So I was wearing a piece of my jewelry at work today and one of our clients asked me where she could find my necklace and was a little disappointed when I told her I made it (but that it or a similar piece was for sale).
And it was then, while we waited for the rest of her party to show for the meeting, that I got to share my views with another unknowing person about the benefits of buying handmade items.
I started off by telling her she could rest assured that she'd be getting an original, more times than not a one-of-a-kind piece that has not been mass produced by machinery. I know most others, like myself, will make certain items that look similar, for say Valentine's Day, but that each item is indeed different whether it be by adding a crystals, silver balls, or shortening or lengthening the item. Occasionally, I will make an identical pattern with different gemstones or crystals, but still, each piece is made with my own two hands and my love of my crafts.
Furthermore, at least in my case, 98% of all of my items can be made to fit, and if not, I can closely recreate a similar piece to custom fit. In most commercial/mass produced pieces, that cannot be done.
With handmade jewelry, the only hype you will get are all of the questions and comments about where you found your wonderful jewelry. The hype that comes with mass production/commercial production is often the brand name which raises prices because of trademark issues. I can keep my prices low because I don't care to brand my products other than by word of mouth or opening my own shop in ten years lol.
All times are uncertain, even the good ones. In this current bad economy, this is the perfect time to go handmade for the very reason I told her above. Most artisians I know, whether jewelry makers, bead makers, painters, etc., we put so much love into our crafts that no matter what, we often underprice our items either because we a) want to or b) have a hard time knowing the true value of our items.
Each handcrafted item takes on a life of its own and has its own character. Personally, I don't find that with commercial/mass produced items, even as different as they can be. I used an example of Webkinz, which is one of my personal addictions. These are adorable stuffed animals that have a virtual world where you play and take care of them. I can pick up ten of the same animal in the store, and really not be drawn to one in particular because they are identical, all cut from the same mold.
With handcrafted items, that is not true, well at least in my opinion. For example, at a recent bazaar there was a man there with 10 pairs of earrings all made with the same stone, same colored crystals, and even though they appeared to be the same from a distance, when I got closer, each one was a slightly different pattern, slightly different length, just enough something different to make it unique.
These are some of the reasons I buy handmade and encourage others to go handmade.
Perhaps these will help you when faced with a similar question down the road if they haven't already been used by you :)
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Returning to My Garden
I have found myself the last few days really struggling to be creative and happy. It's becoming too much of a familiar theme with me and I don't like it.
The biggest reason I know of is because it's just been a short month since my dad passed away and yet I've caught myself several times calling his old hospital room phone number and then when there's no answer, I call my mom's house fully expecting him to answer the phone. It has not truly sunk in yet that he is gone and I don't know when it will. I can tell myself over and over and I can visualize the service at the Veteran's Cemetary and the folding of the flag and Taps, but it doesn't help.
Today, I lapsed into a really bad melancholy and just felt like I wanted to wither away. But, then I looked at my two beautiful girls and realized that just couldn't happen. So, while they were occuped with friends who came over to play, I walked over the bookself and found an old friend of mine. It is a book I discovered back in 1991 by Shakti Gawain and it's called Return to the Garden.
In this book the author rawly and truthfully reveals her path to self-discovery and personal power. She writes with such emotion and holds nothing back the reader can't help but be drawn in and become more focused. So yes, I sat down and reread the whole book again today. I haven't read it for about a year now, but before that, I read it at least 10 times a year.
It's sold in bookstores under the Psychology/Personal Growth sections, and occasionally New Age. I don't truly believe that it fits in any of these sections, it should have a section all it's own. I truly recommend that this is a book every woman must read no matter what her beliefs are. This book is not about religion.. as a matter of fact, there are some things in here that I know some of my religious friends have found offensive and repulsive.
A little background on me here, I was raised Catholic, but I never really practiced Catholicism. In my early to late 20's, I met a friend who declared herself not religious, but not an Atheist either. She didn't claim to be Wiccan, but she said she felt most at home with the Wiccan family. She introduced me to wands, crystals, and much more, things I'd never heard of let alone seen in my life. In my late 20's, I tried many religions, Baptist, Lutheran, Catholicism, Mormonism... none of them were me. Even as I went to church and led youth groups, and participated in each religion, in the back of my head and in my heart, I wasn't where I was supposed to be. I would always find myself feeling like a fraud. So, I stopped going to church and started practicing the alternative.
I started using crystals and spells and meditation. I still believe in higher powers and higher beings, but I do not classify myself to any religion. And I found affirmation, even though I doubt the author meant to or would approve of the self-affirmation, and sought solice in this book.
Again today, I was in the same place.. I needed solice, and found it. The book opens with a short "Dear Readers" letter from the author in which she talks about the book being her journey of discovery and return to the garden of her soul and her connection to the earth. I needed to read that. I needed to see in black and white that at least one other person at sometime in their life felt what I was feeling inside at that very moment. The need to discover, or in my case rediscover the garden of my soul.
To me this means the things that make me happy even if I have to be sad in the process. So how does one discover the garden of their soul and connection to the earth? For me, it means getting back into the things that make me happy. That means allowing myself to make mistakes as I be a wife to my husband, a mother to my girls. That means getting back into making and creating the things I am happy making and not the things that make me sad or miserable in making.
When we are young, we learn to reject and repress unaccpetable feelings and even ourselves.. things that have happened to us. What this book points out is that the things we've represeed don't go away because we or others want it to. They fester and build inside of us and explode eventually. For some of us, it explodes in the creation of jewelry, original artwork, poetry, songs, etc. In others, unfortunately, it explodes in violence.
In writing this, I am just off to rediscover myself and find what keeps me centered and focused. I am off to work on myself and my creations and keep finding ways to express the bottled up emotions inside.
I am off to rediscover my inner child, and I highly recommend to one and all that you do the same at some point in your lives. This book, and again it is Return to the Garden by Shakti Gawain shows you how to do this in the last chapter of the book.
Blessings Be
The biggest reason I know of is because it's just been a short month since my dad passed away and yet I've caught myself several times calling his old hospital room phone number and then when there's no answer, I call my mom's house fully expecting him to answer the phone. It has not truly sunk in yet that he is gone and I don't know when it will. I can tell myself over and over and I can visualize the service at the Veteran's Cemetary and the folding of the flag and Taps, but it doesn't help.
Today, I lapsed into a really bad melancholy and just felt like I wanted to wither away. But, then I looked at my two beautiful girls and realized that just couldn't happen. So, while they were occuped with friends who came over to play, I walked over the bookself and found an old friend of mine. It is a book I discovered back in 1991 by Shakti Gawain and it's called Return to the Garden.
In this book the author rawly and truthfully reveals her path to self-discovery and personal power. She writes with such emotion and holds nothing back the reader can't help but be drawn in and become more focused. So yes, I sat down and reread the whole book again today. I haven't read it for about a year now, but before that, I read it at least 10 times a year.
It's sold in bookstores under the Psychology/Personal Growth sections, and occasionally New Age. I don't truly believe that it fits in any of these sections, it should have a section all it's own. I truly recommend that this is a book every woman must read no matter what her beliefs are. This book is not about religion.. as a matter of fact, there are some things in here that I know some of my religious friends have found offensive and repulsive.
A little background on me here, I was raised Catholic, but I never really practiced Catholicism. In my early to late 20's, I met a friend who declared herself not religious, but not an Atheist either. She didn't claim to be Wiccan, but she said she felt most at home with the Wiccan family. She introduced me to wands, crystals, and much more, things I'd never heard of let alone seen in my life. In my late 20's, I tried many religions, Baptist, Lutheran, Catholicism, Mormonism... none of them were me. Even as I went to church and led youth groups, and participated in each religion, in the back of my head and in my heart, I wasn't where I was supposed to be. I would always find myself feeling like a fraud. So, I stopped going to church and started practicing the alternative.
I started using crystals and spells and meditation. I still believe in higher powers and higher beings, but I do not classify myself to any religion. And I found affirmation, even though I doubt the author meant to or would approve of the self-affirmation, and sought solice in this book.
Again today, I was in the same place.. I needed solice, and found it. The book opens with a short "Dear Readers" letter from the author in which she talks about the book being her journey of discovery and return to the garden of her soul and her connection to the earth. I needed to read that. I needed to see in black and white that at least one other person at sometime in their life felt what I was feeling inside at that very moment. The need to discover, or in my case rediscover the garden of my soul.
To me this means the things that make me happy even if I have to be sad in the process. So how does one discover the garden of their soul and connection to the earth? For me, it means getting back into the things that make me happy. That means allowing myself to make mistakes as I be a wife to my husband, a mother to my girls. That means getting back into making and creating the things I am happy making and not the things that make me sad or miserable in making.
When we are young, we learn to reject and repress unaccpetable feelings and even ourselves.. things that have happened to us. What this book points out is that the things we've represeed don't go away because we or others want it to. They fester and build inside of us and explode eventually. For some of us, it explodes in the creation of jewelry, original artwork, poetry, songs, etc. In others, unfortunately, it explodes in violence.
In writing this, I am just off to rediscover myself and find what keeps me centered and focused. I am off to work on myself and my creations and keep finding ways to express the bottled up emotions inside.
I am off to rediscover my inner child, and I highly recommend to one and all that you do the same at some point in your lives. This book, and again it is Return to the Garden by Shakti Gawain shows you how to do this in the last chapter of the book.
Blessings Be
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Creative Inspiration
So as I have sat here the last two days battling yet another in a series of cluster migraines, I’ve had lots of time to think.
Yep, despite the ever present kaleidoscopic explosions in my head and the feeling that my eyeballs are being stabbed from the inside out and at any moment could fly out and then snap back in like they show in the cartoons, I’ve given thought to the topic of inspiration.
All these colors that I see during migraines, sometimes in patterns and sometimes not, are like a magical, albeit obscenely painful, painted canvas. Hard to imagine finding inspiration to get creative out of an experience like this, but many times I write my best poetry or make my best jewelry combinations either during or right after the migraine storm.
A lot of my crafting friends get their inspiration from nature, catalogs, books or movies. That’s when I tend to hit a “dry spell” or slump. Sometimes I will be watching a tv show or movie and cannot stand the jewelry on a character and I end up making something that in my fantasy world, I would have that character wear if I were the person in charge. But nature.. well nature always stumps me unless it’s the clouds or rain.. clouds during a thunder and rain storm inspire me to create darker pieces with splashes of bright color in one place only… usually the pendant.
I try to take my inspiration from whatever or wherever I can get that “spark”… rarely do I try to stifle myself, yes stifle.. I have been accused of being too splashy at times, and I just try to please myself.
I wholeheartedly believe that if I create something that I like, with my full passion and creative drive, and put it out there for others to see, it will be appreciated. And, there will always be someone to give that creation a “home” – even though a lot of times, it finds a permanent home with me J
So what’s your passion and creative drive? What inspires you?
Yep, despite the ever present kaleidoscopic explosions in my head and the feeling that my eyeballs are being stabbed from the inside out and at any moment could fly out and then snap back in like they show in the cartoons, I’ve given thought to the topic of inspiration.
All these colors that I see during migraines, sometimes in patterns and sometimes not, are like a magical, albeit obscenely painful, painted canvas. Hard to imagine finding inspiration to get creative out of an experience like this, but many times I write my best poetry or make my best jewelry combinations either during or right after the migraine storm.
A lot of my crafting friends get their inspiration from nature, catalogs, books or movies. That’s when I tend to hit a “dry spell” or slump. Sometimes I will be watching a tv show or movie and cannot stand the jewelry on a character and I end up making something that in my fantasy world, I would have that character wear if I were the person in charge. But nature.. well nature always stumps me unless it’s the clouds or rain.. clouds during a thunder and rain storm inspire me to create darker pieces with splashes of bright color in one place only… usually the pendant.
I try to take my inspiration from whatever or wherever I can get that “spark”… rarely do I try to stifle myself, yes stifle.. I have been accused of being too splashy at times, and I just try to please myself.
I wholeheartedly believe that if I create something that I like, with my full passion and creative drive, and put it out there for others to see, it will be appreciated. And, there will always be someone to give that creation a “home” – even though a lot of times, it finds a permanent home with me J
So what’s your passion and creative drive? What inspires you?
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