a crystals & jewelry adventure

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hannukah, Blessed SolsticeFor the holidays, I’m celebrating and giving what I can. As much as I can. You won’t see this again for at least a year, and maybe not even then. I just can’t do it but once in a blue moon and still survive. But I’m happy to do it for the few days that I can. From now until midnight EST December 27, 2006

30% off EVERYthing at CrystalsAndJewelry.com
and shipping is still free in the US.

Enjoy. Happy Holidays.

Yep, that’s today’s tip for being a better jewelry artist, or actually any type of artist or craftsman. When your work just isn’t up to snuff, toss it and start over. Get used to doing it from the start. The first "drafts" of most designs, and when learning something new, perhaps all designs, almost always need to be thrown away.

You k now when something’s not really good. You may be proud you managed to make it anyway. I always am when I’m learning something new! But don’t impose the not-really-good part on the rest of the world. There are exceptions of course, like in school, or with friends studying the same types of things, and family (they’re always good for that hehehe). But for the most part, if you know it’s not your best, throw it away. Or tack it to your bulletin board or save it in a box for later comparison to better work.
You don’t necessarily have to throw the whole thing away. You can always rip out the part that’s just not right and redo it from there. For instance, in this pendant / charm I was making, the part that strikes me as really icky is the way the "swirl" over the top of the bead doesn’t really swirl and looks kind of mangled from the pliers. It doesn’t look l ike I did it this way intentionally — and that’s the best gauge I can think of, as to whether something is ok or not. So my choice was throw it away and start over, or pull out the part that’s not ok and rework it. In this case, I couldn’t remove that one thing without making the whole structure weak, so the wirework had to go, although of course I saved the purrty beads. Many times, though, I can remove just the bad part and rework it or just plain leave it out, whichever works with that particular piece.

If you get used to tossing out your creations that just don’t work out, you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble in the long run. The work you do show that much better. You won’t be embarassed by having to tell a customer or gallery things like, "Well, I was sick that day and it just wasn’t my best work by a long shot." You’ll have a lot more pride in the creations you do show to the world. People will be that much more impressed by the things you show. It’s better to show the world your best side.

I found this wonderful thought at a friend’s Christmas message on her website. I just had to share it.

"For those that believe in the spirited magic that exists behind the persona of Santa Claus, author Tara Taylor Quinn sums it superbly well when she wrote that … “Santa Claus is a doer. He exists in those who know about the magic of love, who see a need and address it; who enrich the life of someone else just because they can. Santa Claus is a spirit, a power that comes over normal mortals and gives them the ability to do something extraordinary for someone else. To buy something they wouldn’t ordinarily do - simply to make someone smile. A Santa Claus wants only to make his or her small portion of the world a better place. Santa Claus is everyone who believes in the power of love”.
from Portals of Spirit’s Christmas Message

Looky! Chakra Meditation Comfort Beads (Worry Beads) and Comfort Beads Bracelets are now 30% off.

Yep, they’re the most popular ones. And maybe the prettiest too. I wasn’t planning on putting these on sale until later in the month, but a Very Nice Person showed me that I’d not even had them on the regular December 25% off on comfort beads due to a shopping cart programming snafu. Yep, I snafu’d. So to make up for it, I decided to get these out there on sale in time for Christmas. Which brings us to…

Holiday Deadlines!
December 18 is the last day to place orders that will definitely go out by the post office’s December 20th deadline for Priority Mail shipping.
December 19 is the last day to place orders that will definitely go out by the post office’s December 21st deadline for Express Mail shipping.
I’m happy to take orders after that, of course, but I can’t promise I’ll be able to get them out in time for Christmas unless you’re willing to pay enough for a rush so that I can hire someone to take over something else.

New Jools! Jools = Jewelry

I have new jools of my own creation like the Aqua Aura Quartz bracelet to the left there. Yum! I’ve been grabbing up every bead, crystal, and whatnot of Aqua Aura Quartz that I can find. I love the stuff, but it’s impossible to find cheaply. Wah wah! It’s fantastic for psychic awareness and energy work, not to mention stunningly gorgeous. So I nab it when I can. There are other new jewelry goodies of mine that I put up today too.
Plus new Swarovski Crystal, Gemstone and Bali Silver jools by Gabrielle Gaither. I’ve known Gabrielle for years, and she does some gorgeous work with the Swarovski crystals and stones. I know her to be such a perfectionist, I’m giving the same handcrafted jewelry guarantee on her work as I do on mine. I can’t do that, and wouldn’t even consider it, for just anyone.

So pop on over for some eyecandy and/or fun shopping.

… if you have an online shop, there will occasionally be misunderstandings with customers. That’s life on the internet, and we’re all human, so all of us get confused or make mistakes occasionally.
For instance one misunderstand that happens on my site occasionally involves Express Mail. On the top of the terms page  button, which every purchaser has to visit in order to check out at CrystalsAndJewelry.com, it specifically says above the "Agree to Terms, Continue to Checkout",

"Please allow 3 days to one week before shipment for your order to be prepared, or longer for special orders or made to order items. If you need your item(s) for a special occasion or need a rush, contact me and I’ll try to help out. Thanks!"

Yet a couple of customers have thought that because they chose Express Mail, their orders would be rushed even though they did not contact me about them.  I felt bad about it, but I truly don’t understand why they believe that choosing Express Mail would negate the terms they agreed to.  I’m not even sure how to make it clearer than to say just how long it takes to get items out the door.

My suspicion is that, like many busy people, not everyone reads the terms carefully. And you know what, that’s going to happen. People are busier than ever in the 21st century here.  It’s human.

The question is, what do you do about it when your customer isn’t happy because they didn’t either read or fully understand the terms.  You’ve done exactly what you said you’d do. So it’s hard to take on the blame for that being a bad thing.  But do you want to have unhappy customers?  I don’t recommend it, and I sure don’t want to.   So I always try to look for the win-win situation.  And if I can’t find one of those, I modify my expectation of what I "win" out of the situation, and try to help out the customer as a first priority. Sometimes this may mean refunding someone for an order that I would be within my rights to refuse to refund. I still prefer for that the customer be happy, and sometimes what I "win" is just that. And that’s ok.

It bears thinking on what you’d like to happen when misunderstandings occur. That way you don’t have to come up with ideas in the middle of an actual misunderstanding!  It makes it a lot easier to already know what you really want to do.

I love cats!

As many of you know already, I love cats. Oh yes, I do. The cats I’m owned by are hosting the Carnival of the Cats #142 at their blog today. What fun! You see, they ganged up and sat on me and forced me to type out the carnival stuff for them. Ok, that’s not exactly how it happened, but close enough. They made me make a blogging cat calendar too, to raise money for their catblogging friends in need. I must say I’m pleased with how it turned out. I haven’t totally lost my graphic design skills after all.

Cats and Healing Prayers. Whodathunkit?

The catbloggers are super, if you didn’t already know that. We have live healing prayer circles/vigils at least once a month to get together to send healing purrs and say “purrayers” for cat friends and their beans (that’s human beans) who are sick or in a bad patch of some sort. If you ever want to join in, please do. (We’re doing two this week, I think, tonight at 9pm EST, and Monday evening sometime). Even dogs have been known to attend. There’s even a Pet Prayer and Praise Blog run by catbloggers with a weekly prayer list and Sunday Sermon.

The cats are bent on world domination, it seems. Or at least blogosphere domination. hehehe

Oh, did I mention that I love cats?

It surprises me a great deal to realize anyone might feel they could only wear a stone if it wasn’t any other month’s birthstone. I read this on a site just a short while ago, though:

“Though citrine is the November birth stone it is an accepted stone for anyone to wear if they enjoy the golden color.”

It’s perfectly ok to wear a stone that is some other month or zodiac sign’s birthstone. It’s also ok to wear a gemstone that isn’t any month or astrology sign’s birthstone.

Birthstones are symbols and energy patterns of a particular month of birth, but can also be used for other things. It’s kind of like the color red is the symbol for stopping in a stop sign or light, but can also be used in totally unrelated things like Santa hats. So if you love aquamarine even though your birthstone is amethyst, by all means, wear aquamarine.

You can find traditional, modern and Biblical lists of gemstones here, in case you’re curious to learn more about birthstones.

Yes. Yard sale. Online. Well, that’s what I’m calling it. Starting now and going on and on, I expect. You might find orphan stones, or jewelry making tools, or odd jewelry. I guess I could have called it something else. But I always loved yard sales from back when we used to go treasure hunting at them when I was a kid. So it’s a yard sale. New crystals and stones goodies went up just a bit ago too.

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Not anything to do with yard sales, but of interest to me at least.

This is a necklace that I’m probably about halfway finished with. It’s about a warrior goddess in another world. So far it has over 45 feet of wire in it, fine silver, Argentium® sterling silver, copper, and gold filled. It also has garnet, obsidian, and lava rock. And I have a big matte ruby nugget that goes on it. I’m pleased with it so far. I just wish I had 48 hours in a day so I could keep working on it right now. hehehe

… to distraction.  Comment spam and trackback spam on my old blog set up made me hate the blog.  Yesterday I got over 100 spams that came from the blog.  Pffffft. Well that wouldn’t do.  So I moved over here to a new WordPress blog.  It has handy-dandy features like Spam Karma 2 that eats these spams for breakfast. Woo!  So I should be ok, I won’t hate the blog, and I will be thrilled to update more.

I’m in the process of moving the old blog posts over and whatnot. Bear with me please. I’d love to finish it now, but I find the idea of getting orders out for folks really appealing. hehehe
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Eyecandy for today: Check out the gorgeous Indio Agate cab on Sam Silverhawk’s sale cabs. Isn’t that a yummy stone?  I have to learn more about it