i call it: restoration hardware under the big top

some fancy 60's yard sale furniture- a la marcia brady.

some framed paper from ps- and a wonderful wall of stripes (like a circus tent, get it?) thanks, ryan :)

my proudest achievement- a pennant banner originally made for maribel's shower (also kind of circus-y). actually that chair rail is my proudest achievement. do you know how i feel about chair rail and crown moulding and wainscoting?

my lovely anthro lamp which matches the smaller one in the living room, and my very favorite cliche poster- which i now own two of.

here's what our room looked like last week. if i ever get around to ironing (and starching, judging by the picture above) my new duvet cover and sheets and pillowcases, i'll post pictures of what it looks like now. although, it took me about a year for these pictures, so don't count your chickens.

i hate ups

i sent a package to san francisco in december. usps told me i'd missed the cutoff time (3:30 pm) to get it there the next day, so i went to the ups store. i paid $54 to ship it guaranteed overnight with $1,000 of insurance. the package had about $3,000 of jewelry inside. i tracked it online as it arrived in san diego that night. and then didn't leave until the following night. the package arrived at 10:00 the next morning. about 19 hours late, and barely in time for the show which was the whole reason for this overnighting business. i'd also express mailed (with usps) a package to boston with $2,500 of insurance for about $19. that package arrived a day before the one in san francisco.

i meant to call ups to get some sort of refund on the shipping, but it was december, and i was busy, and the receipt just got lost in the shuffle. while cleaning off my desk yesterday, i rediscovered it, and called the ups store today. i told her the story, and she said, "it's been 8 months! there's nothing we can do." i said i'm not sure why it matters that it's been 8 months- it was still a guaranteed service, and it was still late.

i asked for ups' phone number, and the woman who answered said, very annoyed, "that was 8 months ago! you would have had to call within 15 days. it says it on our website. i can't do anything about it now." well, ups, while your life is shipping, mine is not. i said that policy was written in very tiny print on my receipt from the ups store, buried within a ton of other rules and regulations, and it was not clearly stated. and that that rule seemed to be designed so people would not ever get refunds because of that very small window of opportunity to complain. she said she didn't understand what i was talking about.

well ups, if shipping is your life, perhaps making sure packages arrive on time is a good idea.

otherwise, you should work on your customer service.


ps: the package in the picture was obviously not the one i was referring to (note the $4.60 postage), but a lovely friend, Aik, over at 'friends and family' did a product review and interview with me, and that picture is one she took. read all about it over there!

a masterpiece, of sorts.

yay for spending hours lining up rows of earrings just for this blog.

you can't see them all there, but there are 64 pairs in that lineup.

that setup was ridiculous, but looked so cool.

i found some new favorite color pairings laying these out.

citrine and smokey quartz- so modern, who knew?

i've been working on the above order for my favorite customer in japan for about 3 months now, and it's finally finished. now, i wasn't working all day everyday by any means. but the grand total was 84 necklaces, and 64 pairs of earrings. the necklaces were actually much simpler than the earrings. 64 earrings= 128 spiral wrapped stones, and 640 tiny headpins. my thumb and forefinger were a little sore for a few days. you can't really use a thimble while making jewelry.

inspiration bored.

in all my spare time this week, i've done surprisingly little. Although the week did include a rousing trip to the dentist who informed ryan and i that we need a little over two thousand dollars of dental work. oh, and that our insurance really doesn't want to pay for much of it. yay, auto repairs, healthcare costs, and taxes!

i took pictures of new designs today, as well as pictures of packaging. i've emailed a few design blogs to see if they would like to do a feature on my work or an interview on what inspires me, where i get my ideas from, how i started making jewelry, etc.

for you, dear readers (all two of you), i will post some inspiring pictures, in hopes of inspiring myself to...do whatever it is i'm supposed to be doing right now. which i'm pretty sure is making lunch.

an inspiration board. i need to make one of these with all those pictures ripped out of domino (r.i.p.), and all those paint swatches borrowed from restoration hardware.


this is a great idea, which i've seen a number of places now, which is to turn a vintage frame into a chalkboard. while the sound and mess of chalk on a chalkboard unnerves me, i could turn the huge vintage frame i already own into an inspiration board. you know, for behind my desk:

this desk, in white, is what i want more than anything right now. i feel like it's a practical purchase in this economy, and might inspire me to create new works of art in a workspace other than my coffee table.