Jewelry biz makeover

The Open Studios 2010 show is this weekend (May 1 & 2) and I've been better this year about getting myself organized ahead of time. No repeats of last year's procrastination, pls. One major change this year is the rebranding of my jewelry endeavors. I decided to do away with the SugarCube Jewelry name. I was never too fond of it and I didn't feel like it really represented me. Along with the name went the website, which I never updated. I was paying monthly service fees for essentially an outdated photo gallery. I needed an easier, simpler way to catalog my latest work. Hello, Flickr. Pleased to meet you!

My new venture is called Designed by Jess. Check it out, yo.

I plan to open a new Etsy shop soon, probably later this month. Stay tuned...

2009 Open Studios show

Over Mother's Day weekend, I had my 2nd successful (and fun!) Open Studios jewelry show, hosted again by the BF's family at their home/backyard. The weather was gorgeous and perfect and so many old friends, family, and neighbors stopped by. There were also a lot of new faces, people in the area checking out the other Open Studios going on. SugarCube Jewelry was a hit! I surpassed my sales from last year, even tho I slashed my prices. And my "not in this economy" cheapie earring rack was really hot. I was all about clearing out inventory this year and making room for the new. Isabelle did really well too, selling more paintings this year than last. Safe to say we'll be doing this again!

The only thing that could have gone better this weekend was if I had not been sleep-deprived. It's my own fault of course. I had this great idea to give each piece of jewelry a code on the back of the price tag, then match up the code with the file name of the jewelry's photo. That way, when a piece was sold, I simply would have to write down the code and could reference exactly which piece it was later. Sounds pretty straight-forward, right? Well, I'm an admitted neat-freak and I do love order, but as much as I adore Martha Stewart, my digital photos are a complete mess. Nothing is organized or sorted in any logical way. So this great idea turned into an even bigger nightmare--if you can have a nightmare without sleep. The BF and I were up til 6AM tying price tags and tagging photo file names. (Now that is love, folks.) We had just enough time for a one and a half hour "power nap" before packing up and being down in the South Bay by 9AM. (The show went from 11AM to 5PM.) By the end of the day, I was running on 100% caffeine fumes, but still managed to visit a friend's newborn baby after dinner that night before hitting up a backyard BBQ birthday party. Got into bed by 2AM to do it all over again on Sunday. Who says I'm old? I did less in my 20s!



Above are photos of my "shop". I changed up some of my displays. The handy BF made more frames. (He got a new set of power tools out of this project!) And to cover the tables, I used some free fabric from work that I actually like in that Miss-Marple's-living-room sort of way.

Some close-up shots of my work:

My etsy shop is open for bizness!

Yes! I am finally up on etsy. Ok, so I only have two items up, but I did it. It's a funny feeling, putting yourself out there. Exhilaration. Relief. Fear. Accomplishment.

For those who don't know, etsy is a great online venue to sell/buy handmade goods. There's even some vintage on there, but most items are handcrafted by the seller. You can even shop locally and support your fellow local artists. Trolling etsy.com sucks up waaay too much of my work day, to be honest. Hopefully some jewelry-lovin' people out there will stumble upon my little shop. More items to come soon. Keep checking back!

Go to SugarCube Jewelry's etsy shop.

Droplet earrings

As promised, new jewelry pix! I have to confess tho. These aren't really "new"--I made them months ago. What I really need to do is get more pictures up on the SugarCube web site. It's been ages since that site has been updated. Who's responsible for running this outfit anyway? In true CEO fashion, I'm going to lay the blame elsewhere: my IT department (aka. the BF). It's gotta be his fault, right? Because it can't possibly be me and my non-motivated self. Oh no. The only other options are Oliver and Russ and, well, the pigs are just too cute. And they aren't very savvy in DreamWeaver...


1. Amethyst briolette droplets; 2. Different colors of faceted tourmaline; 3. Cherry, champagne, and smokey quartz; 4. Pale pink freshwater pearls on Sterling silver.

Amazonite & Gold

I've been working on a few new jewelry pieces over the summer. This one I made a few weeks ago. To me, it has a vintage-y feel to it, but the asymmetric design keeps it modern. The cloudy blue stones are amazonite, and that's a burgundy pearl in the back for a little interest. All the metal is 24k GF.

Oy. I'm using the decapitated neck display. I didn't want to get one of these at first--they're a little creepy to have around the apartment, if you know what I mean. But it actually worked really well for the May jewelry show, especially for pieces like this so you can see how it is supposed to hang. More new jewelry pix to come soon!

Show Time

Let's just get this out of the way first: Wow, I really suck at keeping a blog. A lot has happened in the last month. I'll be playing catch-up over the next few entries.

May 17-18: The jewelry show was a huge success. It took place at the BF's family residence where his mom also displayed her art work--she sold six paintings! And I sold about 20 pieces and got a couple of custom orders. The turn-out was pretty good and remained steady over both days. It was great to see so many familiar faces (and meet some new ones). Many thanks to the friends, family, and neighbors who stopped by on the hottest weekend in the history of the planet. I think we all know what it's like on the surface of the sun now. I really need to thank Isabelle and Greg Sr. for being great hosts and for providing such a beautiful venue, not to mention all the tasty eats and cold drinks! Thank you!! Below are a few pix of my jewelry at the show. The last pic is of a little work station I set up for some on-the-spot sizing and demonstrations.

We also finally launched the SugarCube web site (http://www.sugarcubejewelry.com/). And yes, there are typos in there, egad. I need to update that too. Sheesh, a blog and now a web site? How am I ever going to keep up?

Armed and handy

I've been trying to get organized for the upcoming jewelry show. It's hard to believe it is little more than one week away! After months of procrastinating, I'm starting to feel the heat now. I have enough inventory as far as the jewelry goes. Too much. Hence the show. Now I'm concentrating on my set-up: how to display the pieces, how to dress up the table, business cards, mirrors, baggies, Zzzzz.

A couple weeks ago, I decided that I had to come up with a new way to display my jewelry--so I put the BF to work. It was swelteringly hot that day in the south bay--perfect time for some manual labor! With A LOT of help from the BF's fam, I was able to use some flea market frames and turn them into padded displays to hang jewelry off of. Here are some before, during, and after shots. Not bad for $30 and a liter of sweat. Thanks to the fam for the hard work, power tools, and brave faces when I was wielding the staple gun!



1. Ply wood and a flea market frame. 2. Cutting out the batting and linen. 3. Watch those fingers. 4. The fruits of our labor!

Earrings for night owls

I just made these tonight. It's almost 1 a.m., and I don't know why the hell I'm still up. But I am so I thought I'd snap some quick pix and share. I went to a bead faire (yes, with an e!) this past weekend, and since then it's been beadle mania. I got some 20-gauge gold-fill wire to experiment with. That's what makes up the main teardrop shape here. The stones are amethyst and green aventurine. I'm into this loopy wire-wrapping nowadays. If I end up doing a whole series of these, I guess that's what designers might define as a "collection." The Loopy Collection? Hmm, there's gotta be a better name out there. Anyhow, I like the overall look of it, but man does it destroy my fingers. All this is in preparation for my upcoming jewelry show in May. More on that later. Maybe when I'm not so sleepy.

Photog I am not

This past weekend I fooled around a bit with the camera and tried out some different backgrounds for my jewelry pix. I really like the idea of using the map of SF and pairing it with the branch. But on the other hand, the colors and busy-ness of the map are a little distracting. Needless to say, many many many hundreds of photos were taken this weekend. Most of them dumpers. Maybe a dozen or two actually look decent. Thank god for digital. My uncle's a photographer and I always hoped that whatever artistic gene touched him also affected me. I may have an eye for some things, but lighting and shutter speed knowledge (not to mention steady hands) not so much...

Here's the latest piece I've made: cherry quartz wire-wrapped in gold-fill, about 2 inches long. This style of wire-wrapping is something new I'm trying out. This is only the second time I've done it. The wrapping is a little insane--my fingers and eyes hurt after a while! It was worth the pain though. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out actually!

So this next piece is what I'm going to refer to as the Holiday Party Necklace quite simply bc I wore it to my company holiday party. I'm deep. Faceted garnets asymmetrically lined up on gold-fill. I'm using a linen background--plain, but at least you get a good look at the necklace. I got a lot of compliments on it at the holiday party, too! But I feel compelled to mention that all my coworkers were probably sauced.

Super Quartzday

Wait a second. No posts for weeks, and now two in one day? Get out! What can I say? I'm listening to the Super Tuesday results and, in the meantime, am on a roll with the blogging and picture taking. Here's a necklace I made fairly recently (a few months ago at least)--smokey quartz pendant, garnet, and amethyst tear drops wire-wrapped in gold-fill with a 3-inch extension. The zoomed-in pic shows off the colors a bit. It's another fave of mine--goes with nearly everything!

Labradorite & silver earrings

It's taken a while, but you're finally looking at my first SugarCube Jewelry posting. These earrings are one of my favorites of the moment. They're made from labradorite, sterling silver and Swarovski crystal. Like all my jewelry pieces, they're handmade by yours truly! More jewelry pix to come for sure on the blog -- showcasing my jewelry was one of the main reasons for starting it. The BF is working on my Web site, which will be more of a gallery than a business site. It's slow-going, so stay tuned...