Rae’s Creations The Blog  

Well, it pours when it rains! I have a barrage of new stock coming into my Etsy store. I have accumulated quite a big lot of new pieces during my recent down time, but I haven’t had the time to take photos and list them. But wait no more.

Most pieces are not new designs per se… They are rather familiar affairs with some twists such as: simple briolette solitaire necklaces and briolette drop earrings. There are my hugger earrings in exciting new shades of orange and emerald green. And then there are some pieces incorporating some fresh design elements. Highlights of this new stock after the jump. Enjoy! ( continued… )

Not a moment to soon! Here are the remaining six birthstone TAB necklaces: amethyst for February, aquamarine for March, emerald for May, peridot for August, sapphire for September, and pink tourmaline for October. Again, coy and cheerful triples of gemstone rondelles coupled with a lone Hill Tribe silver charm.

The scene stealers in this group are the May and September stones: emerald and sapphire. I had my doubts as to whether or not I will be able to succeed in sourcing reasonable quality stones in just the right size and shape. It was wrong of me to doubt — after some initial difficulties (and a few dropped jaws at discovering just how expensive these stones can be), I was able to find just what I needed. It was a worthy effort: what will birthstones be without emeralds and sapphires? (Diamonds are an entirely different matter… people are more forgiving when it comes to that stone. ^^)

Anyhoo, this completes the Birthstone Edition of TAB necklaces. These will start appearing in my Etsy shop in a few days. As always, larger photos after the jump. Enjoy! ( continued… )

October has quietly come and gone (that was fast!), and I am happy to usher out a new line of jewelry before the year passes.

I have always fancied making a series with birthstones; I have finally gotten around to it, just in time for Christmas 2008, no less! I was going to use rondelles, as I already had the most variety of stones in that form, and I knew that the design needed to be consistent and kept as simple as possible. So here are the precious birthstones, accompanied by a single lovely Hill Tribe silver charm. I am calling them TAB necklaces. I used different charms for different gemstones, and together they look like one happy family.

This is part one of my post showing 6 of them; the remaining six will be posted in part 2, which include amethyst for February, aquamarine for March, emerald for May, peridot for August, sapphire for September, and pink tourmaline for October.

And of course, the birthstones leave out so many of my (and my customers’) favorite stones (chrysoprase, for example!). TAB necklaces will be made available for these stones later on. Don’t miss the big photos after the jump! ( continued… )

I have been pretty much neglecting my pompom earrings ever since I wrote about them in my blog last year. Three reasons: they are rather tricky to make, I have been unsuccessful in finding new exciting stones in the form of smooth-surfaced (i.e., not faceted) rondelles of the right size, and my general aversion to leverback earwires. The classic pompoms use leverback earwires, but nicely shaped leverbacks are rather hard to find, and I personally prefer fish-hook style earwires. The leverback requirement is due to the fact that the ball-shape is woven tightly with classic pompoms, so fish hooks won’t leave much room between them and the pompom clusters, making the earrings hard to put on and off.

OK, that’s enough technical details… The news today of course is that I managed to go back to my “roots” and have made a few new pompom designs with an array of colorful gemstones. Yay! This time around the stones are mostly faceted, and fish hooks have been used. The clusters are made looser than those in classic pompoms, so they are easy to put on and remove. Available in: Caribbean blue apatite, peacock blue apatite, pink tourmaline, sunstone and amethyst. Some of them are available in my Etsy store now; some of them will be listed in a bit, because I don’t want my shop’s first page totally plastered with pompoms. :-) Larger photos below. ( continued… )

As new designs roll in, my older listings are looking a bit, well, old in my Etsy shop. Some of them are even nearing expiration dates! It is time for them to leave my shop for a nice home — so I am having a CLEARANCE SALE.

Starting from this Saturday, some of my older stock items will be put on a 15-20% sale. You can find them all in my shop’s Sale section. Supply is limited, and the sale will be on for a week only, so get ‘em while they last. When they are gone, they are gone!

… And there’s more! Since my last blog entry about new designs, I churned out a few more new pieces. Once I got into it, I found it impossible to stop. :-)

There are 6 pieces this time around, 3 of them featuring lapis lazuli. Why lapis lazuli? I got into this stone only recently, rather late in the game, and I was lucky enough to acquire excellent quality stones. I have been playing with them for a while, and I think I am getting the hang of working with the unique beauty and quality of this stone. Besides lapis, there are new renditions of my old-time favorite pompom earrings. Detailed photos and descriptions below, so please check them out! ( continued… )

So this morning, I stumbled across this nice tutorial on wire-wrapping briolette stones, done by a fellow Etsy seller. Wrapping briolettes is indeed one of the trickiest techniques that often frustrates the beginners and the skilled alike — god knows we need good tutorials on the subject! :-)

To my surprise, though, I spotted my own photo of my own creation used in the blog as an example, uncredited. It is of my labradorite briolette earrings, sold a while ago in my Etsy shop.

This is not the first time that my briolette wrapping techniques got attention from fellow etsians, but I can’t say I am too happy about this one. I would have thought it is common courtesy to ask in advance for permission to use, or in the least give proper credit for the photo and the work. I emailed the proprietor of the blog, contrariwise, nicely requesting for credit, so we’ll see how it turns out.

And also, I would like to point out that the description on the blog is wrong: There was no “wrapping back up the bead and wrapping tightly under the loop” on this labradorite briolette, although that is another technique that I do use frequently. The wire end was … (drum roll please) … tucked into a drill hole!

Times like this make me think that maybe I should publish my own briolette wrapping tutorials: I happen to love briolette wrapping (can you tell? ^^), and I do have an arsenal of techniques under my belt that I deploy on briolettes of every size and shape. Two things stop me: the desire to keep this hard-earned and self-discovered knowledge to myself, and the fear of the pain that is writing detailed and precise descriptions of the process. Who knows, maybe one day I will find myself in the mood for pain… lots of it. :-)

[update 09/29/2008] Woo hoo! A couple days ago, Anne of Contrariwise got back to me on Etsy via convo to let me know that she has updated her blog to give me proper credit. It took a while, but I am glad that the photo and the wrapping work finally bear my name. Thanks everyone who’s been supportive, and thanks to Anne for fixing it.

The weather was sunny and sweltering, I had set a few days of down time, so I sat down, with my AC blowing in full, with my beads. It was heaven! This is my idea of a perfect vacation: far from sitting in a car for hours, waiting to move up an inch in an endless queue of cars, getting to some resort literally swarming with people. Yep — this is a notorious vacation season in Korea, when everybody rushes to places filling up the roads and vacation spots. After one day of vacation hell, I was ecstatic to be able to stay home with my stones. But I digress…

This time, I was in the mood for simpler, stream-lined compositions. There are a few gemstone solitaire type necklaces, pendant necklaces with Thai Hill Tribe silver charms, and wire-wrapped earrings. Some of them have been already listed in my Etsy store, some of them have already been sold, and the rest are yet to be listed. More photos below! ( continued… )

As some of you might have noticed, my Etsy shop was closed from late June — mid July, during which time I was on a tour of the US. Almost literally. Check out my itinerary:

1. San Francisco, CA
2. Columbus, OH
3. Chicago, IL
4. Philadelphia, PA
5. Princeton, NJ
6. New York, NY
7. Monterey, CA
8. San Jose, CA

Let me just summarize by saying: many old friends were met, many new born babies were met for the first time, and some new girl/boy-friends and fiancees have been introduced. :-) And the photo is of Center City Philadelphia, which shows the city’s newest landmark Comcast building, looking totally like a USB thumb drive, next to the now ex-highest Liberty building.

Now that I’ve come back and gotten over the worst jetlag of my personal history, my Etsy shop is open again, although it is looking quite empty with only 8 items. I am producing some new designs, it’s just that the process of taking photos and putting them up on the web is such a painful work that I’m procrastinating getting into it. I do need to unload my old stock and plush my new stock out there. I will get to it soon, I promise!

I looked over my last post and realized: it’s been over 2 months since my last blog entry. Some of you might have noticed that updates have been sparse in my Etsy shop as well. So what’s been keeping Rae away from her fliers and wire spools, you ask?

Well, classes. I began to teach my first college classes in March. All two of them. And they have since completely taken over my life. I had this vague notion that someday I will teach all throughout my graduate school years (all 9 of them). Teaching, now I realize, is an entirely different beast than I had previously imagined. For a 3-hour class (as commonly offered in Korean universities), I have to make at least 30 slides, which take up to 15 hours to make. There is reading up, there is grading, there is… oh I don’t know, many other little duties to fill. And I get paid $120 a week for all these efforts and hours.

Not one of the greatest deals around, but I am not complaining. For the most part, I find teaching activities invigorating and rewarding. And my friends tell me that it gets easier as time passes (I hope they are right). In any case, teaching has finally done something that I did not think was possible: tearing my attention away from jewelry making. For my customers there’s always summer, when I will be class-free; I hope I will be re-acquainted with my fliers and flush cutters once I am done with giving out grades. That moment is eagerly awaited!

I regularly check up Kitco’s silver price page. Today, silver price was $19.78/oz. It very well could be that tomorrow it’ll go over the $20 mark. It’s… pure insanity. I started jewelry making back when the price was measly $4+/oz, and that was only 6 years ago.
At this price, $14/oz is suddenly looking OK. I do hope that the market calms down after a while. Luckily, I don’t have any urgent need for restocking silver at the moment, but I will be running out in a couple months for sure. The only regret I have is that I cannot take advantage of the ever growing silver scrap pile of mine — it’s at over 20 oz at this point — which surely will be lucrative to sell. If I were in the US, I’d be cashing this in with grim satisfaction. In Korea, cashing scrap silver is more complicated, as refineries will not accept bits of silver wire. Well, my parents’ stash of silver spoon and chopstick sets is looking awfully tempting now. :-) ( continued… )