I'm on a mission ...

... to transform my business.  You might remember, early August I completely dismantled my sample collection and started over.  Last weekend, after five weeks of intense focus, I finished my wholesale catalog, an enormous amount of work, but it was truly a labor of love.  I sent out email links to existing accounts and followed up with mailing hard copies of the catalog on Monday.  Here's the cover. 

I've started in on the website redesign and am loving the look of it.  I was hoping to build the new site on a new platform and have ecommerce straight away, but I've got too much going on to learn a new program and my old software will just have to do ... at least for another month or so. 

As if designing a new website and relaunching my wholesale business is not enough, I'm also in the middle of collaborating on a very special collection of jewelry.  I'm about to bust with excitement and dying to share, but I'm not quite ready to divulge the details ... let me just say this is a major opportunity and an enormously cool project.

And my life's getting even more interesting ... A couple of days ago, I had this very compelling dream.  I'm riding along in a car with someone I perceive to be a friend although she doesn't look anything like the person.  I'm in the passenger seat.  We're barreling along a two lane road and coming up fast on a fork in the road.  Considering our speed, I'm fully prepared for us to take the main road curving to the right, not quite as prepared to take the left fork which is a dirt/gravel mountain road.  I am wholly unprepared for what we actually do ... keep going straight over a grassy embankment and down a precipitous slope.  I see where we're going and am thinking, "OMG, we're going to die."  Only we fly over the embankment and continue barreling along down the steep grassy incline and I'm thinking, "Well, this isn't as bad as I thought it would be" ... and then I wake up.  Gotta say, this one's pretty obvious, dontcha think?

It's been a crazy week and that dream has really stuck with me.  So in the spirit of taking the unexpected way and the road NOT traveled, I've decided to do some studio cleaning.  I'm going to be listing a bunch of new pieces on Etsy ... I've got discontinued samples as well as pieces that I've made along the way and have never tried to sell.  I'm going to have a sale starting today.  Etsy peeps will get, for the first time ever, 40% off everything.  And here's the big payoff for my blog and Facebook followers ... you, my beloved community, can enter the coupon code COMMUNITYDEAL for an unprecedented 50% off and the sale will run through September 22nd. 

I mean business here.  Looks like it will be tomorrow, but I'll be listing at least 4 new necklaces and 2 dozen pairs of earrings ... most of which have never been seen.  I love all the work I make and am not really a fan of sales, but it's just time to move on.

So the COMMUNITYDEAL coupon is active and you can go ahead and use it ... just be aware that over the weekend, I'll be listing a bunch more work.

onward!
l i g a - kvk

fresh start

I finally decided to do it.

Dive in, take it all apart and start over.  

What you see here is my entire wholesale sample collection.  Well almost all.  Since I've had my samples back I've used a few pieces here and there to fill orders ... but for the most part this mondo pile of jewels represents a major part of my life since 2005. 

Once I took everything off the sample boards and piled it up to take a snap, I proceeded to dismantle the whole shamoozie ...

And in case you hadn't noticed, that's a butt load of silver.  Next I ran everything through the tumbler to brighten it up and give it some fresh juju.

Then it was on to sorting tumbling media from silver.  Et voila ...

Like I said, a mega pile of silver.  

Then it was sorting it into my little plastic bins and getting ready to dive into putting together a new, updated, fresh interpretation of my wholesale collection.

I'm pretty excited about starting over and I'm still very much in the middle of the whole process, but progress is being made.  

It's been a long long time since I was at all motivated to work on this side of my business.

Along with the production side of things, I've made a bunch of new, one-off pieces.  I had thought I would get them listed on Etsy today, but got completely bogged down with another project. 

Ah well - here's a sneak peek at what's to come .............

Two pieces using the 'shard' components from the samples - 

this one with a lovely trio of peridot colored sea glass

and this one with shards of crystal quartz ...

Then here's a couple of pieces using the petal components.  

The first one with a major stack of tiny Chinese turquoise slices and wonderfully flat slate river pebbles ...

and this one with a stack of white sea glass and the slate river pebbles ...

And of course, I'm still obsessed with my ocean color palette ... hugely obsessed with those colors and these tiny gravelly pieces of silver.  I would love an unlimited supply of metal clay to just make these all day.  

Then I decided to bump things up a notch ... well, kind of a big notch.  This one has 27 tiny silver beads inspired by the shells and coral I used to find on the beach in Port Townsend.  

Worked in with the silver, a yummy stack of sea glass, Roman glass and my own, hand-formed lapis nuggets along with some cobalt trade beads ...

and the Pièce de résistance
this one is so over the top amazing, it makes me giddy ... she's 48" long and has virtually a whole gem show's worth of treasures ...

So I'm hoping I'll get pieces listed this weekend ... we'll see.  That and the continuing re-creation of my wholesale collection.  Looks like I'm gonna be a busy girl.

Have a lovely weekend!

l i g a - kvk