Rae’s Creations The Blog  

The year 2007 is almost over! A whole month and another near-month came and went without a new blog post. You might have noticed that shop-keeping efforts to my Etsy shop were minimal during that time. There were some distractions: I moved mid-November to a new place, and I started out at a new job at the same time. However, the real big reason for this recent hiatus was, I think, my subconscious fear of the biggest shopping season of the year. With the recent big changes in my life, I just didn’t feel up to dealing with the mad pressure that is the Christmas shopping season. So, now, with the frenzy officially over and my audience much calmer, I resume my jewelry making and shop tending activities in a leisurely manner. :-)

And the new awakening is accompanied by some fresh new looks: I have been experimenting with new photo styles. The time for new photos was ripe. There is a roaster of photo setups that I have been using in most of my shoots: one involves a natural wood piece as a background, another with dark stone slate, and another stone background with a golden brown tone. Some lovely shots have been produced in these setups, but there were some things that warranted an overhaul. ( continued… )

It is time…! I have long been promising myself a SALE, which I kept putting off. Well, I’ve been distracted lately — after a long break from work, I have recently found a new job (hurray!). It is a research position, but I got some teaching duties too so here’s keeping fingers crossed that it won’t distract me too much from making lots and lots of jewelry. :-) Anyways, the time is right for me to have a sale! It’s been a couple months since I made my last email announcement to my mailing list subscribers, and apparently that got some folks wondering “Is this thing still on?”. So if you’re a subscriber, watch out for an announcement in your box — it will be there very soon!

With the exception of my pompom earrings, I haven’t been using leverback earwires much in my designs. I love their functionality and looks, and I know that many customers prefer them on account of the extra security they provide. It’s just that attaching a drop to a leverback earwire always seemed to create a disjointed look between the two components due to the way leverbacks are shaped, which tends to leave the overall design looking unfinished. Recently I have been discovering many creative uses for Hill Tribe silver printed rings (such as in this bracelet), and they came in handy again this time. Simply placing a couple of them atop a gemstone dangle gives a leverback earring a cover-up and a touch of re-enforcement at the attachment spot while adding a decorative element. I went ahead and made quite a few variations of this design.   ( continued… )

My focus has been on making bigger, complex pieces lately, and the staples of my jewelry line have been neglected as a result: affordable, everyday silver earrings with rustic appeal. Strangely enough, I realized that this cool period came from… fatigue from making my own earwires. :-) Apparently, I spend too much mental energy on getting every detail and especially the contours of my earwires right. Luckily, once I got back into the mood I was rolling out new earwires and designs in no time.

For some reason I have long had this aversion to carrying variations of the same design in my shop. It somehow felt indecisive as a designer to make available essentially the same design only with different gemstones, when I should be offering one and only version of a design, painstakingly refined to perfection! Haha… Well, I decided to get off the rather maniacal high horse and try offering design series. After all, it would be good to give customers some choices as to their preferred gemstones and color schemes. I have conjured up a couple of “lines” here.   ( continued… )

I love making wire-wrapped rings. I am not as widely known for rings as other Etsy sellers such as starrydesigns and farafield, but I have had a fair share of successful ring designs of my own:

• the Ruby Cluster Ring (it was featured on Etsy homepage once),
• Seafoam Aquamarine Wire-Wrapped Ring (a definite attention grabber, only a few left to sell, unfortunately!),
• Blue Rose Wire-Wrapped Ring (back when I first listed it, it was the only wire-wrapped ring featuring a carved rose; this style has since become very common on Etsy), and
• The Green Spring Ring (I need to get more of the prehnite rounds from my supplier!).

Most of them are set for retirement, so I wanted to come up with some fresh new ring designs. There are standard-sized stones that can easily be wrapped and turned into a ring, but I always felt that the center stone of a ring needs to pack a little more “punch”. The fine faceting and organic inclusions in the Aquamarine Ring make for that punch, and so does the disco-ball look on the multi faceting of the prehnite stone. This time, I wanted to use some interesting-looking free-form nugget stones. The advantage is that the resulting rings have the unique, one-of-a-kind quality; the downside is of course that these rings become limited edition, and might require individual photo shoots, which adds to the price. ( continued… )

As a designer, I go through a phase every once in a while where I am hooked on a certain design element. Flowers are, for me, not one of them: it seems that I am perennially in the state of being hooked on them. :-) Thai silver flower charms and beads have always been my favorite thing to work with; I am also always on the lookout for flower-shaped gemstone beads with high-quality and detailed carving.

Continuing from my last designs of rose branch earrings, I created three additional earring pieces designed around rose blossoms. There are also a couple bracelets and a necklace featuring Thai silver flower components. Continue reading below for larger pictures!

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Where did the summer go? It’s officially fall, and here in Seoul the raging summer heat suddenly vanished. I had a wonderful, lazy summer, but I suppose it is time to get back into action.

Back in May, I was pondering the possibility of switching venues in the fall, as announced in this post. Well, the cool new season is here and it seems that my shop will be continuing on Etsy.

Etsy is not without faults, but it is still the best vehicle around for me and my jewelry. Of all the flaws and foibles Etsy boasts, I find its saturation problem most troubling. Back on August 10th, the jewelry category passed the 200,000 listing mark. (I made a rather excited post in the forums with a wrong title.) Today, the count is at 214,701. In just 3 weeks, the number of listings increased by 7.35%. According to my quick and dirty calculation, the jewelry category will reach another monumental number of 300,000 in about 15 weeks from now, just in time for Christmas. 400,000 will come even more swiftly: just another 11 weeks down the road.

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OK, so my creative juice hasn’t exactly been flowing since my last sale of new designs. Many reasons… The sale kept me busy for a while which got me exhausted. I felt slightly guilty since I wasn’t making much progress in my day job. Also, I recently purchased a whole lot of gemstone briolettes, and while briolettes are the most beautiful among bead shapes, I find they tend to dictate simpler designs and not so much bursting creativity (or maybe that is just my own tendency ^^).

Well, I finally got my act together and made something new. Lovely rose branches, one with blue amazonite roses and another with red coral roses. The wire weaving techniques used in these earrings are not completely new to me — they are variations of my other designs such as these tourmaline earrings. I have always wanted to incorporate flowers in them, so here they are. I think they turned out nicely.

Labradorite marquise leaves are cascading atop blue amazonite carved rose beads. I am loving the combination of colors here — cool blue flashes on the labradorite beads and warmer pastel blue of amazonite.
(UPDATE: available now in my Etsy shop!)
(UDATE2: This pair was featured on Etsy front page on August 28th! It racked up 400+ views that day and 200 more the next. And it sold soon after. All hail to the power that is front page feature…)
Carved red coral roses are blooming under silky gray moonstone leaves. Well, let me tell you about the moonstone leaves. They are exquisite with intricate carving and excellent sheen. I’ve always found red and gray to go nicely together, so I was lucky that I had these red coral roses handy.

You’ll notice that I made the two pieces of these earring pairs asymmetrical — one with three leaves and the other with only two. I think this arrangement accentuates the natural and organic look of the design. When I list these in my Etsy store, however, I will probably give an option to make these pairs symmetrical, since I can understand if my customer favors a bit more conservative look.
(UADATE: I went back to my supplier to buy more of the coral beads. And they were all out! Occasions like this feed my already overblown hoarding instincts. Sigh…)

32 brand-new designs of mine will go on sale soon in my Etsy shop. 3-4 new designs will be posted in my Etsy shop daily, all between July 11th (Wed) — July 18th (Wed).

I know, I am supposed to be closed till October, but just had to roll out my latest summer jewelry collection just in time for the vacation season. :-) Please scroll down to see the whole lineup.

Bought an item, but want to see what else I list before making a payment? No problem. You can make individual purchases, wait and see, and make one combined payment when you are done shopping. Just email me and ask for a combined invoice when you’re ready to pay!
 

SUBSCRIBER SPECIAL!
A free pair of Thai silver post earrings! Two designs are available: leaf-stamped buttons and flowers. I was very excited when I found these — for some reason, post-style Thai silver earrings are very rare. They are super cute, and they match perfectly my bracelets and necklaces with Thai silver, which is pretty much everything. :-) The details:

• Flower earrings for purchases of $50 or more
  Leaf earrings for all other purchases (totaling $49 or less)
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Unless I am just imagining it all, my best known work are my “pompom” earrings. They sell consistently, and they often get chosen by fellow Etsy users to be featured in their Treasuries. One pair (with rhodochrosite, the red pair on the right) even had the luck to grace the front page of Etsy.

It all began with the chrysoprase pair shown at the top. This pair occupies a special place in my heart in many ways. It was the very first item I listed in my Etsy shop, and it was my very first Etsy sale (within hours of listing as a matter of fact). It was the most-viewed (2000+ views) and most-hearted (66 hearts) item in my shop until it finally sold out after a year-long run on May 18th, which it achieved all without ever being featured on Etsy front page! Needless to say, it was something of an emotional moment for me when the last one in the stock sold, taking down with it all its hearts and views. (Now I only have enough chrysoprase beads to make a couple more pairs.)

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