In Memory

On November 24, 2009, I lost my mom to cancer. My friends in high school never really understood when I said she was my best friend. (Parents weren’t supposed to be your best friend at that point in your life.) She was always there to listen if I had a problem, needed to bounce an idea off someone or just talk. She was also very supportive and interested in the various projects I have undertaken in my life, from work to volunteering to hobbies. She often likened me to Johnny Appleseed with the way her garden and many others bloomed with plants that I divided and shared from my own gardens.

My mom is the reason that I got into designing and making jewelry. That is something she had done for many years and I had admired her creations. (I had made a few things with my son for gifts, but really hadn’t done much with jewelry until my mom helped me with a special project.)

A few years ago, my husband gave me an amber pin/pendant that I wanted to be able to wear both as a pin and as a pendant on a beaded necklace. My mom helped me look for beads that would compliment the piece and I found a bail that allowed me to remove the pendant without disturbing the rest of the necklace. After we had gathered a good variety of beads, she helped put together the design and walked me through stringing up the necklace. After that, she encouraged me to try my hand at designing a couple of pieces to put in her booth at an antique/craft mall. A necklace and earring set of mine sold and I was hooked.

Unfortunately, this was also about the time that the economy went south. My mom closed up her space and I discovered Etsy. We decided to open a shop on Etsy together and EDCCollective was created in February of 2009. My mom always enjoyed collecting and had been the proprietor of different shops over her lifetime, so she had a great store of vintage collectibles to contribute, as well as some of her own jewelry designs. My first listing was actually a pair of cute coyote vintage earrings, but I quickly added listings for my handcrafted jewelry items as well as photographic art. My mom listed a variety of her vintage treasures as well as a couple of her handmade pieces. Later, I expanded my offerings to include note cards and bookmarks based on my photographic art as well as some hand crafted wood items.

We worked hard to get our little shop noticed. Sales began to trickle in. October was shaping up to be our best month yet when my mom began experiencing health problems. Towards the end of the month she was diagnosed with a very aggressive late stage cancer. Still, she managed to keep her spirits remarkably high and continued to put her efforts into building our shop. On November 11, she mentioned how pretty the front page of our shop looked. I decided to capture this with several screen shots, not knowing then what I would do with the resulting image. Now I do.

I would like to end this post with the view of our shop that my mom liked so much, as a memorial to her. (Click on the image to enlarge it.) Her journey was much too short in the eyes of the people that knew and loved her, but I am very grateful that she was my friend in high school and beyond. She is very much missed but I know will never be forgotten.

EART Team Scavenger Hunt

The Eclectic Artisans Team (EART) has a new team shop. Check it out! To celebrate our new shop and the beginning of the holiday season, we held a scavenger hunt.

The winners visited the participating etsy shops and searched their items for this photo:


When they found it, they sent the shop owner an Etsy convo letting them know they had found it and where. Each shop owner randomly drew one winner at the end of the hunt. Congratulations to the following winners!

Matrix0258, texasmonkeyboutique, lsshepler, sassygirliegirl, khollich, alainndesigns, TimRachel, MadeInCanarias, kssm, apamperedprincess and Corkycrafts

Fellow Etsian Sightings – SkepticZone

Ok, I must admit that Richard was not an Etsian when I had the opportunity to sit across from him at a conference this past summer. He opened his Etsy shop (SkepticZone) shortly thereafter though, so I think it should count. Richard does really marvelous origami that you have to see to believe.

I actually had met Richard the previous year and marveled at his pierced earring origami creations. I don’t have pierced ears however, so I just window shopped. This year, I decided to look a little closer and realized that they would be easy to convert to clip earrings. The tiny, precise folds of his creatures are amazing. I found a pair of cranes that I just had to have. Now just two changes and they would be ready for me to wear. One, was the aforementioned conversion to clip earrings. I replaced the ear wires with hinged screw backs. I also wanted to find something to dangle from the loops under the cranes. Upon looking through my supplies, I found some small freshwater seed pearls that worked perfectly.

Richard’s origami skills are not limited to cranes however. He also creates flamingos, elephants, dinosaurs and more. (Oh my!) He treats the paper creatures so that the earrings will be durable. Currently his affordable earrings include free shipping anywhere from Australia.

Richard is the author of several origami books if you need some guidance in order to try your hand at this craft. You can also find some of his “how to” videos online, such as this one on the somersaulting horse. These step by step videos could get you hooked on paper folding in no time.

Etsy Front Page – Bringing People and Goods Together

I had a “pinch me, I must be dreaming” moment last week when I discovered that another one of EDCCollective’s items was featured on Etsy’s front page. Last Friday, my vintage cloisonné butterfly belt was picked by Etsy for a front page treasury that was posted at 12:30pm EST. You can click on the treasury to enlarge it.
And even better than the increase in views and hearts that I received from the exposure on the front page, is the sale that resulted! Thanks Etsy. I found out from my customer that she had had a similar belt many years ago that she loved and jumped at the chance to purchase mine when she spied it on the front page. Sometimes when people go to Etsy, they know exactly what they are looking for and sometimes things like Etsy’s front page treasuries will let them discover things that they didn’t know could be searched for. I think it is really cool that Etsy brought this customer and my item together like that.

Design This – Upcycled Jade n Pearl Necklace

What do you do with material from broken or outdated jewelry? You can recycle, repurpose and upcycle it into “new” fashionable jewelry that fits your current needs. This is exactly the charge that I was given by a recent customer.

My customer had some loose pearls from her mother’s necklace and an outdated double strand jade necklace. (See inset customer's photo in photo #1.) My instructions were to design a fashionable necklace for her daughter from these materials and any others that I thought would give the necklace a more contemporary look. The only other must have was to use 19 of the pearls in the design.

As with my other custom design orders, I took a photo of some possible designs and materials for my customer to give me feedback on. (See photo #1.) The feedback was to just use the jade and pearls that she had sent and surprise her with the design. She also mentioned that she loved the tiger’s eye beads and suggested that I might be able to use them in the bracelet that she wanted me to make for her. (I’ll share this project with you later.)

As I laid out the necklace, I took care to match the color and shape of the jade beads that would be across from each other. At first glance, they may look alike, but they varied by how the holes were drilled, their shape and length and color just enough that attention to these details would make a difference in the look of the finished necklace.

After I was happy with the design, I took a photo with all of the materials laid out, ready to string up the necklace if my customer liked it. (See photo #2.) I got the go ahead, so I assembled the materials into a “new”, upcycled necklace. (See photo #3) I had also had enough jade from one strand of the original double strand jade necklace for this project, that I was able to return it as an updated single strand necklace. At this point I still had some pearls and loose jade beads left. Since the daughter was going to have two new necklaces, I asked if she would like some earrings to go with them. Again, I gave a couple of design options to my customer and then assembled the winning one for a new set of earrings. (See inset in photo #3.)

So don’t rashly throw out that broken bracelet or dated necklace. Think about your current likes and see if they can become a new piece of recycled, repurposed and upcycled jewelry that you can cherish for years to come.

Etsy Front Page EDC Sighting

What’s even more exciting than being chosen by your peers to be in a treasury on Etsy? That’s being picked to be in a treasury by Etsy for the front page. EDCCollective was honored to have its Rustic Tealight Candle Holders included in a treasury featured on Etsy’s front page at 5:30am EST on Thursday, October 8, 2009. Below is a screen shot of that treasury. You can click on the photo to enlarge it.

Fellow Etsian Sightings – EverythingDear

Whether by getting to know fellow Etsy team members, browsing through Etsy or hearting your favorites, one is bound to get to know at least some of the artisans’ unique styles. If you have done this, you may one day stumble across one of your recognized artisans in a brick and mortar establishment like I did recently.

My husband and I were invited to a large gathering of friends for lunch in Spring, Texas outside of Houston. Since we live in the DFW metroplex, this meant dedicating most of a Saturday to this sojourn. The organizer of our lunch didn’t realize that that particular Saturday was one of the busiest weekends for Old Town “downtown” Spring. It turns out it was their annual classic car show. The place was packed. We were lucky to find parking since the street that Google maps directed us to take was blocked and we didn’t know our way around.

We did enjoy looking at the classic cars on our way to meet our friends for lunch and noted that there were many interesting specialty shops in this area. After lunch some of us did a little shopping and looked at more of the cars. My husband and I turned out to be the only ones parked on the other side of this quaint shopping district, so after the others headed to their cars, we continued to browse some shops on the way to our car.

When we stepped into Mason's Art Gallery, the proprietor invited us to look around and let us know that her shop contained items from a wide variety of Texas artisans. As we wandered toward the back of the gallery, I noticed some prints that looked very familiar. Upon closer inspection, I realized they were the work of fellow Etsian, EverythingDear. This is a seller that is a member of one of the teams I belong to, TexasEtsyCrafters, and a seller that I have hearted. I told my husband that if we ever need a gift for a friend that is really into cats, we need to buy from this seller. Her work is every bit as good in person as it looks online.

EverythingDear’s photographic art is at its best, in my opinion, in her cat prints. They look like watercolors instead of photographs. There are also wonderful prints of flowers and butterflies. EverythingDear’s profile lists some other galleries where her work can be found. So if you are near one of these brick and mortar shops, you can get to see EverythingDear’s wonderful work in person instead of just admiring it online. (Photos in this article are from Everything Dear’s Etsy shop.)