Inspiration

I've been struck by a design mind block for the past two weeks. I had a massive spree of creations and then for a whole week, nothing. Absolutely nothing. So here's my question for you. What do you do when you're stuck? Do you take a break from making pieces and just take time off? Or are you one of those who force yourself to come up with X pieces by Y time? I'm aiming to have 100 listings in my shop by Nov which doesn't seem tooo hard but on the other hand, I also gave myself a week off to give my brain some rest. I've found that buying supplies always help kick start the design process but when I spend $US300 on supplies weekly and make a US$25 sale, it really isn't cost efficient. So what other methods are there? (PS, the image is the first that came up in google when you search for inspiration so I went along with it.)

Yes I know...

I've been horrible with the Accessorise Me column lately. I've just been swamped and been on a jewelery making craze so all I do is make jewelry and try listing. I'm aiming to get 100 listings up by mid November so I'm churning away. I made a few sales offline this week though so happy dance!

If you take a look through my Etsy store, you'd undoubtedly notice that I've moved away a bit from the mesh although still keeping the pearl aesthetic. There are some pieces that I am absolutely in love with and I"m hoping that they will find good homes. I've also taken to coming up with names for my pieces. What do you think of the below? Name appropriate?

The Planets Are Aligned


Autumn Melody


Knotty by Nature

Giveaway

I've partnered with the Shop By Hand blog to give away one of my rings. You can participate by visiting the the blog here. Be sure to let me know if you're participating! The giveaway ends Sept 30

Screaming Fans

Finally got around to creating my Facebook fan page. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be as I haven't been using Facebook for quite some time now. After the redesign, I couldn't find anything and just gave up on it. Anyway, after scratching my head a few times, I finally got it to work so if you like my work, please become a fan! You can find my fan page here or scroll down the page and see it on the right hand side.

And if you have any tips on how to utilise the Facebook fan page, do let me know!

Sassy Hong Kong Writeup

I was featured on Friday on the Sassy Hong Kong blog as one of their favourite designers in their Chic Boutique fair which I attended a few weeks ago. Do check it out here.

Quirky Infinity

Many of you may not know that I have another shop called Quirky Infinity that sells more kitsch items. It's a much lower price point shop and I definitely treat it as the ugly step sister to Chic Infinity. I spend most of my time drafting designs and hand crafting Chic Infinity but lately I'm finding that I have the greatest time scouring for brass antiqued charms and pendants. It takes some work going through shops and what not to find the perfect pendant but I am absolutely in love with this manicure spa set charm complete with nail polish that I found over the weekend. I'm starting to understand why people want to go vintage shopping and appreciating the hunt for looking for that perfect charm. I always thought there can't be too much work involved in the piece in terms of design and crafting but understanding now that finding that one piece can also take a lot of time.

My first media clipping!

Two of my brooches were spotted and showcased in this week's Weekend HK. So excited. It talks about how my brooches are timeless with the use of vintage buttons and plaid cloth

Accessorise Me (Steampunk Mania)

I had never heard of the term steampunk before until I joined Etsy but I am in LOVE with steampunk jewelry. So this post is an ode to steampunk. The outfit:
See by Chloe Studded leather ankle boots
Grey Grunge Wash Shorts
More Miss Selfridge shorts

The accessories
Metropolis 3 -handbag from Garbagebag

Industrial Steampunk Dagger Staff Anchor 1930s Hardware Necklace with Gears from MechanicsDaughter

STEAMPUNK BRACELET-FABULOUS GOLD MESH STEAMPUNK BRACELET with VINTAGE ROSE GOLD WATCH MOVEMENT- MADE EXCLUSIVELY by TheSteamPunkTrunk

The aftermath of a craft fair

By now, you probably know that I just did two craft fairs. In the buildup to the fairs, i've been frantically churning out pieces as I wasn't sure how much to bring. As a result, I ended up with over 100 pieces.. of course, I barely sold a fraction of the goods and now I have piles and piles of goods left over. What to do? Well I went on a listing rampage. If you take a look at my Etsy shop, you'll see that I have listed 16 new items in the past three days. There are more to come but I need to get more photographs taken. While I know that listing in big batches is not a good idea, and rather it's better to list slowly throughout the week to gain exposure. I have soo much stock left over that I was in a rather bad mood and felt like doing something positive to offset my crankiness. The result was an insane session of photographing, using two cameras no less and a lot and a lot of listing!

Thing is, now I still need to figure out what to do with leftover stock. Any tips?