as much as they do…I might have spent some time considering whether a sewing machine is appropriate for a wedding registry (not so much, I concluded). I made a simple shirt, which came in handy for work the next week, but the best part about it was simply receiving instruction from someone who really, truly, knew what she was doing.

Really, the three days I was there were so packed that I can’t even remember all the details — but I do remember coming away from Craftcation feeling amped to go make things, and grateful for all the people I met. I had a chance to show off some of my own work, and it’s validating to have other makers ooh and ahh over things that come from your hands — and to have a chance to ooh and ahh over others’ work as well!

I’m already registered for 2017’s Craftcation. There will be no indecisiveness when it comes time to go this time around! Want to join me? Registration opens October 13, and in the meantime you can sign up for Dear Handmade Life newsletter. Do it. You won’t regret it.

I <3 the Othermill

September 29, 2016

When I was working at Code for America last year, I was introduced to the Othermill: a desktop CNC machine, run by a Mac, that accepts SVG files as the guide for cutting. Looking through my history, I can see that I’ve made random mention of CNC milling before, but that I’ve never really talked about the mill itself.

So if you read that and were like, huh?, CNC milling is using a computer to control a rotating cutting tool as it cuts through material. (I’m way oversimplifying, but I couldn’t find a good resource to link to that didn’t make my eyes glaze over.) In manufacturing, CNC milling is the type of process that produces circuit boards and prototype machine pieces. In fact, the Othermill recently got a huge upgrade to the Pro version in order to facilitate that sort of production.

For me, it amounts to this:

I can start my process in Illustrator and come out the other end with precisely cut and engraved metal. I’ve used it to fabricate stone settings, play with bi-metals, and translate sketches into reality. It never really results in a finished piece, but it has sped up my production process considerably.

Here’s a 15-second video to demonstrate: watch.

My Othermill is my favorite tool. I might have literally cried tears of joy when it arrived, and hearing the little electronic song it sings as it cuts makes me super happy. It’s opened up avenues for me that I didn’t anticipate.

I think I may have been one of the first jewelers to take a CNC mill to silver, and Othermachine Co., which makes the Othermill, highlighted my process on their blog. (Hello, things that made my year!) I’ve also gotten to talk to Adobe, which makes Illustrator, about using their software together with the Othermill to go from idea to object.

I’m definitely not the only one, though, and it’s amazing to see what other jewelers are doing with the technology.

On starting over

September 27, 2016

So, almost nine months ago, we uprooted our whole lives and moved to Baltimore from San Francisco so that I could start a new job. There were a lot of things I was anticipating in this move: the expense, the stress, having to furnish someplace new, find new friends, new workspace…it was a long list.

Even so, there’s one thing I wasn’t counting on (though I should have realized): moving across the country meant that the (tiny but mighty) audience I’d cultivated in San Francisco and surrounds would evaporate. Not to mention my momentum! I went from having a make-apply-show cycle that was pretty steady to struggling just to find time to get in the studio.

So now I start over. I found bench space at the Baltimore Jewelry Center, an amazing facility with lovely tools and lovely people. I bought myself an Othermill, since the one I was using lives in San Francisco.

I’ve started prototyping new pieces and thinking about how to move this forward with some sense of purpose, rather than in the sporadic bursts I’ve been having since moving. And I’m looking forward to rebuilding that audience! I’m hoping to show at least once this holiday season in Baltimore, and am actively working towards waking up my virtual presence. Let’s see how this goes, shall we?