Luna's Baublebilities

Every now and then I like to pop over to the World Beach Project of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The map header says this of the project; "Devised by artist Sue Lawty in association with the V&A, the World Beach Project is a global art project open to anybody, anywhere, of any age, building on the experience many of us have had on holiday of making patterns on beaches and shorelines."

This is the photo I most enjoyed today.



'Eatons Neck, Long Island, NY'
Al Jarnow
7 January 2008


First, this is just an incredible sculpture. Second, I've been thinking a lot about balance and alignment lately and my reactions to this project were a bit visceral.

Without going into gruesome detail, suffice it to say that my life is hideously out of balance and I need some serious realignment, both spiritual and physical.


Will I someday stand back to look over my life and see that this particular period is like the project in these photos - a series of precariously balanced boulders and pebbles, spanning an otherwise uncrossable chasm?

When I look into my chasm right now, I see economic insecurity, my husband's career uncertainty coupled with my uncertainty about what I can and should do to contribute financially, Maxx's special needs, intellectual stagnation, our crumbling house, religious burn-out, constant low grade illness, too many demands and not enough resources and a general lack of direction our family.

If these things represent a chasm, where & what are the stones we can gather to create the bridge we need? What do we expect to find when we get to the other side of the chasm?

I do so love getting new beads!

I've enjoyed selling my creations at local galleries and in my LunasBaublebilities shop for several years now. However, every year I spent almost as much on supplies as I brought in from sold items. I don't like to do production work - or making multiples of the same design, so my bead and supply inventory was always feeling stale and boring to me. I was always scrimping, trying to place the smallest possible order to avoid spending too much or having lots of leftovers. This made designing stressful and uninspiring as I would get "precious" about certain beads and supplies, trying not to use them all up in one piece. But no longer!



These lovelies just arrived today.









The ones I am most excited about are the pearls in sand and copper colors. My niece is getting married next month and I get to make her wedding jewelry! ( I love making wedding jewelry.) She wanted pearls in earthy colors in a vintage looking style so I ordered lots of warm sand and copper colors in button and rice shapes. I have some wine colored pearls to round out the colors in my existing stash. I am thinking that they will be linked together with wire and a little bit of chain with maybe a vintagey doo-dad slightly off center in front.





I'll be sure to post my progress as I work on it.






I also ordered some blues ad soft sage-y greens just for good measure. I'll probably put up some more pearl mixes in GoblinsMarket in the next few days as I unstring and sort these babies into jars.















I also got more of these incredible sparkling glass spacers and a strand of copper spacers. There are at least 500 beads on the strand of copper spacers. I do not want to take them off the string - they look so amazing all stacked together like that!


The really great thing about selling supplies is that I can order tons and tons of stuff at once and have plenty to work with in my own designs without worrying about having a huge deadweight inventory left over. Buying in such enormous quantities gets me great prices and I can then re-sell things in my Etsy shop for approximately the same price per bead that a customer would get if she bought from my suppliers in smaller quantities - but she can get more variety for a lower cost. For instance - the large faceted glass beads sell at GoblinsMarket for about the same price per bead as they would from my supplier in their highest price point, but a customer can buy just two beads from me instead of having to buy the whole strand.

That is a deal that seems to work for everyone. I get lots of beads and unload my leftovers. My customers get great beads at reasonable prices without having to meet a ridiculously high wholesale minimum orders or buy hundreds of dollars worth of beads to get the lowest possible price. Plus Maxx & Molly love to play pirate. The hardest pat of unpacking is keeping track of where all the strands of pearls and beads end up!

I have found that running a supply shop takes up more of my time than I would sometimes like. Our house is only marginally clean this week because Bryan is off work for mid-winter break and molly conjured up some magic - or some helpers - and scrubbed the living room and kitchen while I was at work last Thursday. But I am learning how to manage my time and my tasks. For instane, I've trained myself to only go to the Post Offuice once per week s I was originally spending at least an hour each day trying to package a few small orders - packaging 18 or 20 orders assembly line style with Molly's help once a week actually takes only a couple of hours and therefore I save lots of time.

The fun I get from unpacking new beads almost evey week, the increased inspiration I find in having lots of beads and supplies to design with and the financial freedom to take a wild chance on some expensive new beads (like these incredible aqua terra jasper beads) are totally worth the extra time I'm putting into rnning a supply shop. Sometimes I even toy with the idea of opening a real life bead store - maybe in a cute little yurt out back . . .

This month's Featured Etsy Blogger is Donna Pool. Donna has a very nifty shop filled with all sorts of interesting trinkets, mostly buttons, pocket mirrors and photographs.























She is obviously bolder than I am because she is wiling and able to cut up vintage magazines and turn them into buttons or magnets or push pins or key chains . . . . .





This is something that I would really love to do but I can't bring myself to cut up literature of any kind. Believe me,I've tried. I've purchased old books at garage sales, intending to chop them up for their illustrations or use them as altered books. I get my scissors out or a bottle of gesso and . . . freeze. The book goes on my shelf. It is insane.

Possibly I need a support group to overcome this phobia as the results look like so much fun!



Donna also has lots of cat related buttons and photos. I have heard that one can sell anything with a cat on it, and often feel that putting cats on everything is a bit of a sell out. But Donna's black and white cat photos are really wonderful and I'm still a sucker for sleeping kitten posters. Dona also has a few photos of rural Texas countryside and material culture that will feel homey for anyone who has grown up anywhere in Backwoods America.









If you need a bit of vintage silliness or some warm and fuzzy kitens in your life right now, pop over to Donna's shop. Her items are perfectly priced for gift giving or office decorating. Donna obviously does a good job of making her customers happy, too, because the feedback left for her shop is fabulous! Have a great February, Donna!