Kavita's necklace

Kavita, a friend from choir had asked me to make her a custom necklace. She invited me to her house on Saturday- the house has been in an on-going renovation for 11 years- she designed some of the rooms herself. That afternoon, she got her husband, her twin teenagers (a boy and a girl), and her 5 dogs all sitting in their living room looking through my Etsy shop in a 60" flatscreen tv. That was quite a big moment for me...

She told me about her love for jewelry and silver. Her husband then pulled out her old silver collection and showed me her crazy collection-  silver bugs jewelry, silver half a foot pendant, over-the-top heavy precious stone necklace and a huge messy wire earring in silver. She finally asked me to make whatever I want with the oval lapis lazuli bead that I've got.

It's very uncommon for someone to say to me, "I like your taste, here's mine, now go!" - especially in Canberra! Talk about trust! I know this place is Australia's capital city, but it's sort of rural at the same time. The suburbs are divided by forests, sometimes people go to the supermarket and cinema in their PJ's and wear jeans to concerts. No one wears crazy in here!

So this is what I've come up with,

I oddly quite like this necklace. I tried making it crazy, but not too much so that it's still 'me'. I'll be giving this to her this weekend. I hope she likes it! Eeek...!

Her daughter Llana also ordered my 'geometric choker' but in black. It's so odd. I thought I would never sell that piece because it's so unusual- but she loves it! Man, I love people who are 'out there'! They get me! =)

Ways to Stay Creative

Greg forward me this list from work. He thought this might be very useful for me, and he's right. I think this is more than just really good tips, it's a way of life. I'm going to blow this up and stick it on my mirror now. 

Words

(I wrote this blog post a week ago and for some reason I forgot to post it up! Oh well, I guess late is better than nothing)

Last week... hasn’t really been easy. I feel like getting blows, after blows of challenges.

It started as a silly challenge. I finished this adventure game called “Dreamfall” which I have spent a lot of time playing lately. This game is more of a story book than a game really. When the game ended, the story has unfolded to me in a very disappointing way. I fought through mazes and tried to stop bad guys from getting their ways. But in the end, all of my friends died, or captured. I also died and the baddies, though mildly injured, still made their way through. The only situation that is resolved is that the ghost that has been haunting my character had disappeared. That is like, 1 out of 10 cases that I’m trying to solved actually got solved properly.

Words are not enough for me to express my disappointment. I actually feel irritated and upset. The game was so visually stunning. There’s so many build ups, and my expectations rises every time I move on to the next chapter. I thought to myself “There has to be nothing worst than being let down after so build ups and expectations! Whoever wrote this story is sooo evil!” Well. Turns out that there is something worst than that. Less than 24 hours later, I got an email from Canberra Handmade that says,

Dear Designer

Thank you for your recent application for Shop handmade Canberra. 

Unfortunately your application has been unsuccessful as the category you have applied for is full.

Thank you for your interest in Shop Handmade Canberra.

With Thanks

Alright, maybe there is something worst than being let down after a huge build up in a fantasy world- that is being let down in a real world! I've been told that shop handmade have agreed for me to lease out their space just a couple of days back. It doesn’t seem like it’s serious, but its still getting me down. I feel like making wire jewellery is all I’ve got, and if a local certified handmade shop won’t take it, I’m really really stuffed.

I can feel myself sinking in hopelessness and felt a bit lazy with making jewelry for the rest of the day. I remember the same feeling in uni when I got my comments back from my lecturers about my singing. One particular semester I got an extremely bad mark and comments about my singing that is so horrifying, I couldn’t get myself out of my room for 5 days. 

I wished back then that those words didn’t get me down. In uni I keep feeling bad about getting comments after comments that I don’t even bother trying anymore. So, I took this hard-earned wisdom, pulled myself together and kept working for the day. They finally wrote back to me 3 days later that the email was a mistake and they’ll contact me by September. Thank you God!!!

Words are so evil sometimes. I mean, they can be used for great things of course, but when its used badly, it is really, really bad. I feel like when someone complement me, I'd be happy for a little while, but if someone said something that I didn't like, I'll carry it with me forever like scars. 

And if that wasn't challenging enough, on Wednesday I suffered a migraine that lasts for 2 days.  I couldn’t do anything besides sleep and watch tv. My husband has been supporting me in the background the whole time. As I was constantly frowning and feeling disappointed in myself, he was very forgiving and listened to me. He even took over making dinner in some nights. I guess by the end of the day, no matter how bad things are, I still feel like the luckiest girl in the world because of him. 

I had a much better time the week after. I seem to be able to do the things that I said I was going to do such as going to the gym, turning up in the social events at night time and doing the dishes before I go to sleep- simple things like that. Hopefully I'll be able to keep this up for as long as I can!  

Insight Handmade

Yesterday, I finally had the confidence to go to the Canberra Handmade shop to find out if my jewellery were good enough to be sold there- and they loved it! Thank goodness!!! But they recommend me to start selling in September when the weather is warmer. They think my jewellery is too summery for winter and won’t really go with the ‘scarf issue’. Well, it is 3 months away and even though it seem ages away, I was thinking that I probably wouldn’t want to start selling to the general public inside a busy shop 2 to 3 months from now anyway. I need to come up with more designs and built more stock.

It’s taking a lot of time for me to grow my business, but I guess that’s the catch with handmade, you have to allow a lot of time to built your collection in order to have a stall or whatever. I guess having ‘stock’ reminds people of buying stuff online in bulk arriving 2 weeks later and sell them the next week in a market. When I introduce to people what I do, I get asked, “So, how much do you contribute to the household per week?” or “how come you don’t have a stall in the market?” – I wish I have a magic wand that can stop time for awhile so I can get things done while the rest of the world is frozen.

Oh gosh, I have to HAND-make all my stock. I do everything from coming up with my own design, plan and think about them, and then I make them- and most of the time than not, at least one of my attempt will fail an hour or so into the making. And then I have to price them, do the photos and list them online. I’ve had so many people asking me if I’ve got any eyes left. Sometimes after sitting on my desk for hours and days at a time, I thought- ‘it is too late. I’m going to crazy-town and no one can stop me.’

Oh well, I don’t expect people here to know what handmade means let alone making wire jewellery. And it’s only the first year that I’m doing this so I shouldn’t let the ‘stock’ issue thing get inside my head.

So, I have 3 months left and a bit until September. Seeing how I’ve been going in the past couple of months, it will be a challenging 3 months. Here’s some of my personal challenges that I’ll be facing:

1.      On a normal ‘work’ day- I’m very easily distracted. I will caught myself day-dreaming or taking breaks longer than I should
Another completely different challenge is that most of the time I don’t know how to stop in order to go to the gym. I love the gym. I like jogging while watching tv and counting numbers while doing weights, but believe it or not my biggest challenge is to get dressed and walk out the door. 

3.Trying to keep the house clean is another challenge. By the end of the day, the last thing that I want to do is wash the dishes. But if I don’t I will be unhappy at myself on the next day.

These are the sort of things that gets me down. How can simple things be so hard to do??! Anyway, I’m going to improve on these points and all you bloggers (hello?) can be my witness!!!  

Unfortunately, aside from these news, I don’t have any new items to list today although today is Friday. And just for today, I didn’t make any jewellery either. Today I learnt how to use a sewing machine for the first time- using that singer sewing machine I found in the dumpster- we haven’t found anything wrong with it yet. My friend Hanna is a sewing teacher, and she helped me introduce this art- and I suddenly feel liberated from a certain mystery that is known as sewing.

This week however, I’ve been re-stocking items- which is good. It doesn’t show much in Etsy, but I have been getting some sales- simply out of me handing out name cards and word of mouth. In my old Etsy shop, I used to try to get people sign up on Etsy and buy my stuff online- even if they’re buying it off me face to face so that I can get the sales number up, keep my one-off jewelery pictures online and get feedback. But now I don’t really care about those things, I just want to build up stock.

Yes, stock , stock, stock... Ok, I’m falling asleep now. Gtg- good night peeps! 

A Little Car Incident

Something crazy happened after church yesterday. We finished at around 8:30pm and one of the girls car from church got smashed- but she saw the guy who did it. So she ran back in to tell Robin- an older lady at church. Robin rang the police and called out to 3 guys at church including Greg and her husband (whom just become an elder of our church an hour earlier). Well... they went and chased after the culprit towards the general direction he was running to, and saw him when they were running down a hill. They yelled to the guy, "Hey, someone's car just got smashed!" the dude just ran faster and yelled back, "I'm gonna stab you in a minute!" So the guys followed him at a safe distance to where he was living- which is to a government housing/apartment area.

Meanwhile, some of the girls and I were trying to calm each other and waiting for the boys in the foyer, thinking, "So... what are they going to do when they caught him? They won't beat him. Maybe they'll pray for him?" haha... how funny would that be?

Thankfully they all came back around 10 minutes later unharmed. I started packing my keyboard but Robin told me that Greg might not be back for awhile because the police thought they caught the guy and they want him to identify if it was the right person.. It wasn't the guy, but fortunately nothing was stolen from the car. There's a lot of car theft going on in Canberra, but the police said it's a rare situation when the person got caught in the act.

Oh well... I'm just glad that my husband (or anyone) didn't get stabbed... I will cry.

Plants, Books and Photography

On May 1st, I received my Etsy update in my email, aaand it hits me. In the month of April, I've only listed 5 new items and had re-listed $18.20 worth of items (91 items).

What...have... I, DONE?!

I have to admit that listing things on Etsy is not my favorite things to do. I envy people who loves photography and gets excited when it comes to taking photos of their own jewelry. I love taking photos for fun, but when it comes to taking Etsy photos, I really, really, dread it- and I don't realize when I don't do it. So from now on, I'm going to restrain myself from making jewelry on Fridays and will dedicate that day into taking photos and listing new items on Etsy.

I have been sketching a lot and have been coming up with new designs.My recent one is the butterfly wings earrings. It's been hard and fiddly work- doing sketches has definitely helped me map out of what I'm making. I really like the result, especially the multiple colour combination.

Mariposa in green and purple

Mariposa in red and black

I’ve been having an awesome following weekend. Greg and I decided to go to a nursery to spend a gift voucher we got from a friend. When we got out of our unit to the car, Greg went to take the recycling out and guess what he found at the dumpster?!

Taraaaaa...!!!

You know, I've always wanted a one, even though I can't sew for the life of me. Greg looked up on the internet to see how to thread the cotton through, we test it on a piece of rag and it still works!!! It's so awesome that we haven't got out of the house yet and we're already getting free stuff :p

When we arrived at the nursery, I was pretty much in heaven. We got lots of basic gardening things- and some fun things like- tulip and hyacinth bulbs, lavender plant (so that I can stop stealing Suzanne’s and eat my own lavender), 2 camellia plants (cause it was 50% off) , and a mushroom growing kit!

On Sunday morning, I did my first half a shift of minding our tiny Christian bookstall at a market in a parking lot with my friend Chloe. Our stall were located in a place where people sell their whatever. We’re not there to make money. It’s a way for our church to bring out Christianity and raise conversations with strangers... except I was a bit shy and were'nt familiar with the books. I hope I’ll get more shifts soon and practice a bit more. Our main priority is to talk to people about Christianity. So when someone is interested of a book and money is an issue, sometimes we just give them away. Or sell a book for $2 when it’s meant to be $7, like we did that day. But we do sell other things outside of this to cover our losses.

That afternoon I did some gardening, which I enjoyed immensely. I bought a basil plant weeks ago which are growing in clumps, so I spent time splitting them and re-planting it. I planted some seeds- properly this time with individual mini pots and super fine dirt- with labels. Most of the seeds are various winter salad seeds that I got for my birthday.

Btw, if you ever wanted to do some gardening and think that it’s hard, here’s a tip: plant grape hyacinth- you won’t fail! I pulled out some grape hyacinths bulbs last year and chucked them in a bucket to replant. I saw some of the bulbs started to sprout in the bucket, but didn't realise that it had grown inside the bucket feeding on each other. This plant is seriously persistent for life and they somehow know that when autumn comes it's time to grow. While still in the bucket the bulbs did get some sun, but I didn’t water them at all. I could just left them the way it is and put it in a glass jar to see how it grows, but I'm not that game so I just end up replanting it.... Maybe next year I'll prepare for it.

what we 'made' on Easter holiday...

One of the many reason I started a blog is so that I will be able to challenge myself in appreciating my life experiences by writing about it, no matter how simple they are. I’m not sure why I was so uninspired I couldn’t think of anything to write in the past couple of weeks. I need to shut my brain in thinking that way because I overlooked something awesome that we did on the Easter long weekend: making my long awaited jewelery holder!!!  

Greg’s parents own a huge farm 3 hours away from Canberra- ...aaand a shed in their yard full of wood-turning related equipment. On Monday morning, as soon as Greg and I are up, we rode on a motorbike around the farm to find wood. Greg showed me this old broken shed and we picked out a single long wood that was nailed to the roof. I couldn't believe my luck! A genuine, properly aged and weathered piece of wood that has been sitting there for decades- and it looked amazing. The wood was no less than 2 meters long but we somehow managed getting it back on the motorbike. 

Back in the house, me and Robyn (my mum in law) swept all the umbrella weed and dead caterpillars out of the wood turning shed. We got some chicken wire from the farm and Greg’s dad helped us cut the wood. As soon as we figured out what to do, I became the useless one and Greg did the rest of the work. 

...so Robyn and I organised a special outdoor lunch for the 4 of us! Robyn is a master in creating the perfect fire. With pieces of bricks and rocks put together, it is just as good as using a proper barbecue. 

This is one of our favorite camping food: potato wrapped in aluminum foil then placed inside the fire's hot coal (not the flames). When it's all cooked you can easily peel the skin, put butter and salt on it and scoop up the soft hot potato inside. Oh yuuum....  

'

oh, and the cat gets to enjoy the fire too but not our food. 

We took the jewelry holder back to Canberra and it is now sitting on my desk. I'm not quite finished with it yet, but right now... I'm just happy that I can see the things that I made displayed than just piled up in a bag. And when I feel like I'm not being productive I could look up to my jewelry display and be happy with what I've got. Yay! =)