My First Fashion Show!!

I participated in my first fashion show last weekend at the Mosaic Lounge in the Kansas City Power and Light District. It was so fun to see my designs on the runway! And all proceeds from the show went to benefit the Chameleon children's charity of Kansas City!

This is a shot of some of my designs featured on the runway. All runway photos are courtesy of Stephen Melvin. He does some awesome work! http://stevemelvin.com/. I now have a slideshow of the runway up on myspace at http://myspace.com/shakeitnbakeit.

My parents and husband came to help me celebrate. We sat right next to the dj booth. I think we were all a bit out of our element :) I drank some fancy Norwegian water because they didn't serve coffee with Frangelico :(

Here I am with Matt (isn't he a cutie?) after the show. We met earlier in the day when he picked up my product for the show. He designed the shirt he's wearing and is going to be designing full time when he graduates this spring. In the background on the left you can barely see Keylee Sanders, who helped organize the event and chose wardrobe for all of the models. She is a stylist out of California. She is currently reworking her website. http://keyleesanders.com

Opportunities and Payoffs, Part Two

I browse Craigslist almost daily. I began looking at the site when my family's home rehabbing business was no longer and I was pondering what to do with myself. At the time I was designing jewelry and listing items on etsy, but sales were few and far between, so I looked through part time job listings, among other categories. One day a couple of months ago I saw a headline stating "calling all fashion designers". It said something about a charity fashion show looking for designers to donate time and product for the show. I answered the ad and got a response from Keylee Sanders, a stylist out of California. She liked my stuff. I sent out some samples to her and will be meeting with her briefly next week to give her some product to be featured in the Artful Threads charity fashion show benefitting the Chameleon childrens' charity in Kansas City. It will be held at the Mosaic Lounge in the Power and Light District on April 18th. This is an exciting opportunity for me! I can't wait to see the show in person, as I've never been to one!

On a side note regarding Craigslist, I also recently answered an ad requesting products from local artists to be placed in a shop. I ended up getting a decent size wholesale order from Alyssa Aley, the new owner of Nancy's Niche in Shawnee, Kansas. It is a very cute shop! It looks like a little cottage! I hope my product does well for her.

Back to the fashion show, here is the ad promoting the show. My name is misspelled :( , but my logo turned out! :)

Opportunities and Pay-Offs, Part One

Last fall I had the opportunity to set up a table at a local retail shop for their open house. There was no charge, nor did they take any part of my sales. That day a group of women came in the store. They were all part of a sorority that was in town for a convention. They had just redesigned their logo and commented on how one of my necklace designs almost exactly matched their logo. I only had one of those necklaces available, which I sold to one of the women and another of the women placed an order for one. All in all I think I sold six items, which I thought was great for my first real live "sale".

Fast forward to a few days ago. I receive a message on my answering machine from the woman who first purchased a necklace from me. She had been trying to track down my phone number for over a month and finally found it. The women in her group just loved the necklace and could she order ELEVEN more? Wow, what a great feeling to hear that!

You never know which opportunities are really going to pay off, so you have to remember to take advantage of as many as possible!

Okay, Here's My Gold

In my previous post I mentioned I was going to create a cuff bracelet out of sections of resin. After deliberating on the idea for a while, I have decided against it for now. It is very time consuming because of all of the pours I have to do to create one bracelet. Because of the time and material cost, as well as the labor involved, the necessary price point would just be too high. Instead, I have settled on these two necklace designs for the time being.

I love the sleekness of them. They have a modern feel with a touch of the 70s. The heart shaped pendant is actually two resin hearts adhered together back to back to create a "puffy" heart. It looks great! I am hoping to find ribbon to be able to do a silver version of both.

I Love Goooooold!

Remember that quote from Austin Powers Goldmember? I love that movie and these new pieces totally remind me of it! I am creating these 70s inspired pieces with resin and gold foiled ribbin chopped up into little triangles. The resin is a bit more bubbly than I would like, but they will look really cool when assembled. I will be creating eight of the long pieces, then drilling them and creating a cuff bracelet. The square piece will become a ring, and the heart will be a pendant. The teardrop I'm not sure about yet. When the pieces are completed I'll post photos for your viewing pleasure :) Happy Monday!

Tarina Tarantino

I just had to blog about one of my favorite jewelry designers, Tarina Tarantino. I just happened onto her website about a year ago when I began dabbling in making jewelry. I knew nothing about jewelry design and had the impression that most people that made jewelry were either metalsmith designers or beaders. I did not really care for traditional "beading" and knew nothing about working with metal. Being a graphic designer by career, I knew I liked to "put pretty things together to make them prettier." I also liked pretty skulls. I liked how something "evil" could be made beautiful. It was during my research of this current trend that I found Tarina. "Oh my gosh!," I remember thinking, "If I made jewelry, this is totally the look I would love to create!"

I read her story and looked at all of her product and have watched some of her video work as she opens her new store in Milan, Italy. If I could sit down with anyone and chat with them about how to build a business and market your talent, it would have to be her. And the pink hair! Awesome! I would never have the courage to wear such a bold color, but it works for her.

One aspect of her business that I truly admire is that everything is assembled in her warehouse in California, not overseas, which is something many companies do not do when they grow so large. I stumbled across this article from a back issue of Swindle magazine that is an interesting read:
http://swindlemagazine.com/issue04/tarina-tarantino/

And, if you want to see some amazing, sparkling jewelry, see her shop at http://tarinatarantino.com/

Adventures in Resin

I have been experimenting with resin and am so excited about this medium! I am finally starting to produce some pieces I feel I can show to the public! The best part is that I am using a lot of bottle caps that would normally be thrown away to create a lot of my pieces. The toughest part is waiting for the resin to cure, as I don't have much patience :) These pieces were worth the wait, though:

This piece is made from a bright orange Naked Juice bottle cap. It is loaded with multi-colored plastic and glass beads. In the center is a shimmery shell bead that looks like an eye. In the middle of the "eye" sits a blue-green plastic bead surrounded by glass beads. There is also glitter placed throughout the resin that gives this pendant a lot of sparkle.

This has got to be my favorite project of the whole week! I call it "Vitamin Candy". It is made from a Flinstones Vitamins cap. It has a doll head "floating" in a sea of candy sprinkles coated in resin. It is not the sort of piece to wear if you don't want to be noticed. :)

This bottlecap pendant is the first one I created using two different layers of resin. You can't tell from the picture, but in the background is neon pink and neon green glitter. Once that layer was cured, I did a second layer and added plastic and glass beads. The three accent pieces are painted glass baubles. It's called "Primary Colors" even though I used hot pink instead of red. :)All of these pieces will be in my etsy shop soon, so check them out! AND, if you want to see some other REALLY awesome resin work, check out this shop: http://stoopidgerl.etsy.com/. She kicks BUTT in this medium and was my inspiration for trying it out!