Rae’s Creations The Blog  

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…)

I’ve been tagged — by Tamara of McFarland Designs! In this blog post, she invited a few fellow jewelry designers to reveal their own jewelry wardrobe. I have to say I was confused at first as to what this “tagging” game was about. It took me a while, but I’ve finally figured it out: “tag, you’re it!”. :-) So, since I’ve been tagged and I’m a good player, here are a few of my favorite jewelry pieces.

Peruvian blue opal rondelles dangling from 10k earwires. If my house catches fire, these Peruvian opal beads are going to be among the first that I’d grab before I run for my life. (Yes, I’m feeling particularly silly and morbid today.) Seriously though, I know for sure that it’ll be hard to find something like these again. The color… translucency… they are dreamy! I am not sure if there are demands for solid gold pieces on Etsy, but I think I’ll come around to list these some day.
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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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I have one last set of new designs to show off before new items go on sale in my Etsy shop next week!

New bracelets are shown in the top row, “berry branch” necklaces and charm necklaces in the middle, and earrings with oversized oval earwires at the bottom.
 

 

 

Please take a closer look at each design on this page: ( continued… )

I came across these while going through the big pile of my jewelry paraphernalia: a sunflower charm (11×14mm), a heart charm (9×9mm) and a leaf charm (10×10mm).

I made these charms while I was in a metalsmithing class, circa 2003 I believe, at University City Arts League in West Philly. This was my first project for the class. I picked up a piece of red wax and sculpted the original models, which then my teacher Claire took to a metal casting place to have them cast in sterling. After I received the cast pieces, I had to re-shape, oxidize, polish and give them the finishing touch. I was particularly happy with the way the sunflower charm turned out, so I had a mold made along with a couple duplicates. I enjoyed working tiny corners of wax figures, and it was such a delightful sensation to see those tiny, red wax blurbs transformed into weighty and shiny silver pieces. I’d love to try more in the future.

The jewelry class of UCAL had the most relaxed atmosphere — it doesn’t have much of fixed structure at all but feels more like a shared studio space with a teacher present. Each student picked out what she/he wanted to make, and Claire the teacher would help them out. There I learned how to cut, solder, hammer, polish and finish metal. Fun time! I was quite lucky to be living so close to such a wonderful establishment. If you live in or nearby Philly, I highly recommend checking out University City Arts League.

Ever since I changed my blog address about a week ago (explained in this post), I watched curiously and anxiously as Google blog search lose sight of my blog. I waited, re-submitted my blog address and even pinged, yet Google kept stalling, failing to index my new posts.

Today, I decided to read up on the art of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and made an eye-opening discovery. Well, apparently, a subdomain and a main domain are treated as separate entities by search engines. This means that my main domain (http://www.raescreations.com/) and my now-former blog address in a subdomain (http://blog.raescreations.com/) are seen as unrelated for indexing purposes! I am not sure if this is the direct cause of my blog’s Google search woes, but I have a feeling that this is a bad thing for me regardless.

So, I have once again moved my blog address, and for the last time this time. It is now located in a subdirectory of my main domain: http://www.raescreations.com/blog. I have to ask you once again to update your blog feed, if you are subscribing to my blog. It will be the last time, I promise!

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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I have decided to move my blog into a more proper, blog-like location: http://blog.raescreations.com/. Not much of a move, but rather given a room of its own, thereby freeing my web domain for other things if need be. Other exciting things such as… a web store some day? Ha ha. Better get this move done sooner while the blog is still young, I thought.

For now, a hit to my main domain “http://www.raescreations.com/” is automatically redirected to my blog address, but I expect to change it at some point. More importantly, your blog feed might have stopped working due to the address change. Please update your blog feed with my new blog address!

**UPDATE (07/04)** The blog address has been moved again. Please see this post!