A few things I saw on one of my walks today.
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| Feather in the straw bales |
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| Decaying Mexican Sunflower |
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| Leaf of a squash plant |
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| Morning Glory Leaf |
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| Datura Pod |
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| Datura Pod |
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| Datura Pod |
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| Datura Pod |
I bought a few stones to add to my collection today. Here's some examples:
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| Onyx |
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| Agate |
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| Indian Agate |
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| Dragon Vein Agate |
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| Purple Coral Fossil |
And one of the books I ordered,
Rockhounding New Mexico, by Ruta Vaskys and Martin Freed, arrived in the mail.
I made a pair of earrings using washers I got from Habitat Restore in Maryland and recycled glass bottles from Ghana. I have a related necklace mostly completed now.
My big breakthrough of the day was the decision to not spend my time trying to be more successful as a jewelry seller on Etsy. I've read their Seller's Manual and many posts in the forums, joined lots of groups, read external sites related to Etsy success, etc. and I've heard all the main things that people say about how to be successful.
Consequently, I've spent a lot of time improving the photography of my work, tinkering with my item descriptions, and researching key words for search engine optimization. I've also invested many hours in networking, liking people's work, creating treasuries, adding people to my circle, etc. It hasn't had much effect on my sales.
It takes a lot of work to be successful on Etsy, especially if you're selling jewelry. While I have improved my photography skills and greatly increased my interested in macro photography in particular through this process, I believe too much of my time and attention have been spent on trying to optimize myself for sales on Etsy. It was one of those weird situations where, at one point in time, you have an end in mind, but you get so caught up in the process that you forget to think deeply about that end and whether it's really the end that you want to be pursuing in the first place.
The end I want (and wanted) to pursue is not to be a successful seller on Etsy; I got myself caught up in thinking it was when I realized I might be able to make a few dollars from doing something I liked: working with things like gemstones, found objects, bones, metal, treasures from thrift stores, etc.
So, now I want to get back to where I started from and embrace that end more directly and fully. I want to think about new designs that capture my beliefs and sensibilities about the world, and study what other like minded people are doing. I want to take a look inside myself, and a look outside myself to see what people are doing to create functional art made with renewable, recycled, vintage, repurposed material.
I also want to develop some of my skills to higher level, and learn some new ones. In many cases, I imagine designs I'd like to execute, but I lack the skills to realize the vision. And I need to do some experimentation with materials to see how they can be used in new ways. For example, today I was staring at my barn and the grain of the wood--and I was envisioning a necklace made of reclaimed plywood that would preserve the patterns and texture of the wood. I've cut sheets of plywood before while building things, but never on the small scale of jewelry. To use reclaimed plywood, I need to spend some time experimenting with that material and using the tools needed to work with it. I also need to play around with finishes to see what kinds of things would seal the wood while preserving some of the texture.
I would also like to make use of the lava rocks around here. But I haven't yet drilled into any to see what they're like to work with. And I've seen many beautiful and interesting rocks during my walks that I'd like to put into settings for rings and necklaces. This requires that I develop my drilling skills and my stone setting skills. So--my decision today was to allow myself to work on developing my imaginative capacities, to experiment with new materials, and develop my technical skills.
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