Photo Slideshow

Take a look in the lower right hand side...yes, that's right, down there, in the little box with the 'play' arrow. That's my new photo slideshow! Only a few photos now, but someday, after I stop stealing pix other people took for me, I'll be able to add even more photos! I can even set it up to play music ... but don't worry. I can't even imagine how crazy that would drive me, and I vow never to put anyone else through that, either!

Enjoy!

Another New Venture Launched

Check me out at indiepublic:

http://www.indiepublic.com/profile/JericasDesigns

I don't have much listed beyond a bio and a few pix which I'll be putting up here and discussing in the near future but the site is a great consortium for independent craftspeople worldwide! Scrolling through the assembled photos is fun.

University City Arts League Holiday Sale

I've mentioned before that one of the places I sell my jewelry is my local arts league. I've been taking classes (pottery) there for 5 years now, and have met a bunch of great people through my association the the arts league. Last year, my items sold very well, and because part of the requirements for participating in the sale is staffing the sale, I got to hear a lot of feedback from my customers. I've begun working much more in sterling silver--in the old days, I didn't want to buy more than I could comfortably sell, and sterling is, obviously, much more expensive than plated metals. Buying in bulk helps cut down on unit costs, but you also have to be willing to shell out more money at the outset. I think most craftspeople have had the same set of tensions through which they've needed to work. I try to have money coming in when money is going out, but it doesn't always work that way. I also try to keep my prices very reasonable because I'm a consumer, too, and I haven't lost that sensibility.

Here's last year's sale flyer, a postcard that was mailed out advertising the sale. One of my bracelets is featured on the back, and a few people came to the sale specifically for this piece! I hadn't known that the photo I tendered was going to be used 'til I got one of these cards in my mailbox! The colors (style name: FUNK!) remind me of a 1960/70s kitchen (who here had an avocado oven?) or maybe even *gasp* a 'rec room' (complete with wood paneling, tv with antenna and some Jiffy Pop pop corn that mom cooked up for Saturday night).

I only wish that the vibrant colors of the Czech glass beads would come through in these shots I have. They really have to be seen to be appreciated. I'm already working on this year's collection.

I have about 80 of these cards...I should make a giant Jericas Designs poster! But where on earth would I hang it? And do I even want to? Even *I* am not that self-absorbed! Well, on second thought, I might be...

Happy Birthday! I Got You a Rock.

While the idea of a birthstone may seem pretty cut and dried, there are a variety ways that someone's birthstone can be decided, and a selection of stones that relate to each and every one of us. There are traditional stones, modern stones (decided by birth month), stones decided by astrological sign, stones decided by different cultural groups.

The Mystical Birthstone list was taken from a 1000-year-old Tibetan book. These stones reportedly help one overcome the difficulties of their his birth month. The Ayurvedic Birthstone list comes from Ayurvedic Indian Medicine, a type of medicine practiced for over 1000 years. These stones reportedly hold the power to heal illness.

The tradition of birthstones comes to the Judeo-Christain world through the story of the 12-gem breastplate of Aaron recorded in the Bible in Exodus 28 and 39 (representing the 12 trives of Israel), as well as the description of the 12 gem-encrusted foundations of the wall of Heaven found Revelations 21.

In 1912, the American National Association of Jewelry, Jewelers of America, standardized the birthstone list by adopting the already-used Modern Birthstone list and making it the official month-by-month list of accepted birthstones. Over the years, there have been a few additions to this list, the most recent being Tanzanite, a new December birthstone, in 2002.

So, there are a lot of ways to skin the cat when it comes to birthstones. Take a look at the different options and pick the one that resonates with you the most! After all, it's YOUR birthstone, right?

Where Are They Now?

Whatever happened to the chandelier earring? You know, the bright, jangly, doorknocker style that has been popular for the last few years. Well, they're still around, but there's a new kid in town. And that new kid is the Stiletto Earring.

Like it's name, the stiletto is long and lean, often just a straight dangle, top to bottom, like the diamond stiletto earrings from Morris & David, above. A stiletto earring can also have more movement, and include beads--the same sorts of beads that you'll find in a chandelier earring, but smushed together top to bottom, like the crystal earrings, below. They generally range from 2 to 4 inches long, but can certainly go longer, and are also known as 'shoulder dusters.' If you've opened any magazine featuring celebrities in the last year, you've seen these babies.

Come to think of it, I should really work up a few pairs of these myself, in case any Hollywood celebrities end up at my Holiday Sale!

Fun With Flipping

I love this page that my friend Steven put together from necklace images he scanned for me a while back. This is some high-fun clicking right here, my friends. Load the page, then click on a necklace and use the arrows to travel back and forth through the collection, using a fast connection. It's like one of those flippy books that shows someone running or a car driving, frame by frame.

http://pobox.upenn.edu/~sgagne/JERICASTEST/Necklaces1/

Who the Heck is Karen Hill?

Ok, that was a trick question. Karen Hill isn't a person. Well, I'm sure it is--lots of people worldwide, actually. But the Karen Hill I mean is a specific tribe of people located in the hills of Thailand. The Kariang (Thai for Karen) tribe, the largest of all of the hill tribes, lives in the hills near the border with Burma and numbers approximately 290,000 people. The Kariang are farmers and believed to be the be the best mahouts, or elephant trainers (elephants are used to clear fields), in South East Asia. [That's a Kariang woman pictured above.]

Why am I telling you about farmers in Thailand in my jewelry blog? Because the Kariang also do beautiful work with silver. Using traditional methods passed down one generation to another, parent to child, these artisans handcraft from scratch beads and findings showcasing nature and intricate geometric designs. The silver content in Hill Tribes silver work ranges from 95% to 99%, even higher than the 92.5% content of sterling silver. This makes the silver softer and more malleable so that Kariang craftspeople can create very detailed pieces. When you look at a piece of Karen Hill Tribe silver, you can readily notice the slight differences in each piece of the same design; every piece is truly handmade and, thus, unique.

Karen Hill Tribe silver is very popular in beading magazines right now and purchasing it allows the Kariang to maintain a traditional craft, preserve part of the culture, and reap the benefits of a reliable source of income.

One of the things that very much interests me about jewelry is that beads are often very place specific. Different cultures have different beading traditions, methods and products. You may be able to buy similar (or even exact) beads in many different places, but you can very often trace specific types back to India, Japan, Venice, etc. The artisans and factories that produce these beads are proprietary--I've heard you can't bring a camera with you when you tour the glass factory that makes "charlotte" beads in the Czech Republic (and keep in mind that a charlotte is only about a millimeter or 2 long!). I'm beginning to be able to identify which countries make which types of beads, so that whether I'm in a bead shop in Philadelphia, Boston, The Hague or Paris, I know who exported what to whom.

And now you know who Karen Hill is!

Wednesday Is Cocktail Day at Jericas Designs

Thank God it's Friday...er, Wednesday.

I swear that one day, I will make myself a pair of earrings featuring these babies. It's a sterling silver martini glass, a cubic zirconia, and a little peridot. How cute is that?! In fact, I could make a set of earrings out of a lot of these little charms: red and white wine, mai tai, margarita, champagne, beer, cosmopolitan, or appletini. I'm sure everyone at my local corner bar will be impressed with my witty fashion statement, right? ...Maybe not.

The Birth of the 3 Coins in the Fountain Collection

One of the lines of jewelry that I make that sells the best features coin-shaped Czech glass beads, slightly larger than a dime in circumference, linked together by thick sterling silver wire. I can't recall, now, what exactly inspired me to make this design; I'd certainly never seen anything like it before. I think I liked the beads and I started thinking: what color combinations would look from the 20 or so choices I had before me? From the beginning, I envisioned it in a palette of 3 analogous (next to one another on the color wheel) or near-analogous and/or complementary (directly across from one another on the color wheel) colors. These choices both made the pieces very wearable (i.e., a range of blues that go well with something blue!) and also very striking (i.e, mixing aqua with lime and orange which makes the item really pop). One of these necklaces is featured in the blog entry about Good Day Philadelphia (not that we can see it well in those stills!)

There are now 9 color palettes and 9 names that I use to describe them in the collection. I've already mentioned and shown a few of them here in blog. Coming up with names is the best part! The original design featured cobalt blue, a lime-y/olive-y green and aqua. Not unlike the colors on this page (and the photo featured at the top)! I called this combination Beach Glass, because it really does make me think of the ocean and the glass you sometimes find washed up on the sand. That Beach Glass coin necklace was the one that the owners of the Antique Row craft gallery first saw on my neck during a visit to the shop and also the one that got them to ask me to sell there. It holds a special place in my heart, and is still very popular with customers. I'm convinced that blues grab everyone's attention, but I wonder why that is? If you have a guess, please leave me a comment and let me know!

The collection also includes: Ocean, Sky, Forest, Summer, Tulip, Iris, Sherbet and Funk. I've got a 10th combination coming soon, and I think it's definitely going to be something, as I like to say. The collection features necklaces, matching bracelets and then lots of different earring designs, from short to long, featuring the same beads and colors found in the color palettes used for the other pieces. Each set of earrings coordinates with at least 2, and sometimes 3 and 4, of the color palettes I use, which makes them very versatile. Every pair of earrings, and in fact the entire collection, is strong enough to stand on its own, for those wearers who don't like matchy-matchy things. The thing I like most about these pieces is how they lie on the neck and wrist. With some pieces of jewelry, you get what you see, but I think the way these necklaces lie on the neck is more than the sum of the parts, and I'm going to start including more, and better, photos so that you can see that for yourselves. Hopefully these 2 shots give you a better idea of the items on an actual person! And who doesn't like impromptu snapshots taken in a dirty pottery studio? No one, that's who! Enjoy.

To Dream the Impossible (Jewelry) Dream

For years, and years, I have had a dream. A beautiful dream. I have wanted to get a Philly news anchor/personality to wear one of my necklaces. That's all. That's all I've ever wanted.

But I didn't know how! I had a lot of questions: maybe they can't wear their own stuff? Maybe it's all wardrobe and it's matched for them. Maybe they can't show preferential treatment? Do I just hit every anchorwoman, like scattershot? Do I send them envelopes, cold? How much pricey work do I need to give away, and will it just end up in the trash? What if they think it's poison or that I'm a stalker? I never knew just how to accomplish my goal, make my One True Dream a reality.

But it turns out that I'm lucky enough to have a wonderful local friend who is also friends with someone on TV! She knows a member of the Good Day Philadelphia tream, and was willing to ask her if she'd be willing to consider wearing a piece of mine on the show. And she very kindly said she would, indeed, be willing to take a look! So I sent off a necklace, the coin-shaped glass-beaded necklace (style: Ocean), and she wore it on the air, on her birthday, this past August!

It was truly incredible and the only thing that marred the moment was that...I missed the whole thing! I didn't know when she'd wear the necklace, and so I couldn't tape her, or even catch a snippet while I was getting ready for work. I only knew it had happened because someone I know, who has seen my work for sale on Antique Row, recognized the necklace as one of mine! He mentioned it to me a few hours after the show was off the air, too!

I guess I wasn't meant to see it. But it happened! And it was on the air for 4 hours. FOUR HOURS! Luckily, someone pointed me at a short video clip and then snagged me a few stills!

Overpriced Items are the Mothers of Invention

I've mentioned I'm cheap, right? Being cheap, as a designer, has several results. First, I think you buy fewer pieces of jewelry, because you can be more critical of design and construction. You also develop a sense of what different components cost and the amount of work it takes to assemble a finished piece. Finally, you learn about trends--is it worth it to spend a lot of money on 'the newest thing' today, if you won't wear it again next year? For some, the answer is undoubtedly yes, and there's nothing wrong with that. To each, her own. And certainly, I do the same at times. Sometimes I want something just because I want it. Other times, I'm more judicious, and a lot of that comes from the factors mentioned above.

This summer, I got the new Eddie Bauer catalog and looked through it. Some nice things, but I wasn't buying. The jewelry, however, was quite nice. I saw several cool necklaces, very summer-y in design.

The prices...well, those things are always overpriced. $60 earrings. $38 simple necklaces (and not sterling silver, either). I can understand buying them--they really are well designed and hey, when you want to treat yourself, you generally have no problem spending that kind of money now and then.

But like I said, I make jewelry and I know what those components cost. And they don't cost $38. Especially because they're mass produced, with the buying power that kind of production can afford. I AM willing to pay for good design, and that's where part of that $38 goes, and I think that's fair. But more to the point, for me--they're a mere 14-16 inches long. Or 32 inches, meant to be doubled.

I can't comfortably wear a 14-16 in. chain. A lot of women I know can't. And the construction of lots of these pieces can't be altered--meaning, I can't buy them and make them fit, even if I have the materials and skills.

But you know what i CAN do? I CAN let looking at that catalog inspire me to design a great fashion-forward summer necklace that has MY stamp on it, and that costs me a fraction of what those necklaces cost.

BOOYAH.

And so that's what I did. Leather cords were big this summer, adorned with a single focal-point pendant. Something that goes with everything. Shell, for example (maybe because white was so in fashion this summer?).

So, I took a single, thin leather cord, and I added a really cool opalized glass teardrop pendant. It's very striking, and people asked me about it all summer. The nice thing is that the glass picked up the color of whatever I was wearing, which made it look different each time I wore it. Which was especially great because I'm especially sloth-like in summer and never bothered putting anything else on. And the leather cord can be swapped out for any other color you want, which is fun.

Take a look--I think I'll be selling these at my holiday sale this year. And no, they won't cost $60! [You'll notice I didn't lead with this photo! YOU try to photograph opal on white!]