CopperTide

2012-03-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

Well, I have found a new way to waste some hours - Pinterest!

I shouldn't say waste... it's not all a waste of time... but it sure can get addictive easily.

Pinterest is a relatively new social media site based on visual communication and sharing photos. I first heard of it when my sister showed me the "pinboard" she was making with all sorts of ideas for her wedding. Man, I wish Pinterest had existed when I was planing my wedding - what a neat way to gather ideas in one place and share them easily with your mom, sister, etc. Ok, so that example is particularly girly, but it's not just for the ladies. It's wide open.

Pretty much any photo you find online (that's not copy protected) can be "pinned" to this site and shared with anyone who cares to look, who can, in turn, "repin" the photo to their board, and on and on. Pinned photos are organized into categories called boards, and you can have as many boards as you please. People can also "like" and comment on your pins as well as their own. It's also cleverly hooked in with facebook so that you can find your friends and "follow" their pins, so that every time you sign on, all your friends' pins pop up on your home page, kind of like the home page feed on facebook - but less talk, more pretty pictures!

Sounds pretty interesting, right? Something you might check out just for fun if you have some free time one afternoon. That's what I thought, and that's how I got hooked. I had about an hour to kill one afternoon waiting for Mark to get home so we could leave on a trip. I pulled it up.... and ended up creating like twelve boards. I'm a fan of organizing with lists, you see, and when I can put ideas and pretty pictures into fun lists all in one place... well, I get a little carried away.

Here are a few of my boards: (I warn you, these links may not work unless you are logged in to Pinterest, so I'll leave that up to you...)
Artistic Inspiration
Best.Tools.Ever.
Art & Design
Art Jewelry

So there's already some art up there. And I started thinking that Pinterest could be a pretty good marketing tool. But then there's the copyright issue.

Now if you start looking, you can find article after article both praising and condemning sharing your work on Pinterest. I follow Art Biz Blog, and they have posted several articles on this very problem. I'm not going to go into both sides of the argument here, but suffice it to say, I was a little concerned about putting my own work up to be shared. So I polled my facebook friends to see what their takes on it were. Here are a few of their responses:

E.B. (photographer) : I say do it. You run the risk but you always run the risk, and I think it's probably a solid marketing tool.

J.C. (metalsmith) : do it. everyone copies everyone and if you limit how many people can see it you limit your customer base.

N.W. (painter) : Is it any different from putting your stuff out on Etsy or anywhere else really?

A.K. (metalsmith) : Recent article in ny times about several instances of litigation against those posting. Pinterest only protects themselves not their users. I decided not to go there...

All of this got me thinking of everywhere I post my work online. My website, hosted through Other People's Pixels, does now allow photos to be downloaded. But I have work posted on my personal facebook page, my facebook fan page, my Etsy page, as well as my blog. And to be honest, none of these images are safe.

So what to do? I agree with most of my friends in that Pinterest could be a pretty solid marketing tool. However, I believe that any art posted on Pinterest, or anywhere else for that matter, needs be properly cited with credit given to the maker. That said, if you're pinning someone else's art, make sure it links back to the original source, ideally the artist's website. And I always make sure that if the artist's name doesn't appear in the label, I trace it back, find the artist, and include their name in my label. If I can't find the artist, I don't post it.

My solution for my own work: adding a watermark right in the image. So even if the pinner doesn't credit me, my image does.

Subtle, so as not to detract, but there should there ever be any question. Now, just to add this to all the images I have online. Fun. But necessary.

I will be posting a tutorial on how to quickly make a watermark using Photoshop later on.

So how do you feel about Pinterest? What are your thoughts on the copyright issue? Please leave comments and suggestions for others as well! And please follow me on Pinterest, too! It's pretty fun... and addictive...

Sea Pods Sneak Preview

2012-02-26T13:23:00.000-08:00

Hello out there! It's been a while....

I've been hard at work in the studio as well as teaching workshops. I've had two great weekend workshops as well as a fun evening class so far this year. It's so great to work with interesting creative people! Especially when I'm used to it just being me and Buster all day every day. He's super cute and pretty good company, but not much of a conversationalist. Mark is, of course, around in the evenings, but we're so busy with evening business that, well, you know... time just sort of flies.

But lately I've been feeling very sea-y. I guess I just have the ocean in my bones. I got to go down to Oak Island a couple weekends ago, and it just feels like home. Nothing quite like the beach in the winter. So peaceful.

Buster and Jackson had no problem with the cold water.

So I when I got back home, I started thinking about a new jewelry line. I'm calling the line "Sea Pods." It will be with the same five or so colors in keeping with my Reef Jewelry line, but these will be more formed... pod-like if you will. I think there's a lot of potential with this line, so I'm pretty excited about it. I finished the first few pieces this week, and I plan to use these for applications to various shows, galleries, etc. Guess I know what I'm doing this week.......

But without further ado, I give you....

The "Sea Pods" Sneak Preview

I'll post more as I get them done, and please check out my facebook page for quick updates and more previews. Thanks for reading!

Winter/Spring Workshop Schedule

2012-01-09T08:27:00.000-08:00

Feel like learning some fun metals techniques? Here are the workshops and classes I'l be teaching over the next few months!

Enameling for Jewelry and Beyond

Students will learn basic techniques in enameling, such as sifting and kiln firing. We’ll apply these techniques (plus a few other fun things) to everything from pendants and earrings to items for the home - think drawer-pulls and light switch plates!

8 Tuesdays - Jan 10 - Feb 28
6:30-9:00pm
Visual Arts Center of Richmond - Richmond, VA

NC Black Co. Micro Raising Workshop

Raising is a process for forming sheet metal into vessel form using the metal's natural response to hammering. Students will explore methods for creating miniature vessel forms. These methods can be used to create sculpture and jewelry as well as vessels. Students will focus on samples in copper and will create a raised vessel by the end of the class. All tools are provided. Some metalsmithing experience is helpful, but not required.

Two 1-Day Workshops

February 4 - 10:00-5:00

February 5 - 10:00-5:00

Cape Fear Studios - Fayetteville, NC

3-Day Workshop

March 22-24 - 10:00-5:00 each day

Radford University - Radford, VA

Jewelry Fabrication Weekend Workshop

This is the perfect introduction to creating jewelry the traditional way, by starting with sheet metal and wire. You'll learn about the basic tools of the jeweler: a jeweler's saw, pliers, hammers, and the torch. We'll cover techniques that will enable you to create beautiful wearable jewelry, such as rings, bracelets, and pendants! We'll work with copper with sterling silver, and will provide all the materials, tools and equipment. No experience necessary - all you need is enthusiasm!

Feb 18-19 (Sat-Sun)
10:00-4:30 both days
Sawtooth School for Visual Art - Winston-Salem, NC

Galvanic Etching and Champleve Enameling

Galvanic etching, or electro-etching, is a process that uses electricity rather than acid to etch metal. Students will learn forming techniques for their specific pieces, and then we’ll move into champleve enameling, a technique that involves wet-packing enamel powder into the recesses created by etching the metal.

8 Tuesdays - March 13 - May 1
6:30-9:00pm
Visual Arts Center of Richmond - Richmond, VA

Using the Hydraulic Die Press in the Jewelry Studio

Explore the fascinating realm of forming metal with a hydraulic die press. You can easily add dimension to your metalwork with the hydraulic press. Being able to easily create multiples of a simple form is one of its greatest assets. Students will learn to create original dies in acrylic sheet or other material, then use these dies to make puffed metal forms that can be altered using various techniques and textures. You can make multiples for a series of jewelry pieces, each one with the same outside silhouette but finished differently. The possibilities are endless. Basic Jeweler's Saw skills are helpful, but beginners are welcome.

May 19-20 (Sat-Sun)
10:00-4:30 both days
Sawtooth School for Visual Art - Winston-Salem, NC

The Year in Pictures

2012-01-01T15:45:00.000-08:00

January First. Beginning of a New Year.

And you know what? I GOT this. I am all over it.

2011 was crazy and scary and amazing. I worked my ass off, and I feel like I am finally moving in the right direction. Yay!

I took the last few days off to work on some personal projects that I just haven't had time for with everything else going on. I spent hours this past week going through all the photos I have taken this year, editing and cropping, and just loving reliving all those moments. Now, I am my mother's daughter, so I pretty much always have a camera glued to my hand. And I'm a sucker for sunsets and oceans and clouds. But I'll try not to get tooo carried away.....

January: I sent in my portfolio for my graduate school application.

Then Mark and I moved to Richmond. This is the first day of setting up the new studio!

February: Buster came into our lives and we all enjoyed exploring Richmond together.

March : I revamped the look of my jewelry business, CopperTide.

April: Worked on tool designs and Micro Raising Workshop development with NC Black Co.

May: Chuck and I taught our first Micro Raising Workshop

at Sawtooth School for Visual Art in Winston-Salem, NC.

Then I went to the SNAG conference in Seattle and worked the

NC Black vendor booth with Andrea and Les.

June: I launched my new Reef Jewelry line.

July : Traveled to Colorado with NC Black to do a vendor booth at the CoMA Conference.

August : My first outdoor "craft show," the Watermelon Festival in Carytown.

Then took a little time off for the beach, and got to see a hurricane pass by the SC coast. Amazing.

September : Mark and I launched our new business, CopperDog Studio.

October: Taught my first enameling workshop at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond.

November : Started teaching an evening course at The Visual Arts Center, then got some more beach time for Thanksgiving.

December : Made lots of jewelry, dog tags, and festive confectionery delights!

So here's to 2011! It was a hell of a year!

2012 : BRING.IT.ON.

Oh, That Tricky, Tricky Ego...

2011-11-30T08:08:00.000-08:00

One thing I struggle with sometimes is comparing myself and where I am in my career with my colleagues. I imagine this is fairly common within all fields, but I think that perhaps those of us who consider ourselves artists take it maybe a little more personally because we have such close personal ties to our work. When I read something about one of my contemporaries, maybe someone I went to school with, for instance, and they're having a moment of great success, I'm happy for them (really, I am), but I can't help comparing what I'm doing with what they're doing. I mean, yes, I feel like I have some amazing things going on right now, but I always feel like I should be doing more, especially in my own jewelry and metalwork.

photo by Lauren Carroll

Last year at this time, I was working feverishly on my portfolio for my grad school application. I felt mostly good about my work, and felt like I was moving in the right direction. I only applied to one school, VCU, and it was really the reason Mark and I decided to go ahead and move to Richmond. When I found out I was third on the list when they realized that they only had the funding to bring two new students into the program, I was disappointed to say the least. But I decided to reapply in a year, and in the meantime work on my portfolio, pursue my jewelry business, and continue working for my friends at NC Black Co.

Well, here it is, two months from application time again, and I have so many things going on, I haven't had time to work on my portfolio all year. I have ideas and sketches for some great pieces, but I haven't made them yet. And I have to ask myself, why is that? Why are these other pursuits taking precedent over my portfolio work? Well, the answer is clear, they're just more important to me right now. A year ago, I felt like I was moving in the right direction, but this year has presented so many other opportunities, from working on my businesses, CopperTide and CopperDog Studio, teaching in workshop settings (teaching was really the main thing that inspired me to go back to school in the first place), both with NC Black and on my own, plus all my work with NC Black Co. outside of teaching. I feel like now I'm really moving in the right direction, and it's almost as if breaking from all these pursuits to go back school right now would be counter-productive.

But I was still torn.

I had a conversation with my friend and teaching partner, Chuck Kennington, about all my feelings on the subject, and he said something that really struck me, "Don't let your ego make the decision for you."

Yes, I felt defeated when I didn't get into grad school last spring, and there is a part of me that wants to prove that I can. I want the prestige, and I want the respect of my contemporaries. I sometimes get the feeling I am looked down upon because I don't yet have my MFA. But really, what does that matter? It's just a piece of paper, after all. The other NC Black teaching team, Andrea Kennington and Les Bryant, are proof that it may not matter all that much. Andrea has her MFA in Metals from ECU (where I got my BFA) and Les is completely self-taught. He has taken workshops from masters, but has no degree. And yet they're doing the same job. Andrea even told me flat out that having her MFA hasn't opened any doors for her. You go out there and you open those doors yourself.

Hmmmmm..........

So after talking with Chuck and Andrea and Mark of course, and lots of thinking and weighing of options, I've made the decision to put grad school on hold indefinitely. I'm not totally ruling it out as a future possibility, but it basically comes down to the fact that I just don't need an MFA to do what I'm already doing. So there's that.

So even though I'm happy with my decision and the way things are progressing in my career, it doesn't mean I don't still feel a twinge of jealousy when I hear that this colleague got into a show that I wasn't accepted to, that one got her own solo exhibition, and this one got published in a major industry magazine. I'm happy for them, and I respect their work and know that they deserve these things. But dammit, I want it, too! So I will just have to turn this little streak of green into inspiration to make time, work harder, and get my work out there, recognized, and respected!

Ready?? Go!!!

The Alchemist

2011-11-13T08:42:00.000-08:00

I recently read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho for the first time. I have no idea why I never read it before, but it's something every artist and every person who is trying to persue their personal legend should read. Both Mark and my dear friend Lindsey recommended it to me, and I'm sooo glad!

Lindsey and I were talking one day about our job and life situations. She is a friend from art school, a college roommate actually, and a very creative person. She recently quit her job to go back to school to pursue a dream that she had always had. I, however, did not quit my job, but was laid off two years ago. But rather than rush out and take the first crappy McJob I could find (to be fair, even crappy McJobs have been hard to come by the past two years), I began working for my friends (NC Black Co.) in my field, and began pursuing my dream of being a full-time artist and living an artful life. Sometimes things happen for a reason. As the book says, "we must be prepared to have patience in difficult times, and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we might not understand how."
Coelho says that in order to pursue our dreams we must first overcome four obstacles. First, we are often told from the time we are children that everything we want to do is impossible. Our dreams become buried in layers of prejudice, fear, and guilt, and can become nearly invisible, but they're still there. If we can hang on to the dreams and overcome this obstacle, then comes a second: love. We're afraid we're hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dreams. But we have to realize that those who love us genuinely wish us well, want us to be happy, and are prepared to accompany us on this journey. Once we've accepted that love is a stimulus rather than a reason to not move forward, we're up against the third obstacle: the fear of defeat. This is particularly terrifying because those of us who fight for our dreams suffer much more when it doesn't work out because we can't use the excuse that we must not have wanted it that badly anyway. But defeats will happen. It's just part of the game. As Coelho says, "The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times, and to get up eight times." After overcoming all of these obstacles, there comes the fourth: the fear of actually realizing the dreams we fought for our entire lives. We actually feel guilty for getting what we want because we see all those around us who have failed to do so, that we feel we don't deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, and all the suffering along the way, all the things we had to give up. This is the most dangerous of all because it has a "saintly aura about it, renouncing joy and conquest." But we must believe that we are worthy of the things we fought so hard for, and that this is the reason that we are here in this world.

And all of this from the introduction?!? Love.

The book itself is actually a novel about a shepard boy who meets an old king who tells him about following his personal legend. The boy sells his flock and buys a ticket to Africa to begin his pursuit, and soon loses all he has. He has to stop a few times along the journey for various reasons, and he finally meets the Alchemist, who helps him to see things more clearly. The boy never gives up, though he is sometimes distracted by all the obstacles of life, but he is always, in some way, in pursuit of his personal legend.

I love this book. It is so inspiring to me at this point in my life as I try to figure out the best way to pursue my dreams and be the best person I can be. When I feel myself getting discouraged or frustrated, I think about the message of this book, and it puts me back on the right track - or at least back in the right frame of mind.

Seriously, go read it. Now.

VisArts Enameling Workshop

2011-10-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I taught a Basic Enameling workshop at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. It was my first workshop there, and I had a great time. The facility is very nice, fully equipped studio, friendly people, organized administration, fabulous students!

Mark and I moved to Richmond this past January, and knew basically nothing about the city. Someone suggested that I look into the Visual Arts Center as a place to work and to meet some interesting people. I made an appointment last Spring and pitched my proposals for classes and workshops for the Fall session, and came to find out that VisArts was fully equipped for enameling, with four kilns and lots of old enamels, but they had had no one to teach it in years. Lucky for me! I proposed two enameling workshops and an etching and enameling class. I was able to make my Basic Enameling workshop run with only three people, but I don't think my next workshop, Alternative Techniques in Enameling (Nov. 12-13) is going to make this session. Oh well. I already have five people signed up for my evening class, Galvanic Etching and Champleve Enameling, starting in a couple weeks (Tuesday evenings, Nov. 15 - Dec. 20, 6-9pm). So that will be a lot of fun.

Anyway, back to the Basic Enameling workshop. Prior to the workshop, I went into the VisArts studio and made colors samples of all the enamels they had to offer.

I made handouts including some basic info and facts about enamels, descriptions and how-to's with the techniques we were covering, and some tips and tricks that just make things a little easier as you're going. I made samples of all the different techniques we'd be trying, which were surprisingly a lot, given that this was a basic enameling workshop. And honestly, it was a lot of fun to revisit those techniques that I don't often use. In my first enameling class, we were presented with a whole lot of basic techniques like this, and then were asked to take this knowledge and make a piece of jewelry. Well, that's all well and good, but there were so many different things that I wanted to try, I ended up trying to use several on one piece and it came out looking rather muddled. I remember wishing we had been given some extra time just for making samples of each technique to try them all out and see what we liked before jumping into a piece of jewelry.

So that's what I asked my students to do. The first day, I did demos of several basic limoges techniques, and then the students did their own samples. After lunch, I showed them a few basse-taille techniques, and they were free to make some samples of basse-taille or anything else they wanted to explore.

Since we only had three hours to work on Sunday, their homework assignment that night was to come up with a piece that they wanted to make based on the techniques we had covered.

Greg made a beautiful landscape tile:

Gwen made a gorgeous leaf-shaped pendant:

I thought everyone did a wonderful job, and we all had a lot of fun! I hope to see them again in future workshops and classes. Can't wait for my next class.

Thanks VisArts and students!

Blogging Slacker!

2011-10-27T08:59:00.000-07:00

My, my, my... what the little blogging slacker I have been! Here it is, the end of October, and I have not posted all month! I may have had a few other things going on, though..... here's a brief (ok, mabe not so brief) summary of my 4 jobs + life:

My main business focus has been CopperDog Studio. I've been using what I've learned so far in my Marketing course to apply it to getting this business started right. Unfortunately, I am only 5 lessons deep in a 12 lesson course, but I'm learning..... I got the website up and running. For those of you who have been following, we decided to go with Big Cartel as our host, and we have already made more sales than I've ever made from my CopperTide site through Other People's Pixels. (I think I will switch that one over when review time comes up in a few months.) So, that's going. We made samples of each style of tag we offer, and came up with a clever display... on a dog collar!

We sent a similar display with order forms, etc. to Brother Wolf Animal Rescue in Asheville, NC. My friend Nicole works there, and is advocating for us. We hope to have a good relationship set up with them soon, with 10% of the proceeds from sales made through BWAR donated back to them. We also hope to set up similar sitiuations with other rescue groups. This display set is going with us to the dog park this weekend to try our hand at person to person sales. A little marketing tip on placement there. The people are there, thinking about their dogs, so just place this right in front of them and start a conversation.

So there's all that for CopperDog, plus filling orders, etc.

CopperTide has fallen a little behind while getting CopperDog up and running, but I've made a few items, and I'm applying for holiday shows. Check.

Job #3 is with NC Black Co. I have been down to NC a couple times in the last month or so to work with them. The first trip was supposed to be just a quick one to take photos of their new hammers for their website and for a catalog.

Well, that turned into a weekend trip with my teaching partner, Chuck, to Gatlinburg, TN to deliver tools to the store at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. And we got to see some of the glory that is Gatlinburg. Wow. That place would make me want to vomit if it wasn't for Arrowmont. But since this amazing craft school is there, it just makes the rest of the insanely weird tourist trap tolerable, and even hilarious. It was a great time. I love my job.

So anyway, I took some photos when we got back to NC. Edited them, and sent a CD of images to Grobet for their catalog. Congrats to NC Black on the Grobet parnetship, by the way! It's so inspiring to see a small company of talented people finding success! I'm so fortunate to work with them and call them my friends! I took another trip down to see them mid-month to take more photos for ther new website - this time, photos of the people behind NC Black.

And we spent some time working on plans and samples for a new workshop offered by NC Black, Etched Anticlastic Neckpieces.

Which brings me to Job #4 : Teaching. Last weekend I taught an enameling workshop at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. That was a great time with great students. The workshop will get its own post tomorrow. But I just wanted to mention it as another thing I have going on these days. This was the first time I had taught this particular workshop, so planning was involved. And that includes writing a handout and making samples, among other thing. But I really enjoyed it, and look forward to teaching more at VisArts. In fact, I have an evening class in Galvanic Etching and Champleve Enameling coming up, starting November 15, so I guess I better get on the preparations for that! Plus, I've been writing class proposals and sending them in for Winter/Spring classes at VisArts and Sawtooth School for Visual Art. Whew!

Sometimes it's hard to get my mind all organized around everything. Especially when you throw in life stuff. Mark and the pets and I have a lot of fun (somewhere in there), but there's still shopping, chores, and cooking to be done. And there's that looming portfolio situation, and a big decision to be made with that. But I won't get into that right now. So hopefully it's understandable why I've been such a blogging slacker lately. I do plan to get back on that. And start one for just CopperDog Studio. So I'm off to check things off my lists, add more things to them, and make Halloween cookies. Nope, I'm not sorry. There's always time for Halloween. Cheers!

Websites and the Whatnot

2011-09-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

Last week I introduced our new business, CopperDog Studio, to my blog readers and to the world of facebook. I also put some tags up for sale on etsy. We have sold two tags on etsy... to a friend, but still, our first sales, so yay!

This week I have been focused on building a proper website. A friend suggested Big Cartel as a good host for artists as a selling platform, so I tried it out. They have several levels of involvement: the "gold" level is free, is somewhat customizable, but only lets you have 5 products. I went with the next level, the "platinum" level, which is $9.99/month and lets you have up to 25 products, "full" customization, and several other better features. However, the "full" customization is really only for people who know HTML and CSS coding language. I do not. In fact, I'll be honest, I had never even heard of CSS until this week. Now you might think I'm a web dummy. Yep, I'll admit it. I took a computer art class in college, and that was only 10 years ago, but CSS was not very widely used if it was even around at all back then, and we just barely touched on HTML after we played with Photoshop and Illustrator for most of the semester. (I do love me some Photoshop!) Well, after doing some research, I was able to learn enough to be able to embed a mailing list sign up form directly onto a page of my website, and I considered this a major breakthrough. However, I have yet to figure out how to do it on facebook. But speaking of facebook, Big Cartel has a facebook app that allows you to link directly to your store from your facebook fan page. Major points for BC there. I'll get to the points thing here in a minute. I was really frustrated with all this CSS business, knowing that every time I wanted to change something beyond the super basic stuff, I would have to mess with that again.

So I was considering other options. I use Other People's Pixels to host my CopperTide website, so I'm familiar with their control panel, and it's really user-friendly. OPP is great as portfolio display site, but not so great with the sales. They also offer lots of customization options that you don't have to know coding language for. So I thought I would build a website there, too, and see which one I like better. They also offer a 14 day free trial (after which, if I decided to keep it, it would cost $16/month or $160/year). A little more expensive, but I didn't have anything to lose by setting up a trial. On my end, OPP is much easier to use, but there are also some things I don't like about their set-up.

So I made a list comparing the two:

Big Cartel

www.copperdogstudio.com

- home page = product views

- when you open a product view, there can be up to 3 images for the same product which you scroll through

- product description is displayed in a narrow column that makes it seem incredibly long and tedious - even though it's all important info

- clear about "add to cart" on each product

- you can add as many items to your cart as you like

- allows me to add shipping costs for one piece and then for additional pieces

- weird format for links -they're all tiny over on the right side

- i was able to embed an email list sign up form, but you have to follow a tiny link on the right side to get there

Other People's Pixels

http://awilli16.otherpeoplespixels.com/home.html <----- this would change to the above address if I chose to go with this host (this is a free trial)

- no product views on home page, just 1 image of my choice

- when you open a product view (from the nav bar) you only get one image per product

- product description is still a narrow column, but not as narrow; uses a scroll bar on the screen rather than scrolls the whole screen down, so you see the image the whole time

- not so clear on how to "add to cart" (by clicking on the different color price link)

- you can only buy one item at a time

- does not allow me to add shipping costs, I would have to send the customer a revised paypal invoice

- good nav bar at top of page, clear on what is where

- i was not able to embed an email sign up form, but i was able to add links to do so on both the home page and the contact page

As I had spent hours and hours immersed in website business, I felt like I had lost a little bit of my objectivity, so I asked a few friends with some marketing savvy their opinions from both a marketing standpoint and a customer's viewpoint. All but one said they preferred the Big Cartel site. Pretty much, I knew BC was the way to go after reviewing my list, but it's always nice to have some feedback. If this was just a place to display the work, I would probably stick with OPP, but as this is a business and the focus is driving sales, we're going with Big Cartel. One of my friends even said that from a customer standpoint, everything was clear on the BC site, but he would probably get frustrated and leave the OPP site and buy his tag elsewhere. Not what you want. That was just the kind of feedback I needed - thanks, Paul.

So I have a lot to learn about CSS code, but I would rather have to work more on my end than lose sales because the site is not user-friendly to buyers. It might not look quite as pretty right now, but the more I can learn about CSS, the more I'll be able to customize it and make it awesome!

I would love to hear your opinion, too! Check out both sites -

Big Cartel : www.copperdogstudio.com
Other People's Pixels : http://awilli16.otherpeoplespixels.com/home.html

Let me know what you like and what you don't - the more you comment, the more information is out there and can help other people trying to figure out what to do with their websites.
.
I found another article comparing Big Cartel with Etsy and Storenvy. I've never used Storenvy, but it might be worth checking out, too - since it's free!

Who do you use to host your site? Is your focus on sales or display? Are you happy with your website?

Check back soon for more updates! Thanks for reading!

CopperDog Studio

2011-09-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

Mark and I have been super busy trying to get everything ready to launch our new business, CopperDog Studio!

The idea for CopperDog came about when we finally realized we couldn't keep ALL the stray buddies we came across, but we still wanted to do something to help out local rescue organizations. As you know, we do have an adopted kitty, Gabardine, and our adopted pup, Buster. We came across another stray dog a little while ago, and unfortunately we couldn't keep him. But we met so many kind and helpful people and organizations in the search for a home for Fat Boi (not our name for him), that we were more inspired than ever to get this business going.

We make handmade etched copper dog tags and pet portraits. All of our products are custom made. 10% of proceeds are donated to local rescue organizations in the hopes that we can help more sweet pets find good loving homes!

We're really excited about this, and we're in the initial stages of launching the business. I'm going to try to do this right, and I may be already jumping the gun. (I probably am.) We have business cards and postcards on the way from vistaprint. Above is the postcard. I posted our first products, handmade etched copper dog tags on our etsy page yesterday evening, and posted a few pics on the new facebook page! Please click and "like" us!

I'm still working on my "Marketing for Makers" home study course, and I have already learned a lot. I know I have a lot more to learn, and I will share things as I go. But I was excited, and I had to go ahead and share CopperDog Studio with you!

More to come as we get rolling! Stay tuned!

Reality Check

2011-09-12T08:40:00.000-07:00

I never stop being busy. With work stuff, with life stuff, with fun stuff, it's always something. I did take a break last month for a week-long family vacation at Hilton Head Island, SC. It was fabulous. The beach is my favorite place ever, and this was a beautiful one. We were there to watch Hurricane Irene pass by the SC coast before slamming into the Outer Banks of NC and going on to wreak havoc on the Northeast.

This was taken at about 11:30am, about 30 seconds before the torrential downpour. Gorgeous to be able to watch it come in like that.

This was about 8:00pm when the rain finally let up. Love it.

Ahhh, the beach. Ever-inspiring. For more photos, visit my photostream.

When we got back, we had no cable or internet for a week. Thanks, Irene. But we got it easy... poor Vermont. Even though it did put me waaaaaaay behind, work-wise. So I have been playing catch-up ever since. So busy.

So Mark and I are busy launching a new business - you know, one's not enough... - CopperDog Studio. It gets its own post soon, I promise. But I figured I better step up my marketing efforts for both businesses. We have high hopes for CopperDog, so I gotta get on it. I have posted a few teasers and sneak peeks on my facebook page, but that's about it for public interaction. My goal is to get it ready for orders this week. Whew!

Back to the marketing efforts: I signed up for an e-course called "Marketing for Makers" by Megan Auman, author of Crafting an MBA. I highly recommend her blog, and I have a feeling I will highly recommend this e-course, too, when I'm done with it. I just started with Lesson One this morning, and already it's forced me to really look at my current business statistics and to make goals for six months to a year from now. (Also, Google Analytics is a must-have if you have any sort of online business. If you don't have it already, go get it, it's free.) I have a bad habit of just taking in the sales when they come - I keep a record for taxes, etc, but usually the money goes right back into the business. So I haven't really taken an in-depth look at statistics and averages, etc, until now. It's very interesting, but a little depressing to be quite honest, when I compare it to how much I would have been making at my old job - which wasn't that great either, but I could live on it comfortably and even build up a little savings. Which is a goal I have for my craft business, but I do realize that starting any business you usually don't make any money for the first three years or so. So this course guides you through setting goals for the immediate future as well as the a little further on down the road. Plus it's not just about setting goals for sales, it's about setting goals for your marketing efforts. I'm really excited to get this going, and I'll report more as I learn more.

Now, I'm off to the Visual Arts Center of Richmond to make some enamel samples for some of the workshops I'll be teaching this fall! They start this coming weekend, Sept. 17-18, so if you know of anyone who would be interested in Micro Raising or Enameling in the Richmond VA, Winston-Salem NC, or Ridgefield CT areas, have them look us up! They're all going to be super-fun! Ok, shameless plug, but seriously it would be a great time, and I need more people to sign up so that all the workshops will make, especially these first few!

Check back soon for more info and to hear about CopperDog Studio for all you puppy-lovers out there!

Thanks for reading!

Fall Workshop Schedule

2011-08-14T09:55:00.000-07:00

Want to learn more about metalsmithing and enameling techniques? Here are the workshops I'll be teaching this Fall! Come join us!

NC Black Micro-Raising Workshop (with Chuck Kennington)
Raising is a process for forming sheet metal into vessel form using the metal's natural response to hammering. This workshop focuses on traditional techniques in raising, but on a small scale. Using tools specially designed and fabricated by the NC Black team, students will explore methods for creating miniature vessel forms. These methods can be used to create sculpture and jewelry as well as vessels. Students will focus on samples in copper, and will complete a raised piece by the end of the workshop. This is an excellent workshop for beginners as well as experienced metalsmiths who enjoy learning new techniques.
September 17-18 : Visual Arts Center, Richmond, VA
Sept 30 - Oct 2 : Guilded Lynx Jewelry Studio and School, Ridgefield, CT

Basic Enameling Workshop
Enameling is the process of fusing powdered glass to metal at high temperatures in a kiln or using a torch. In this workshop, we will be focusing on the basic techniques of enameling such as sifting and kiln firing, and will use both transparent and opaque enamels. Students will learn additional techniques such as Sgraffito (scratching through enamel) and Basse Taille (using transparent enamels over textured metal.) Students will make several pieces in various shapes and will learn how to set their pieces. This class is perfect for beginners and those who have some metalsmithing experience but are not very familiar with enamels.
October 22-23 : Visual Arts Center, Richmond, VA

Alternative Techniques in Enameling Workshop
Enameling is the process of fusing powdered glass to metal at high temperatures. This workshop will focus on alternative and contemporary techniques in enameling. Topics and demonstrations covered will include: torch firing, liquid enamels, controlled over and under firing, inclusions, and alternative setting techniques. A basic understanding of enameling is helpful but not required.
September 24-25 : Sawtooth School for Visual Art, Winston-Salem, NC
November 12-13 : Visual Arts Center, Richmond, VA

Galvanic Etching and Champleve Enameling Class
Galvanic etching, or electro-etching, is a process that uses electricity rather than acid to etch copper and sterling silver. Students will learn this technique and several image transfer methods and resists that will be used to create etched blanks for jewelry, such as bracelets, earrings, and pendants, as well as for other uses such as home accents - think drawer pulls or even light switch plates! Students will learn forming techniques for their specific pieces, and then we’ll move into enameling!
Champleve is an enameling technique that involves wet-packing enamel powder into the recesses created by etching the metal. The enamel fills these recesses and leaves the un-etched metal exposed, creating beautiful detailed designs.This workshop is perfect for beginning and intermediate students.
November 15 - December 20, Tuesdays 6-9pm
Visual Arts Center, Richmond, VA

Smashing Melons

2011-08-08T07:49:00.000-07:00

Smashing success? I wouldn't say that....

As I predicted, the Watermelon Festival was not a show for selling art jewlery. The crowds were good, a pretty significant amount of my target customers: women aged 25-60. And there were lots of familes, which may have hurt us a little. The booth right next to us was selling silver jewelry where you could have your child's thumbprint or whatever taken and have it etched into a pendant. (Good idea, but not my style. However, we have a idea in the works to appeal to some dog lovers... stay tuned for more about that!) They had a good deal more business than we did - people out with their kids are far more likely to spend money on something involving their kids than on themselves. But the owner said that is was definitely not a good show for her either, and she would not be doing it next year. Neither will we. The woman selling beaded jewelry on the other side of us said the same. We were all unimpressed with the lack of organization of the festival, the high booth fees, and the poor sales. I did make a few sales, but nothing to write home about. I wanted to at least make back my booth fee. Not even close.
It's hard not to take it personally when you're so tied into what you're selling. Your artwork is a part of you. Not to mention all the time and money tied up in something like this. And good lord, it was hot! I'm not kidding, it was 105 degrees. It's hard to sit there for hours without making a sale when your fingernails are sweating. At one point Mark said, "I feel like I'm about to burst into flames... don't you?" I said, "No, I feel like I'm going to melt into a puddle. A puddle of FAILURE!!!" And laughed. I try to joke when I'm feeling down, but yeah, it's not a good feeling. It's disheartening. I think that's a good word for it. And disappointing. And poor Mark, he's just the best husband ever. What a trooper to sit out there with me all day and support me through all this. I couldn't do it without him. Thanks, weets!

We ended up changing our tent arrangement around so people could enter from both sides of the street.

One side

Mark's framed screens worked great, but the dangly price tags did not. Those had to go, and we quickly made signs about pricing to put in front of our displays.

And I don't really feel like a failure... that was just a joke (mostly). I am disappointed with the show, but you know, I learned a lot in the whole process of the thing. And that's what you have to take away from an experience like this. And it's almost like paying your dues to the art world - you gotta lose some before you can win some. I'll sell all the jewelry eventually. And now I have tables and displays and all kinds of stuff to use the next time around - at a better show. And I did have a lot of people interested, especially in the Reef Jewelry, even if they didn't buy yestreday. Maybe they'll visit the website and purchase something later. I also met a guy who was interested in buying some work wholesale for his shop. So it wasn't a total loss. Good contacts, possible future customers. So I'll look at it that way, and move on to the next thing.

Craft Show Check List

2011-08-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

It's the day before my first ever craft festival. And when I say craft festival, I mean the Carytown Watermelon Festival where I will have a craft vendor booth. I have run the gamut of emotions this past week - from frustrated to excited to regretful to hopeful to exasperated to energetic and back again. If you read my last post, I was in one of those frustrated and exasperated moods. It happens. There's no need to pretend it doesn't. That's just part of this whole making a living from what you love game. It gets emotional because you're tied to your work in so many ways.

I finished the main body of work I want to take on Thursday. Here is my tagging and pricing station in the living room Thurday night. Yes, I needed some wine to help me out.

So yesterday and today I have been mostly running though my checklist - I based a lot of mine on this one I found online - and running to the store for a few last minute things I thought of - like printing a nice 8x10 sign for the booth in the style of my business card, getting extra price tags and plastic baggies, etc.

I also made other little signs to place around the booth, an artist bio, my process, and up-coming workshops for this fall.
Trying to figure out everything you need to take for this sort of thing can be rather daunting if you've never done it before. I gathered a lot of ideas from various blogs and sites, and compiled a checklist of my own. Here it is:

Artwork:
- I read somewhere that work should all be a similar style or aesthetic, you want the viewers/customers to get an sense of your style but without overwhelming them with all the different styles you yourself might have. So I opted to go with my more "flat" lines, ones that don't have much forming involved. (At a different, more art oriented show, I would probably include a lot of formed pieces, but I don't think this is the crowd for that - for the most part.)

- Work at various price points, all clearly marked and priced. My range is $8 to $80 for this show, and I have over 100 items (hope it's enough to fill the space!), the majority are earrings and pendants.

- Inventory sheet with prices for us to mark when something sells

- Extra price tags and markers

- Extra earwires and chains

- Tools for fixing or changing things to suit customers' needs

- Boxes, bags, and tissue for packaging fragile items

Tent and Displays

- Because I'm on a budget, I borrowed a 10x10 tent from my parents - thanks! - however, it is blue, which is fine according to the requirements for the show, but I hope it won't be too dark. But rather than invest in a white tent right off the bat, I thought I would give this a try first and make sure I enjoyed doing shows before investing a significant amount in something so specific.

- I bought three 6-foot folding tables, but after setting up the tent last weekend in the yard for a run-through, Mark and I thought three was a little crowded, and it would look better with just two, plus people would have more space to move around. Also, jewelry is small... filling up three tables was a bit dauting in itself.

- two chairs

- I decided to wait and see about the weather forecast before I tried to figure out tent walls, tie-downs, etc (the festival is on the street), and fortunately, it's supposed to be nice tomorrow. yay! But that is something I'll have to figure out by next time.

- Tablecloths, clean and pressed

- Clear acrylic frames for the above mentioned signage, bio, etc.

- Display trays - I am using six 8x14 black plastic gemstone display trays filled with the coarse sand that I use as my background for photographing my work for my website and as the background on my business card and sign. (See photos above.) I think that ties it together nicely.

- Grid displays - Mark made me a super-awesome diptych frame and a single frame with 1/4" wire mesh for hanging jewelry.

- Harware for set-up - hammer, tape, pins, c-clamps, shims for table legs, weights for tent legs

Paperwork

- Copy of state tax ID / seller's permit

- Copy of load-in info sheet from the festival (since there was no acceptance letter) and copy of canceled check for booth fees

- Business cards / postcards

- Company name sign

- Resume

- Artist statement / bio (which will be displayed in an acrylic frame)

- Descriptions of the up-coming workshops I'll be teaching this fall

- Referrals and invitations to other galleries and shows

- If I had it, I would also include info for other craft shows I had done or was going to do - I read that this was great to have for sharing with other crafters

- Inventory sheet / price list

- Special order forms - I'm just using my sales receipt book which has 3 copies, and allows for me to take a deposit (50%)

Sales and Office Supplies

- Cash box with $200 in ones, fives, tens, and change

- Credit card equipment - I just got a Droid phone and several people recommended signing up for Square which plugs into your smart phone's audio jack and lets you swipe credit cards. They send it to you for free, and you download their free app, and it only charges you 2.75% per swipe. You link your bank account like you would to paypal, and the money is deposited in your account the next day. I'm excited to use it, and think it will definitely help in making sales since people don't always carry a lot of cash, but they're always sure to have their plastic!

- Sales receipt book

- Calculator

- Pens / pencils

- Clipboard

- Stapler

- Pins

- Scissors

- Tape

Miscellaneous

- Cooler with food and drinks

- Paper towels

- Cleaning Supplies

- Change of clothes/shoes

- Extra make-up, deodorant, etc

- Aspirin, etc

- Bug spray

- Sunglasses/sunscreen

- Camera

I think that just about does it. Good grief, that's a lot to think about! So I would recommend giving yourself at least one whole day to get all of that together. I took two, and I'm glad because that means I had time to post this, do a couple little extra things, and relax a little this evening before the big show in the morning.

So wish me luck, and I'll have an update on how everything went on Monday. Happy Watermelon Fest!

Seedless Watermelon Head

2011-08-01T07:47:00.000-07:00

Wow, I'm feeling really overwhelmed right now. If you've been following my blog (admittedly, there haven't been many posts to follow lately) or my facebook page, you know that I signed up for a craft vendor booth at the Carytown Watermelon Festival coming up soon. Well, "soon" has become 6 days away, and I am now filled with self-doubt and anxiety. Awesome. I have been working my ass off trying to get enough jewelry made for this festival, as well as trying to figure out displays and marketing. I have no idea what I'm doing. None.
Last fall, I decided I would have a small table set up at the Barbeque Festival in Lexington, NC in conjuction with High Rock Outfitters, an awesome coffee shop/kayak/outdoor adventure shop which sells some of my jewelry. Well, the festival was a complete bust for me. I didn't sell a single piece of jewelry. Apparently, barbeque folk are not art jewelry folk. I know, big surprise, right? Fortunately though, I didn't have anything but time (making jewelry, etc) invested in it.
This festival is a different story in that regard. I think I may have bitten off a big ol' piece of somethin' I can't chew. I have been wanting to break into the craft fair / festival scene for a while, and when I found out about the Watermelon Festival, I thought it might be a great opportunity in my own new town, etc. I applied in April, and when I hadn't heard anything by June, I figured I hadn't been accepted. No big deal. By then, I had talked to more people, and had been given some advice about not applying for shows that were really about something else, like music or food or whatever. Fine. Well, one day I checked my bank statement and my check for the entry fee had been cashed. No email or acceptance letter or anything, just a cashed check. So I had to dig around and find someone to contact, who got back to me a few days later saying that yes, information would be sent soon, but that if my check had been cashed then I was in. Ok...... So that was my first clue that this might be a little squirrelly. But I had paid my booth fee, so I was doing it. And I got to work.
Now, knowing that this festival was not just a craft show, I thought I better make some lower end pieces because that's probably the crowd that's going to be there. Hopefully a little more willing to spend some money on jewelry than barbeque folk, but still, it would be mainly impulse buys. I'm thinking $30 and under will be the majority of sales. So I have a stockpile of small simple copper earrings in circle and triangle shapes that I will sell for around $10. I have sets of wine glass charms that will be $12-15. I have sun-catchers made of copper wire and sea glass for about $20, and I made watermelon enamel jewlery!

Now, I was a little afraid that making watermelon jewelry specifically for the watermelon festival was a little whorey. But I actually like them. I think they're pretty cool. And they're not way off from my style. I mean, yes, it's literal, but I don't think it bothers me. I'm going to try to keep the prices lower, but I did actually spend some time on these, and I don't want to sell myself short either. Maybe I will offer a festival discount on these to boost sales.

I'm also taking new disc jewelry - the smaller earrings are $35-40. And I'm taking some of the new Reef Jewelry line, even though I don't really expect to sell any of those because I think they are probably pretty expensive for this kind of event - $40-80 - but they're eye-catching, and maybe someone will see them and be drawn into the booth or maybe take a business card for and remember them future purchases.

But I have invested not only a lot of time into this, but a sum of money as well. The booth fee, tables and chairs (I was able to borrow a 10x10 tent from my parents though, so that's good), display items such as trays and sand to fill them as well as table cloths, Mark made me very nice framed screens to hang jewelry on, and other jewelry-related items such as chains and earwires, and whatnot.

And now it's six days before the show, and I feel like I've made a huge investment in something that will have little return. I'm just freaking out a little bit because I have no idea what to expect. I feel like my head is a seedless watermelon. I'm excited, too, but mostly anxious right now. I'm sure my moods will fluctuate a lot as all the preparations come to a close this week.

I'll post a checklist and other prep stuff in a few days, and definitely an update on how the festival goes down. So check back soon! And if you're in the Richmond area, please plan to stop by and see us at the festival! Thans for reading!

A Day in the Life

2011-07-13T06:54:00.000-07:00

Lately I haven't been very inspired to write blog posts. Things have a way of getting a little overwhelming when you're trying to figure out how to build a business, market yourself without annoying - or worse, boring - your network contacts, figure out how to get things together for a craft show, and make the work itself. Much less deal with all the other distractions of life - family issues, travel, psychotic dogs.... yes, Mr. Buster is still insane. But we love him.
Especially since finding out that I had been accepted to a craft show in August, The Watermelon Festival, I have had to break down my days into a schedule to help me use my time more wisely. I'm sure I will have to stop sleeping soon, but for now I can get in a little. But it helps to see it written down in front of you, so you can see where you are wasting time, and where you can be more efficient. So I thought I would share my daily schedule here:

6am - wake up, feed Gabardine (our sweet 18lb kitty who, after 2 years of calling "her" my pretty pretty princess, we just found out is a boy. oops.), stagger downstairs and sit with Mark while he eats breakfast, make sure his lunch is packed, etc.

6:30 - take Buster for a good walk (because he is neurotic and will have an absolute fit when Mark leaves for work if I don't distract him in this manner.)

7:00 - have coffee and a bite of breakfast while I try to plan out what needs to get done today, make lists, play the rope game with Buster, try to prevent Buster from eating the things in the recycling bin, remote control, etc; sometimes I go running or otherwise work out, but not as much lately, tsk tsk.

8:00 - shower, get dressed, more coffee, Buster settles down to nap until Mark gets home. (yay!)

8:30 - computer stuff: check email, facebook, blog list, sometimes do a blog posting, marketing research, check etsy, update calendars and dry erase board lists of daily, weekly, and I'll-get-to-them-soon tasks.

10:00 - start on the physical work for the day - this might be making work, photographing work, editing photos, posting new work on etsy and my website, packaging and post office run if I've sold something, dealing with other tasks at hand (for instance, yesterday, it took me 2 1/2 hours to deal with buying a plane ticket to Colorado for the CoMA Conference - I'm traveling with NC Black Co. to work the vendor room doing demos and selling tools. By the way, don't EVER use cheap-o-air to try to buy plane tickets. Cheap doesn't work if the flights they "offer" don't exist or are already sold out. I probably could have done this in 30 minutes had I gone straight to orbitz or something. And it was only like $50 more than the cheap-o place "offered." Lesson learned.)

12:00 or so - break for lunch (my poptart is long gone at this point)

12:30 - back to whatever I was doing or the next task at hand

5:00 - snack and tv break with Mark

5:30 - check email and web things again, wrap up loose ends

6:15 - take Buster, who is now wild again, to the dog park

7:15 - cook and eat dinner (I love cooking and trying new recipes, so sometimes this runs a little later)

8:00 or so - if I cook, Mark cleans up the kitchen - best.husband.ever! so I'll check email and do web things one more time, other administrative tasks - for example, last night I did an inventory of all the items I have so far for the up-coming craft show.

9:00 - time to relax with Mark and the pets (if Buster will settle down and let us chill - a peanut butter-filled Kong often helps with that - a glass of wine often helps me)

So, yeah, I have pretty full days. And some days I do have to attend to domestic duties, which I usually throw in pre-lunch. You know, errands (we gotta have food), chores (the laundry doesn't do itself, nor does the pet hair miraculously vanish off the stairs... too bad.)

Now personally, I would prefer to get up about 8 and stay up until midnight-2am or so (In college, not once did I ever go to bed before 2am, and often I was in the metals studio until midnight - then we'd go out for a drink or something - ahhhh, college...) But that just doesn't work these days. Things have to be adjusted. But I will say, I do love working for myself. For the most part, that is. Sure, it's totally stressful and frustrating at times, there's not much money in it (yet!), and it takes a lot of discipline to keep myself on track and not get caught up in that silly movie that comes on tv when I sit down to have a bite of lunch, or to get distracted in Target or Trader Joe's on errand day and fritter away a few hours.

But it's worth it.

Reef-tastic

2011-06-23T14:33:00.000-07:00

The new Reef pieces are now in my etsy shop! Yay!

Annnnnnnnnd... I just found out that I got accepted to have a booth at the Watermelon Festival here in Richmond in August. Oh my, slight bit of panic there since I had applied back in April and still hadn't heard anything (and technically I still haven't - I just saw that my check had been cashed so I emailed the people and they said nothing had been sent out yet, but yes, if my check went through then I was in) and I had assumed that it was a no-go. Way to go with that, guys. She also said it was a new system they were trying this year, and it had some major kinks, so hopefully I can chalk it up to that and hope that the whole thing isn't a disorganized mess. A friend did tell me, after I had applied for this by the way, that she would highly recommend doing only juried shows, which I will probably agree with. But as my first outdoor festival, I'll be happy if I make the booth fee and setups costs back. So here we go. I have so much to do, and I'm a little overwhelmed right now. But I will get on a schedule and make it happ'n cap'n!

I found some info about setting up for festivals which I will share right here:

What Makes a Craft Show Successful?

A Newbie's Guide to Tents for Craft Shows and Festivals

Free EBook : Prearing for Art and Craft Show Success

So let me know if you have any suggestions or resources. And I will share what I learn in this whole process. I'm sure it will be crazy. But hopefully in a good way.

Sneak Peek

2011-06-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

Here's just a li'l sneak peek at something I've got going on - new coral reef inspired enamel jewelry! Stay tuned for more to come!

Seattle, Just for Fun

2011-06-08T11:39:00.000-07:00

I'm always inspired by shapes and colors and things I see around me, so when I'm in a new or interesting place, I generally have my camera in tow. Now that I've finally gotten most of the business stuff from the SNAG Conference out of the way, I just wanted to post a few fun photos that I took while I was in Seattle.

Seattle in a very cool city with a lot of great things to look at. I did spend a lot of time at the conference, but I stayed at the home of my friends Ben and Annie (Annie, unfortunately, was out of town that weekend.) But Ben took me around and showed me some great Seattle sites I might not have seen otherwise. Thanks, dude!

Here are a few from Pike Place Market (the market of fish-tossing fame). I was digging the colors inside:

This was in a neat artsy section of town called Ballard:

Love the troll under the bridge! That is a real VW Bug he's crushing.

This was a lovely rocky beach called Golden Gardens Beach right on the Puget Sound:

And of course, I had to get in a couple Space Needle shots:

All in all, a pretty fine trip! It's great to be around so many talented people in such a beautiful, inspiring city!

SNAG Conference (Part 3) - Photography Tips & Tricks

2011-06-08T11:16:00.000-07:00

As promised (though a mite delayed), here are some photography tips and tricks I gathered at the Professional Development Seminar at the SNAG conference in Seattle this year. There were several great speakers, so to properly give credit to everyone, I will divide the info into sections by speaker.

Doug Yaple - Photographer
- when doing product photography for art, the artwork itself drives the decision on how to represent the work. (i.e. if you have natural organic inspired work, you may want to photograph it in that sort of setting, displayed on dirt or stones, or hang a necklace over a branch, etc. - this applies to advertising, not photographing work for exhibitions, etc.)
- it is critical to position the work so that it tells the story. (highlight the most important aspect of the work)
- bring out important textures
- background is very important to showcase the piece
   - it must highlight the piece but not distract from it
   - body forms can work to display jewelry and wearable art
   - creating shadows can emphasize certain elements
- take several shots and explore from different angles (you might be surprised what looks good in a photo vs. what looks normal in person)
- don't overlook getting in tight to access something critical. (details are great!)

Christopher Conrad - Product Photographer
- work with good light - natural is the best
   - a room with large picture windows is perfect
   - do not mix different kinds of light
   - no flourescent or incandescent lights
- build a softbox for direct light (frame with pvc, cover with thin vellum or ripstop nylon
- always use a tripod
   - this allows for slower shutter speeds and/or smaller apertures (smaller apertures = greater depth of field)
- don't use a high ISO - lower ISO's reduce "noise"
- be optically square to flat geometric objects
- don't fill the frame, crop images later
- for knockouts (isolating images), adding a drop shadow in photoshop adds a ground to the object and eliminates the "floating" look.

Roger Schreiber - Comtemporary Craft Photographer
- ask yourself, "who is your audience?" this will indicate how you should photograph your work
   - everything that falls within the frame has an effect on the viewer
   - for advertising, use energy in the background
   - for juries, isolate the image
- when you're setting up for photographing work, make sure to allow yourself enough time
   - think about models if you're using them - clothing, hair, make-up
   - make a list of everything you need, props, etc
- think about the photograph even while you're making the piece (if you start the thought process early, you will think about what are the best angles and details, etc. that you want to include in your shots)

Suzanne Ramljak - Editor of Metalsmith Magazine
- make sure you have a shot that establishes your work for what it is
- acknowledge our media-saturated culture - you're in competition with all the other images out there
- remember that reprouctions on the web are never perfect and will look different than the original
   - you have to just accept that and put your best image out there

Marthe Le Van - Editor for Lark Books
- the body is the best surface for photographing jewelry
   - indicates scale and drape
   - gives life to the work - makes it dynamic and dramatic
- traditional American Craft photography has used a gradated background with careful lighting, but now a white background is becoming more and more popular
- Scandinavian images are using and dynamic models, which creates a very striking image
   - this has the effect of presenting the piece as more wearable and more accessible
- remember that on gallery websites and search engines, you often just have one tiny image and your name to grab people's attention and get them to browse through you work. use something dynamic!
- have a style for all of your photos to follow to make them work together
   - black or white backgrounds tend to grab readers because they make the piece stand out.

So thank you to all of the above artists for all of your great information and tips! That definitely gives me a lot to think about when photographing my work. And it points out some mistakes I have been making with lighting, etc, too. So I hope some readers will find this helpful as well. Let me know of you have some other tips and tricks! I'd love to hear from you! Thanks for reading!

SNAG Conference - Seattle, WA (Part 2)

2011-06-02T12:35:00.000-07:00

At the SNAG (Society of North American Goldsmiths) Conference this year, I attended a professional development seminar that focused on the topics of Niche Marketing and Photographing Your Work. Just thought I would share a couple of highlights from the seminar here.

Niche Marketing was the part that I was really looking forward to, but while they had good speakers who talked about the niches that they were able to break into, there was not a whole lot of information about how to go about establishing yourself in your niche or really much on marketing at all.

The first presenter was Hilary Pfeifer with her alter ego Bunny with a Toolbelt.

I got this image off her etsy page. Super cute custom cake toppers. (Plus it made me think more about persuing the wedding niche with my copper cone boutonnieres.)

Then there was Emiko Oye who makes jewelry out of legos! Also delightful.

She had some good information to share:

- You want good professional quality photos.

- Balance your exhibition work with your production work. People will see your big exhibition work and maybe can't afford it, but might be inspired to buy something from your production line. (I thought this was great advice and definitely something to try to remember, because I know I can get so caught up with one or the other depending on my current situation that I will forget entirely about the other for a while.)

- Be accessible. Be online, but also in galleries - you will get a lot of exposure online, but people also like to touch the work, try it on, and see the craftsmanship with their own eyes - things that you lose on the web.

- Get involved in your community. You'll make great connections for future opportunities.

Then there was Deb Stoner who found her niche in eyewear.

Her advice was this:

- Teach what you know. Become the expert in your niche. (Hers is a great niche because there are only about two other people known for making custom art eyewear, period.)

- Curate a show. (Now this is not really realistic for emerging artists like myself, I think you have to be rather established in your field to even consider this as a possibility, but I could be mistaken. Please correct me if I'm wrong here, and I'll get in on that!!!)

- In addition to doing work for jobs (for money), make time to do what you love. It will keep you interested and it will keep your work and your teaching fresh.

So definitely some good advice from some very interesting and talented artists, but not a whole lot of info on making your work fit into a niche. So I found this blog posting 4 Ways to Make Your Products More Niche, and I think there's some good information in there as well.

So check all that out, and I'll be back later on to share some info about photographing your work. Until then, thanks for reading!

SNAG Conference - Seattle, WA (Part 1)

2011-05-31T09:59:00.000-07:00

My, my, my... I have gotten behind again. I wanted to post last week about the micro-raising workshop that Chuck Kennington and I taught May 21-22. (No rapture, yay! That would have been rather inconvenient.) But I ran out of time to post with only 3 days to handle business and pack for my next adventure, so that is just going to have to wait for a few days because I just got home from Seattle, and I'm really excited to post about the SNAG (Society of North American Goldsmiths) Conference.

This is an annual conference and gathering of metalsmiths from all over North America, and each year it's in a different city. This year, Seattle. Cool city! It's really great to be able to be surrounded, not only by hundreds of artists, but specifically metalsmiths, enamelists, jewelers, and craft professionals. I was able to connect with some old friends as well as meet a lot of new and interesting people in my field.

Making plans for this year was a little crazy. Usually people stay at the hotel that hosts the conference with a group of friends sharing a room (because these are nice hotels). My plan had been to stay with my NC Black crew, but their plans were altered, and they weren't able to stay at the hotel due to various circumsatances, including the fact that they drove across country and had a thule trailer attached to the car for all their equipment, and that could not be parked in the garage. Great. So I called up my friends Annie and Ben who live in Seattle, and made arrangements to stay at their house. This all went down about 3 weeks prior to the conference. So I got my plane tickets, rented a car, and headed out west solo. Scary! For me anyway. But it all worked out. I flew in on Thursday morning, and that night there was a "pin swap" meet & greet session to kick off the conference. I had made 15 pins for swapping, and unfortunately, I don't have a good photo of them to post. But they were tiny copper cones (made with NC Black tools of course) with hand-dyed wool plumes poufing out the tops. I liked them. And in return for these, I got all kinds of neat handmade pins!

Of the names I know (it helps if you put your pins on business cards!), I got pins from Kristi Kloss, Lessley Brooke, Melissa J. Russell, Nancy Tiska, Kim Howell, Jennifer Wall, Kathryn Osgood, Kim M. Baxter, Erin Swietnicki, Callie Shevlin, and Maggie Smith/Quirk Gallery. Well done!

Among lectures, artist spotlights, and various other activities, I also helped out in the NC Black Co. vendor booth doing demos and helping to sell tools. Here's a photo of our booth featuring the always fabulous Andrea Kennington and the delightfully dapper Les Bryant.

and the featured hammers:

omg, <3

That was a lot of fun. Les and I were also filmed by Jay Whaley and Greg Berg of Whaley Studios in San Diego, doing demos - anticlastic bracelet for Les, and micro raising for me. I'll post a link to that when it's up. I imagine they just got home, too.

I'll be back later today or tomorrow to share some info I gathered at the conference. But for now, there are other tasks that need attending. Thanks for reading!

Hammering It All Out

2011-05-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

I am getting super-excited about my up-coming micro-raising workshop at the Sawtooth Center in Winston-Salem! I'm team-teaching with one Mr. Chuck Kennigton of NC Black Co., and we really made a lot of progress with our tools last week. I can really see it coming together. Finally!

I was at the NC Black homebase Wednesday through Friday of last week. Wednesday evening was mostly shop-talk, but Thurday we really got to work. I had designed a raising stake for small-scale work based on a combination of two different stakes we had been using in the studio. So we needed to make a prototype and test it out.

Stake heating and bending:

Grinding and Polishing:

So you can see, these tools are made with love, and very much by hand.

We made two different sizes, 5/8" diameter and 1/2" diameter. Then it was time for the test!

It works!!! Muahahahahaha!

So we made ten of each size. One for each of us for practice, etc. and eight as a teaching set for this and future workshops! We will also have stake holders to keep said teeny stakes snugly secured in a big ol' vise, as shown above, as well new super-sweet raising hammers designed by Chuck.

So we've got everything squared away. Tools are made, kits are assembled, and we're on our way! Sawtooth will be the first of many of these micro-raising workshops! Stay tuned for a schedule of up-coming workshops and check out the schedule for the other workshops offered by NC Black Co, Micro Shell-Forming and Engraving.

I'll be back later this week with updates for the CopperTide jewelry business, so check back!!! Thanks for reading!

From Fish to Leaves and Back

2011-05-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

Whoops. I've been slacking on the blog scene the past couple weeks. It's not because I haven't been working, I just haven't had a whole lot to report. I haven't gotten to work in the studio at all, so that is not good. The pesky distractions of life again, among other things. And I was out of town for Easter weekend with the family in Oak Island, NC.

But while I was there I did take new work to TheYaupon Tree Gallery. The work I had there in the past has not been great on the sales front. They some pieces from my Sea Life Collection, which features champleve enameled brooches and earrings.

But I guess they were a little pricey for that venue. It's a beach gallery that people visit while they're on vacation, and as Oak Island is a low-key family-oriented beach, it's just not a place where tourists come to drop $200 on a brooch. I have tried dropping the prices a little, but a lot of work went into these pieces, and I just can't go too low. It's just not their place. That's ok. We'll try the new reversible disc line and see where that gets us. Lower prices, summery colors. It's worth a shot. But it's another consignment situation, so if these don't sell this season, I might pull everything and find another gallery in the Southport area.

I'm also trying to set up a meeting with The Other Half in Winston-Salem NC for this coming weekend when I'll be there. They have beautiful work, and I have bought many gifts there myself. They will be recieving some work from my Leaf Jewelry Collection.

So hopefully I can get in touch with them, and maybe Maypop Gallery in Greensboro NC while I'm in the area. Maypop actually asked for new work a while ago when we were in the middle of our move to Richmond, and I haven't had a chance to get back down there and get them any yet. So I think I will add that to my list for the week.

Additionally, I've done a lot of research the past couple weeks when I wasn't blogging, and I want to share my favorite blog for advice for small art-based business owners: Crafting an MBA. They have some excellent advice, and I would definitely recommend checking that out if you're just starting out like me or even if you're pretty established. It never hurts to hear some new ideas.

This is going to be a pretty full week. I had planned to leave on Wednesday to go on down to NC and work for my favorite tool company, NC Black Co. for a few days, but I can't seem to get in touch with them, so that might not be happening. I am teaching a Micro-Raising workshop with Chuck Kennington at the Sawtooth Center in Winston-Salem in a couple weeks for NC Black, May 21-22, and we need to make sure we get all the tools made and everything in order. I designed a raising stake that we will hopefully have at least a prototype of this week, and hopefully we can get that rolling. By the way, if you're interested in the Micro-Raising workshop, there are still a few spots left! It's for beginners as well as intermediate metalsmiths who just want to learn a new technique. Check out my posting from a few weeks ago for an idea of what will be going on in the workshop. It's going to be tons of fun!

So I'll try to do better at posting, and hopefully there will be some new and exciting things to talk about, so check back soon! Thanks for reading!

Good News for People Who Love Bad News

2011-04-19T14:08:00.000-07:00

That was a modest mouse reference.... it's not really ALL bad news....

I mentioned a while back that I had applied for grad school at VCU. Well, a few weeks ago, I got an email from the head of the metals department saying that they were impressed with my portfolio, but there was a very large, very competitive group of applicants this year, and currently I was at the top of the waiting list. There were two positions open, and I was number three in line. What a bitch. So they were waiting to hear back from the one candidate ahead of me, and if they decided not to accept, I would be offered the position. So I waited. And waited. And I saw the professor at a gallery opening, and she said she should know in a few days. So I waited some more. Finally, another week later, I emailed her, and she wrote back that she was sorry not to have emailed me at the beginning of the week, but they did not have a position for me this year. Suck. So I was pretty bummed. But Mark helped cheer me up. He's good at that. It's funny how you feel good about something when you submit the application, and then as time passes, you feel worse and worse about it, and your confidence dwindles. Then you hear that hey! they did like it! there's a chance!!! And you feel pretty good again. Then you wait and wait and wait and your conifidence dwindles once again. So by the time I finally got an answer, I guess it's kind of what I was expecting. But I won't lie, it still sucked.

Guess you have to have some disappointments along the way. We also found out that a house we had seen (awesome!) and were thinking about making an offer on got snatched up from under us. Boooo. Not a very good few days.

But I feel a lot better today and can focus again on getting going. Keep on keepin' on, as it were.

So I've been busy with various tasks here lately. I had been putting off getting all my official business done, you know, the part where you have to get tax ID's and register your business and licenses, etc. So I finally got around to that. It seems like there is no clear answer on the web about exactly how you're supposed to get things done and in what order. So I asked a friend who owns a small art-based business, and she was so helpful! It's not that hard when you don't have 47 different websites telling to you to do various things and just not really being clear and concise. So I will share it with you now:

1. Get a federal tax ID number, called an EIN from the IRS.
2. Register your fictitious business name (DBA) with your city or county Register of Deeds. (In Virginia, you can find that at the Circuit Court office) $10
3. Get a business license.

I haven't actually gotten the business license yet, but I'm on it!

Now I can buy supplies from wholesalers, deduct expenses from my taxes, be eligible for many craft shows and fairs that won't accept you without at least a tax ID, and all kinds of other stuff. Just have to be sure to keep immaculate records of my expenses as well as income. My friend also told me about a free software for managing your finances at https://www.mint.com/. So I will check that out.

Among other things, I took some work to Quirk Gallery here in Richmond. They could only take consignment right now, but with the economy still being the way it is, I'll take it. Obviously if someone will buy your work straight-up for wholesale prices, that is preferable, but I love this gallery and just really wanted to have some work there. So if it sells well, maybe next time they will buy it wholesale. Most of the other galleries that I have shown in for years have been on a consignment basis, so it's not like it's that big of a change for me. One step at a time!

I also applied for Piedmont Craftsmen's Guild, a prestigious craft guild for artists working in the Southeastern US. They are based in Winston-Salem NC, my home town. I actually worked in their sales gallery right after college. It is a two-part application process - an image jury, and then if you pass that, you are invited to show your work at their annual fair in November, where you are judged again based on how your work looks in person. Whew! But once you're in, you're a lifetime member. Many of the best and most well-known craftsmen in the region are members, including my mentors, Andrea and Chuck Kennington and my former employer, Jon Kuhn. Once a member, you are also invited to show your work in their gallery, participate in group shows, and show your work at the fair each year. And just as an added bonus, it would drive JK crazy to have to call me a colleague. Ha!

I also have a couple of shows lined up. A faculty exhibition at the Sawtooth Center over the summer, and an alumni exhibition at ECU in the fall. Nothing too fancy right yet, but they should both be very nice. And I have a few more things in the works.

So I'm trying not to let the whole not getting into grad school thing get me down. I have a lot of things cookin', so hopefully things will take off soon! Guess I better get back to work. Sorry no pictures today! I'll have some for next time. Thanks for reading!

For the Wedding Scene

2011-04-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

Ok, I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think I'm going to go for it - just need to figure out the right way to market it for maximum exposure....

It's mid-spring now, and wedding season is just getting started. I mentioned in an earlier post that I got married last summer - it was an amazing day - you'll see! And speaking from experience, I know brides are always looking for little details, especially artistic and handmade, to add to their big day. I was lucky enough to be able to make many of these items for my own wedding myself, with the help of talented friends and family. But many people don't have that luxury - they don't have the time or the resources or the motivation. That's where I come in!

Now, we seriously made A LOT of the items for our wedding. Both because it saved us some money and because it was just more special that way. We made the save-the-date postcards, the programs (fans! - it was outside in August), I calligraphed the envelopes for the invitations - my awesome sister-in-law printed them for us through her business Sassafras Paper. As decor/favors my mom and a whole group of friends and family and I made little clay birds that hung on trees in the tent as decor and then people got to take them home. Mom and I arranged all the flowers for the centerpieces ourselves in her antique milk glass china. My super-talented friend Annie made 600+ origami paper cranes that I strung into a curtain to line one side of the tent.... So many things. But what I'm going to focus on here are the bridesmaids' jewelry, which were some of the reversible disc earrings you have seen samples of already, and the copper cones I made for the gents' boutonnieres.

This is a close-up of Mark's boutonniere:

And here are our handsome groomsmen sporting theirs:

I wish I had taken a couple pictures pre-flower, but I wasn't really thinking about that at the time. I'll make more. They are basically just a cone made out of copper, with a commercial pin stem soldered to the back with a handmade catch. The copper cone has a decorative cut along the front seam, but you can't see that right here. I'll dig Mark's out this weekend, and see if I can take some photos.

But I think couples looking for special touches to add to their wedding would love to have something like this! Just have the florist put the flowers in so they'll stay put, and you've got some sharp-looking gentlemen!

And now the jewelry! I really hate that I don't have better detail shots of the ladies' jewelry, but I'll figure something out for marketing purposes...

Being a girl who clearly loves color, that was definitely going to be a big part of the wedding, I actually found the dresses at David's Bridal and then I found enamels to match. (They will give [sell] you handy-dandy little color swatches for all your matching needs.) Here you can see my friend Emily and my sister Catherine are wearing their earrings in pretty closely matched colors to their dresses.

I knew I wanted to do the reversible earrings, because that's just fun. Here's a picture of all the girls, then I'll explain what I did...

So Emily, in the sangria-colored dress on the right, her earrings were sangria on one side (seen in the first pic) and bright orange, the color of Andi's dress on the left - you can almost tell in this photo. Andi's were bright orange on one side and red on the reverse. Emily H. is in the red dress, hers were red on one side, grape purple on the other side like Cat's dress. Cat's were grape purple and darker orange like Lindsey's dress. And Lindsey can't wear regular earrings, so I made her a reversible pendant, which is sangria (seen) with the dark orange to match her dress on the reverse side.

So I am working on a way to market this right now. Really wishing I had a more detailed shot. (Wonder if I can convince the girls to get all dressed back up again. Hmmm... maybe if I butter them up with more jewelry. Tee-hee! They did look beautiful though!) What I'm thinking is, I would have the bride send me fabric samples of her bridesmaids' dresses or whatever it is she would like to have the jewelry matched to. We'd work out color combinations, and she'd have her own custom-made jewelry to give to her friends as a thank-you. Love it!

Leave me comments if you have any ideas about how/where to market this idea for maximum exposure. I'm thinking theknot.com could be a good place to start. I also have some friends in the wedding biz, so perhaps some sort of mutual advertising or trade situation could be arranged. I love having talented friends!

Speaking of which, I would like to give photo credit to Emily Barefoot of Emily Alane Photography for all of these photos exept the one of the groomsmen, which a friend took. And if you follow that link, it will take you to the "featured weddings" section of her website, and you can see more beautiful shots of our wedding (the one that says "Mark and Annie") should you be so inclined after I've talked it up this whole posting. It really was an amazing day, and Emily Alane did a magnificent job capturing it. If you're getting married, call that girl! For real, fabulous!

Ok, I'm off to plan and market and do business research............... woot woot! Thanks for reading!

Double Disc Mania!

2011-04-13T07:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, here are the photos I was trying to post yesterday of the new reversible disc pendants:

Front Reverse

These and 3 other pendants with different color combos are currently available exclusively on my etsy page. And for a limited time (till the end of April), you can use the coupon code "doublediscs" to get free shipping!

Just sayin'.... Mother's Day is coming up, and if your mom (or wife) is the fun and funky type like mine, these makes fine gifts.

As Mom's Day draws a little closer, there will be other coupons. And more jewelry! So check back!

Playing Catch-Up

2011-04-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

Wow, I am behind on the blogging scene. I haven't been on in about a week, and there are several blogs I follow that need some attention. Some are fun, some are inspiring, some are business. And I guess it's those that I really need to catch up on. Ready? Go!

Last week was pretty busy, and I would like to say the business was busy, but that was not so much the case. I did take photos of the new pendants and edited several of those, and I did some research and this that and the other. But I'll be honest, photo editing is boring, and it's sometimes hard to stay focused and inspired.

Also... I was a bit distracted with prepping the house for our first weekend visitors! My college roommate Lindsey (check out her blog, GROW) her husband Mike, and their little boy Mason came up for a visit. We had a great time exploring Richmond, going to parks, eating good food, drinking good wine, and reminiscing about old times. Even broke out the old photo albums. (We drank a lot of tequila back in the day.) Lindsey and Mike are very creative people - Lindsey was in art school with me - and being around them is always inspiring. They have great ideas, especially about home, garden, decor, and collecting... and all that gets those creative juices flowing. Even brings up ideas for jewelry! So hopefully, more new work soon!

So after the excitement of the weekend died down a little bit, I got back to work yesterday and finished editing all of the reversible disc pendant photos. The server won't seem to let me add any pictures right now, so I'll try again later. But for now, you can see them all on etsy!

Ok, admittedly, that was a mediocre update, but I have several things in the works, and I don't wait to spoil anything. So you will just have to wait! I'll try to be better about posting this week, so check back! And as always, thanks for reading!

Faaaabulous NC Black Weekend!

2011-04-04T08:03:00.000-07:00

I mentioned a while back that I have been working for NC Black Co., a fabulous small tool company owned and operated by my dear friends Andrea and Chuck Kennington, Les Bryant, and Andreas Schmoll. My time with NC Black has been few and far between since our move to Richmond, so this weekend Mark and I went down and had a mini workshop at their home base in Mount Airy, NC. Chuck and I are debuting the brand new Micro-Raising workshop at the Sawtooth Center in Winston-Salem, NC in May, and we needed to meet up and figure out lesson plans, and really just how to teach this stuff. So Mark came along as our "beginner level" student, and was very helpful with asking questions and just letting us know what and how much we need to explain. Mark has some experience with metasmithing - he actually took the NC Black Hand and Hammer Engraving workshop back in the fall, but this was his first experience with raising.

I should probably take a minute and explain what raising is... by definition, Raising is "a method of creating a seamless form by contraction; the height of the form increases while the diameter decreases. A flat disc of metal is hammered against a metal stake (an unyielding surface), and the side of the disc hammered becomes the outside of the workpiece." (Silversmithing, Finegold and Seitz, 1983).

Much of my portfolio work involves this process. Bascially, you take a flat disc of copper (or silver or other malleable metal), you start by sinking the metal into a shallow bowl form (I do this in a wooden stump with depressions carved into it for this purpose.) Then, you hammer the piece from the outside over the end of a metal stake, from the bottom up, course after course, until you have hammered this flat disc into a vessel form. It take A LOT of hammering, but it's really a lot of fun and quite satisfying to see how far you can form a piece of metal. This can be done on a larger scale, like a lot of my older work, but the workshops we're teaching are for Micro-Raising. So this weekend we started with 3" discs.

Actually, I think Chuck was working on a 2" disc.

Here's Mark texturing his piece toward the end of the day.

See, they're pretty teeny, but very cool! Here's Mark's finished piece. Not bad for a beginner, eh? I was impressed!

If you want to see more micro-raising from our last workshop, check out my album. I started several different shapes just to get a feel for the process on a micro scale and to potentially have some ideas to share with my future students.

So we had a great day with the NC Black team before heading on down a little further south to visit my parents and see some great live music! I gotta go ahead and give them a shout-out, because I know a lot of people reading here are music fans! The band is called Sanctum Sully, untraditional bluegrassy music with a jammin' rockin' good time sound! They played at High Rock Outfitters, a delightful outfitter/kayak/outdoorsy adventure shop that is also a coffee shop and have just now started selling beer and wine in the evenings for shows, etc. It's in downtown, Lexington, NC, and is definitely worth checking out if you're ever in the area. It's a small venue for some great bands on the weekends, and Sanctum Sully was no exeption. Good times!

Incidentally, I also have some jewelry for sale at HRO. I mean, fishing fly earrings? Yes, please!

Ok, that was a shameless plug, but they're fun.

So I'm off to take some photos of the new pendants from last week, so as always, thanks for reading!

Pendant City

2011-03-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

It's dreary and rainy in Richmond today, so that means a good studio day for me! I got some more discs cut out yesterday among research, errands, dog-walking, and house-hunting, so today I was ready to go with the kiln! And despite slicing my finger open on an unruly little earring (tsk tsk), I feel pretty good about today's work. I enameled 12 reversible pendants. The ones with 2 discs are a new design and will be debuted on etsy after I get some good photos taken. Hopefully the sun will come out tomorrow. Hmmmm... I feel a song coming on.... (yes, yes, go ahead, my name is Annie... you know the rest.)

Anyway, here's a quick studio shot of today's enameling work. The colors aren't the greatest because of the flash and angle, but like I said, a quick studio shot.
One the right side of the photo you will see one side of the pendants, and on the left are the reverses of the same pendants. Hence, reversible. Fun!

These are also in the same color schemes as last week's earrings, so hopefully that will lead to sets being purchased. Woo-hoo! I'm also thinking some rings would be fun. I'll have to work out the specifics, but I have a few sketches and a couple ideas in mind. I will need to purchase some sterling silver though - so I'll need some buyers. (Tell your friends!)

Until next time.... thanks for reading!

Slow Week

2011-03-26T14:54:00.000-07:00

I will confess, this hasn't been the best week business-wise. Those distractions of life again. Buster the pupster has been a little bit of a challenge, among other things. I know, I know... it's no excuse! Shame on me. I have been working a little each day, editing the photos I took last weekend and putting the new work up on etsy. You can see them all here: CopperTide on Etsy

I've posted 19 pairs of enameled disc earrings, 13 of which have 3 photos each, so I've spent A LOT of time in Photoshop. I've had several views for each pair, but no buyers yet. From what I understand, getting your first buyer is the toughest because people like to buy from someone who has sold to others and gotten positive feedback. So we'll just hope someone is brave enough to try it out! I've also been promoting on my facebook page and the CopperTide facebook page, but I don't want to bore people, so I think I will post a little less frequently there than I have been.

I'm going to get back in the studio and make some pendants to go with the earrings this week. And I'll have Gabardine to regulate to keep me in line...

So I'll be back in a few days with some updates... Until then, happy weekend and thanks for reading!

Brand Spankin' New Enameled Disc Trio Earrings on Etsy

2011-03-21T12:09:00.000-07:00

Here it is: CopperTide on Etsy

Woot woot!

It's kind of amazing how much work goes into this. I spent the morning finishing up some photoshop edits for the new Enameled Disc Trio Earrings. There are only six pairs of these, mind you, but the computer was running slow - need to do some housekeeping there. Also, I'm a little anal about my photos, so I probably do a little more editing than is actually completely necessary, but what can I say? I like them to look good!

I also spent some time this weekend writing my etsy shop policies and getting all that business cleaned up. Then the last 2 1/2 hours have been spent uploading photos, writing item descriptions, tagging, etc. Just for six items. But hopefully since I've put in more time and effort this time around, I will get some results. (Tell your friends!)

I don't know that etsy is really the way to go for all of this, things tend to get lost within an hour of posting. There's just so much on there. So I've decided to spread out my postings over a few days (Also because they haven't all been edited yet - that pesky business with life getting in the way over the weekend again.) But I will post here each time I upload new work, and you can see what I've been up to. I'm also going to look into setting up my website for better buyer's access. Which may include finding a new host. We'll see... I only have about 2 weeks to decide before I have to renew my subscription with my current host, Other People's Pixels, which is great for displaying your artist portfolio in any medium, but maybe not the best for selling. Oh boy, more research! A friend suggested Big Cartel, so I'll be looking into that one for sure. I'll post updates on what I find out.

In the meantime, here's a sampling of Trio Disc Earrings. Let me know what you think!

Bird of Paradise Disc Trios

Crocus Disc Trios

Thanks for reading!

Photos and Marketing, Woot Woot!

2011-03-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

Finally! The sun is back out, and I can go outside and set up for photographing the new earrings! I want all of my product photos to be consistent for etsy and other online venues, so I've been waiting for a pretty day for shooting. I had high hopes about yesterday afternoon. It was nice out, but lots of clouds passing by, and just not consistent light. I know, I know, I could set up a photo booth and use artificial light that would always be consistent, but the glow of natural light is just so much more pleasing to me.
So I occupied myself otherwise. On these past couple of dreary days, I set up and took a few shots by the window, just for business cards and promo materials. (It took a good deal of photoshopping to get brightness I wanted, but I think it will work just fine for this purpose.)

Here's what I came up with for a new business card

I thought it was kinda cool to use the photo of the actual earrings as a graphic element. It's important to show off your style and your actual work if possible, and I think this was a good way to do both. And I had a bit of help on text sizes and placement from my marketing whiz sister. Thanks, Cat!

And I thought my web banner should coincide, something to carry the theme through all my marketing. And I will extend it to other things in the future. So here's the banner for my etsy site (which will have new pieces up this weekend! I'll post the link as soon as I get them up!)

So I'm pretty pleased with all that. And here's an interesting marketing tip I got from an etsy blogger: She said that one thing that really impresses your buyers and makes them want to be a repeat customer is just to add a little something extra, a little piece of SWAG or something that comes in their order. And to make it even more useful to you as a seller, make it something that they might actually want to use so your name gets out there even more. Something like a pin or sticker or a magnet, just something small but interesting-looking, so that when their friends see it, they'll ask about it, and your marketing is working! Well, I wanted to include a link to that post, but I can't find it now. Sorry. But that's the general idea.

I like the idea of magnets. I mean, if i ordered something and got a cool magnet for free, I would totally stick it on my fridge. Right? Sure, postcards are great, but they don't stick by themselves... So I'm thinking I might order a few magnets in the style of the business card when I order the cards from Vista Print. They do a great job for a great price. If you want to use your own design like I am, you just upload it right to their site and they'll print it up. You can even get free business cards if you like one of their 45 templates and are willing to let them print their logo on the back. Doesn't work if you want to use your own design like I do, but nonetheless, a viable option. Just puttin' that out there.

So there's a little bit from the marketing end, and I'll be posting photos of finished earrings later on! Thanks for reading!

Disc Earrings Du Jour

2011-03-14T12:49:00.000-07:00

Alrighty, I just finished a 5-hour enameling session, and I feel pretty good about the work I got done today. Friday after my posting, I ended up cutting out more discs for more earrings, so I didn't get as many enameled that afternoon as I had planned. So I finished those up today. The weekend didn't really lend itself to much work in the studio. Mark and I got involved Saturday cleaning out the rest of the boxes from our move - they were driving us nuts! It's only been 6 weeks, so we didn't think that was tooooo bad, but it was definitely time. That and general domestic duties took up most of the day. The house looks sooo much better!

So this is my enameling set-up. Pretty sweet.

And here is a photo of this round of enamels.

They still have to be filed and then fitted with earwires and findings, but the hard part is done. Actually, it's really not that hard, it's pretty fun, just time-consuming. You just have to know how each enamel reacts in the kiln and with the pickle (the chemical bath that is used to clean dirt and firescale off the metal) and how to treat it. All that just comes with experience.

Then comes photography. That will probably happen tomorrow, so I can use the nice morning light. I usually prefer natural light for photographing enamels because the colors come out the truest that way. This actually isn't bad color-wise, but the reflections from the flash are no good. Another thing I like about natural light: no flash. One of these days I'll make a nice photo booth. Until then...

I'm off to file disc edges now... Thanks for reading!

Studio Time!

2011-03-11T06:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I got a little computer work and some research done. I have an idea for my new logo, business card, etc, for production pieces including an image of actual enameled earrings. But whoops! I left most of my inventory of enamel disc earrings and such at Urban Artware, a fabulously fun and funky gallery in Winston-Salem, when I was in NC last week. Well, I needed to make more anyway, so that's what I started working on yesterday afternoon. I cut out lots of discs for round one, which I hope to enamel today. At least most of them.

Here's a photo of my studio set-up. It's in what would be the dining room at the front of the house. Who needs a dining room when you can have a rockin' metals studio?? The lighting during the day is not bad, windows all along the front wall, but at night the dim chandelier lighting is not so good. Lamps help, but we're going to have to do something about that soon.

That orange tool cabinet is the best! My mom found it at a consignment shop and painted it for me as a studio warming gift when I was moving into my last apartment, which was the first time I had an actual room devoted just to the studio. (It had been in my living room previously.) But yeah, she rocks! And it gives me a place to revel in my OCD.

I love hammers!!!

But I digress...

I like to start by planning what color combinations to use by getting out all my little enamel samples and arranging them in sets of 2 and 3. I am definitely ready for spring, and this week's color combinations are inspired by springiness, flowers - I have crocus blooming in my yard, and just brightness in general!

So here are some of the copper discs I will enamel today.

I'll be back with some finished earrings later!

Thanks for reading!

New Beginnings - First Things First

2011-03-09T07:01:00.000-08:00

Well, I started a blog. Among other things.

I plan for this blog to be a documentation of the start and growth of my jewelry business, CopperTide. I guess it's fair to say that CopperTide actually started about 3 years ago, but it has remained very small. And by very small, I mean that I have shown work in a few juried exhibitions recently, I sell work (usually on a consignment basis) in various local galleries, I have a website, http://www.coppertide.net/, that has sold a few pieces and generated a little interest, and I started an etsy page that did not sell anything. So I took a little break from that while a few other things were going on in my life...
Here's a little background info so you know where I'm coming from:
I studied jewelry and metal design at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. After I graduated in 2003, I moved to Winston-Salem, and began showing some work in local galleries. But my official employment at the time was for Jon Kuhn, a world-renowned glass artist. I'm sure as this blog progresses, many stories from that time period will surface, but we'll just leave it at that for now... As a few years went by working for another artist, I wanted more and more to start growing my own business.
Well, I lost my job in 2009 with the downturn of the economy. Apparently people were not as interested in buying $10K-$100K glass sculptures. Go figure. So I started working for NC Black Co, a growing tool company based in the Blue Ridge Mountains of NC which is owned and run by some of my very good friends, also metalsmiths. The company makes hammers and micro-forming tools, and they teach workshops in micro-forming, engraving, and, starting this year, I will be teaching micro-raising for them. More to come on that later. But anyway, I had the whole job transition thing going on, and was very inspired by the work with NC Black (because you know I had to try out the tools!), and I decided it was finally time to persue graduate school. So I began working on my portfolio for grad school submissions. Also, I was busy planning and doing all sorts of creative fun things, as well as not-so-fun business things, for my wedding. I got married in August 2010 to my wonderful husband Mark. He just finished up his masters in occupational therapy in December of 2010, then it was time for me to submit my portfolio for grad school admissions in January. Still waiting to hear about that... but I hope to be starting grad school at VCU in the fall. And as that is the plan, Mark needed a job, and we figured if we needed to be in Richmond, VA by August, he might as well look for a job there. So we moved to Richmond by the end of January. And as if that wasn't enough change in our lives, we adopted a stray german shepherd mix puppy about 3 weeks ago. And by puppy, I mean 86 pounds of pure puppy energy. His name is Buster, and trust me, he's living up to that name. There's a lot going on.

So my number one enemy : distractions. But now that things are settling down just a leeeeetle, I'm in Richmond and not working for anyone else right now (other than the up-coming workshops I'll be teaching), it's time to focus on my business. I'm a huge list-maker, so I'm making a schedule of how to go about all of this - not just making the jewelry, that's just a small part of it - the promotion and marketing and all the other fun business stuff that no artist really wants to do. My first two projects are :

1. New logo, business cards, promo material, etc

2. Revamp my etsy page. Including new photos, better descriptions, joining forums, and promotion, promotion, promotion.

Plus make more jewelry to get out there. So, ok. I will post updates on how those things are all going plus tips and tricks that I learn along the way to help get this started! It takes a lot of time and hard work, but I'm up for the challenge. Please follow my progress, and leave me comments along the way.

So here we are... and here we go.........