Election 2012 (orig post date 11/6/12)

OH HAPPY DAY!!!!

Happy Halloween (orig post date 10/31/12)

Gathering thoughts (orig post date 10/2/12)

I have recently been doing lots of reading about jumping into running your own business and the how-to's and whys. There is some really great info out there. My most recent neat find is about creating a solid brand for your product. I would very much like to do this. I have no idea what to pick, but I'm thinking on it. Something simple, definitely.

So I come up with a brand, then I order everything to match? Yes? I think so. Business cards (which I need to reorder anyway since my name just changed), a banner for the craft shows I hope to do next summer, a banner for the blog and the associated sites with matching icons/avatars/what have you, and a packaging style with the logo on the packaging somewhere. The husband and I have recently discovered we LOVE rubber stamping stuff, so I am thinking of having a custom rubber stamp made and using that. I don't know. The possibilities stretch for miles.

Something else that really caught my eye and my mind was in an Etsy write up of E.M. Papers. She says that in her newsletters she always makes a point of keeping everything in her actual voice as though she is sending an email to a friend rather than a client. I really like that idea and it touched on a problem I've been having for ages; how formal to keep the blog?

Thing is, I don't want to keep it formal. I want it to be fun and funky and showcase who I am and what I do. Now that is still a confusion for me since I want to do so many things that my head feels like a junk drawer at times. At the same time though I don't want it to be too personal either. It’s a fine line and I really haven't found my balance yet. But I'm working on it!

And so it begins anew (orig post date 8/7/12)

On July 28th, 2012 my best friend and I were married.  

We are very happy.  This is a large understatement. 

Now all those plans that were labeled "after the wedding" are coming on deck.  I'm deeply excited to get started.

Saturday I pulled out all the inventory I have for the stores and made a list of everything by type.  I rebagged everything and labeled it all with a name, an item code, and a price.  Now I have to take new photos and get loading.

This project has not been helped by my (very ancient) desktop computer becoming infected with a hostile virus that is demanding money to go away.  I have news for it....not going to happen.  I'll wipe the hard drive and recycle the old girl first.

So wedding completed and plans being generated constantly.  I couldn't be more excited for the future.

Love,

J.D. Lynn

A short update (orig post date 1/17/12)

Having a ball planning the wedding. It's fairly time consuming though. I'm just enjoying the ride. The plans are almost all complete. Implementing those plans will be another interesting bit on its own, but without plans where would we be? I'm torn between leaving this blog just focused on crafting (as was the original intention) or expanding it to cover my entire life. I'm just not sure. I'll figure that out another day.

Going to need a new name for this soon (orig post date 3/14/12)

I started this blog to chronicle and share my adventures in jewelry making and selling, but I'm deeply interested in farming and agriculture too. I don't want to start another blog (I can't even update this one regularly!) so the only real option I see is to let this blog expand into my farming adventures too.

There are so many things I want to do! The jewelry is fun (and shiny!), farming and agriculture is a deep rooted interest (pardon the pun), I just discovered aquaponics and I really want to learn more about that. AND I'm going to go back to school this coming fall for copyediting. I am a busy woman.

Everything except building the hoop house and planting the veggies is on hold, pretty much, until after the wedding though.

I ordered all our seeds for the year the other day and they should be on their way soon! I think my kitchen table is going to turn into a seed starting station (wow, say that fast) I am so excited about the hoop house. I'm planning to document every step of the building process on here.

Now I just need to come up with a new name for the blog. I wish I could come up with a farm name that felt right. I can come up with names all day long, but I want that One. The one that when I hear it, I feel it in my chest.

Another quick update (orig posting date 2/28/12)

Still wrapped tight in wedding plans. We have never been happier in all the years we've been together. This is so much fun!!!

I bought a glue gun (with two temp settings!) and a big bag of glue sticks to make Kusadama origami flowers (I think that's what they are called anyway) I'll actually have crafty pics to post next week! What a shocker!

A new year of possibility (orig post date 1/2/12)

What a crazy ride it's been! I finished the order for the casino and got them in the gift shop. I sold a few more pieces to co-workers and then life got absolutely nuts for awhile. Which is basically an excuse.

I started putting off beading and furthering my craft in favor of other things. Things that didn't improve or enrich my life that much, but definitely were fun at the time and amazing time sucks. I don't regret doing them, but I wish I had gotten more crafting done as well. There is no use wishing for a better yesterday though. It is a new year and a new day and time for another new leaf.

My long time love proposed on November 23rd and we are getting married in July! I couldn't be happier. I rearranged the house a bit and found a great place for the craft table in a spot that feels perfect for it. I even beaded a little this weekend.

I have to renew my tradename by March 1st and I have to go annoy the Department of Revenue agent that hides in the DMV and find out why my sales tax license is still MIA.

I have lots of ideas to try out in the coming months and I will post some of the pics here. Maybe one day I'll even have people following this blog that will see them! *grins* All in good time, no?

Focus Grasshopper (orig post date 3/19/11)

Grasshopper being me, that is. I really intended to post every week. I did! However, I am still trying to get that big order for the casino done and it's got to be my focus. (Not that I'm complaining! I am thrilled to be so busy so soon! Beyond thrilled, really. Flabbergasted is closer to the truth Anyway, moving on...) I had to interrupt myself this past week to fulfill another order for someone at work as well. I'm really happy with how that turned out too! The packaging, the product, everything! I'll say more about that once they've been given as the gift they were intended to be.

I have another window open with my brand new flickr account open in it. I'm hoping to get some of my photos up there and have them accessible when I'm not here at the home computer.

Want to see my new business cards? *bounces* I am so excited to have them! I feel all official and stuff. 

I bought them from Vistaprint. I've seen them rec'd many times on various blogs and articles, but to be honest with you, I won't be using them again. It feels too much like a con to me. The lead in hook is that you can get 500 cards for something like $4.95 but if you want anything extra the fees really start to pile up. By the time I was finished my order (counting shipping) was 47 something. Well, here....I went and found the digital receipt I saved. I'll just show you that. er...apparently not. The browse button decided it didn't want to work on the "add picture" so I'll have to save that for another day. Bottom line is, I love the cards. I love the little leather case I bought to go with them. I didn't love the final price and the outrageous shipping charges. Let me clarify that a bit; if at the outset they had said it was likely to end up costing that much I wouldn't have a problem. It's the con part of it that I don't like. I also don't love the daily used car salesman-like emails hitting my account either. I'm not saying don't use them. I'm just saying I don't think I'll be using them again. Okay, enough with my public service announcement.

If I can get blogger to let me upload more photos I'd love to show you my new packaging design. Let's see how cooperative its feeling. 

Look at that! I did that! One piece of cardstock, one sheet of duralar, about 2 feet of polished hemp and my cute little stamp circle I made. And the butterfly of course. Can't leave that little time sucking buster out. *grin*

Alright. Time to get back to work. I've got 5 more dragonflys to make this weekend plus packaging. If I'm really lucky I may even be able to get the pics done on the prayerbeads and actually get something up on the Etsy site. *crosses fingers*

Talk to you soon!

Wide eyed and wonderin' (orig post date 2/24/11)

Wow. What a week! (And it's only Thursday) Sometimes things snowball in an amazing series of events.

It started with me being asked to modify my wire dragonfly onto a hairpin for a co-worker's wife. Here's a picture of the dragonfly that inspired his choice. The one I sold to him had blue wire instead of gold and blue/purple crystals.

A delivery driver saw it sitting on my desk at work and asked about it. He liked it so much that he commissioned me to make a butterfly pin for his daughter. I was so happy with the way it turned out (and the display box I found a tutorial for here) that I showed it to the lovely ladies of the marketing department. The director liked the butterfly and the display box so much she offered to buy TEN of them from me!!!

You could have knocked me over with a feather! I didn't need Redbull to give me wings on that day, lemme tell ya! I was floating!

To be honest, now that I've had a moment to catch my breath and think about it, I'm more than a little intimidated by the order, but this is an amazing turn of events and I'm not going to let my worries swamp me on this. I'm hard at work each night when I get home now, making butterflys, dragonflys and display boxes.

Last night I streamed season one of Xena (don't laugh) through my computer and angled the monitor towards my crafting desk so I could see it while I worked. Between dinner and taking care of the dogs I only got one finished, but that's one more down. I have about six dragonflys already finished, but the more I look at them the less happy I am with them. I may do 5 more of them and use the new things I've learned to make them look better. Mark says I'm being overly critical, I don't know. Maybe I am. But I don't want to put out anything that's not the best that I can do. That makes sense, right?

The marketing director also asked me to go as fast as I could on the insects so that she can bug me for shamrocks in time for St. Patrick's Day. (This is me jumping up and down in excitement!)

I am so busy making bugs to fill the Casino order that I don't have time to get the layout here tweaked and turned how I want it. I have the Deviant Art account that needs updating and it would be really nice to get some product up on Artfire and Etsy too!

Wow. When it rains it pours.  And that is seriously not a bad thing in this case.

The Beginning (org post date 2/15/11)

This is my very first Blog entry ever! Seems like everyone and their dog has a blog these days and I am running way behind the eight-ball. *thinks* Oh, wait. That sounds like my usual spot, so everything is perfectly okay! *grins*

But really, here I am, joining the blog-o-sphere. My name is Jenn and I am starting this to follow along with my adventures in crafting. My eventual goal is to be able to craft and create full time and leave the “glamour” of small town casino work behind me. My fingers are crossed and it’s seriously hard to type with your fingers crossed, lemme tell ya! *wink* I work with wire and beads. I have several ideas that I am dying to try out and I’m trying to balance that with creating a line of the things I already make, along with keeping house and working full-time with almost an hour commute each way. There is seriously not enough time in the day for everything I want to do!

The basics. I am a thirty-something, southern-born, mountain-living, dog-loving, hermit. I live on an acre of thistle infested land in the Colorado Rockies and most days I love it. Some days (snowy days when I have to drive to work mostly) I hate it with a purple passion, but it’s lovely, it’s remote and it’s mine, as much as land can ever be anyone’s anyway. I share this space with my sweetie and my dogs.

My first attempt at having a business crashed and burned. That old adage about not doing business with family? Yeah, there’s maybe a reason for that. Not going into details, but we tried and we failed. Very painful. But I’m trying again, and this time I’m doing it on my own.

I’ll be posting some pictures soon, and my current goal is to do at least one post a week. We’ll see how that goes. For now, I have to get back to work!