Up to My Ears

I am up to my ears in jewelry.  My new job is mostly great, except for the fact that my boss has politics on every radio in the place all day every day.  It did get me to finally put music on my fake iPod though ($15 mp3 player from eBay)  I'm doing that right now.  I raised the prices in my own shop to be closer to what they should be and surprisingly I have been selling more stuff than ever, which is really cool.  I have so much more stuff I want to make for my shop but I am also trying to get my room how I want it at the same time.  I have spent a little bit of my first paycheck.  I got delicious Korean food with my friend last Friday night.  (I told G that I had beef bulgogi bibimbab and he kept asking me, "But what is it really called?"  Silly boy.  He said some other funny stuff lately but I forgot to write them down so I can't share.  Update: I remembered one.  His mom got him a dreamcatcher and he sat at the kitchen table and started waving it around in the air.  I asked him what he was doing and he told me he was catching some really good dreams.  It was adorable.

Anyway, I bought a dress at Fred Meyer that was on sale for $40.  That is a high price for me, since I usually shop at thrift stores, but I really loved the dress and G told me I should buy it for myself since I can afford it now.  It's super cute and very professional looking, but I plan to just wear it to work since there's no dress code and I can dress as casual or dressy as I feel like.  I bought myself some bubble tea for the first time in over a year and it was delicious.  I plan to make that a weekly thing now.  I missed it.  I found $3 in the parking lot at Safeway the other night.  It's weird how when I find ones, it always amounts to three dollars.  Okay, so only once before but still!  The jewelry making is interesting.  I have learned so many things that I can use in my own shop.  It's so different too, because at work we make jewelry to sell wholesale to small boutiques who then sell it retail to customers.  We make lots and lots of every kind of thing.  But for my shop, I just make one of each thing to sell to people directly online.  So far I have learned how to write earring cards, find the bracelets, pack orders, patina metals, hammer texture onto metals, wire wrap, make clay beads and paste words on them, and drill beads.  Another big difference is that here I know where everything is and it is kept as neatly as possible.  At work, there used to sort of be a system of organization but not so much as the years passed.  (I can tell.)  I know where some things are but most of the time I have to ask my boss and then we have to dig through stuff to find things.  Check out how my work space looked last week.

where I actually make stuff

to the right of where I make things

next to my desk where I make things

This week my desk has become super cluttered and hard to work on, not my fault at all.  I kind of hate how awful it is.  I have made so many things, mostly necklaces.  Some of them are really cool looking, but I didn't take pictures of them directly since I don't want people copying the epicness.  Not that any of you awesome blog readers would, but stuff can get around the internet, you know.  And I got a really great product photography idea from my boss, photograph it on complimentary colored/patterned scrapbook paper.  I have a bunch of it that I was going to use to make handmade envelopes to ship Etsy orders in, but that turned out to be a tad over-ambitious.  My boss also gave me a Fire Mountain Gems catalog so I can order some stuff I need for my shop.