dressed for success!

I spent a few hours this weekend photographing new designs. I finally had time to figure out how best to use the bust/display mannequin thing I had bought to model my necklaces, and spent a long time trying to dress her up in something suitably versatile. I finally settled on a cute little black dress! I hope this will help buyers get a better sense of proportion of my necklaces, and make life easier for me so i don't have to contort my body to try to get a good shot of it on myself.

I also photographed most of my new, unlisted designs, and am happy to report I am at 46 new pieces. I hope to have 80 new designs by April 1st. I think that is a manageable target! Most of all, I really love love adore x100 about half of them, and love x50 most of the the other half ;). I guess this is not surprising since I don't finish things I don't like. My workspace is littered with half-finished designs... I usually come back to them when I'm reinspired or if I find the perfect piece to complete them.

I also spent some time organising the pieces into "collections". Usually, I list items the moment I make them, and it's interesting to take a look at everything and see the stylistic themes that inevitably emerge. Sometimes I find a style I am very drawn to, and I make several pieces in that style, but in different colours and slightly different variations. =) It's kind of fun to do it that way! In the new shop, I hope to make categories so you can shop by type (necklaces, earrings etc), or by collection... we'll see how things shape up!

front page II

wow, i've been really lucky with being featured recently! my victorian rocker haute earrings were on the Etsy front page today (bottom right) for about 2 hours, i think. thank you, The Storque!

no way

victorya is out!! i'm so sad, especially after kit was booted last week.

christian looked really sad too. i love the two of them, i think they are/were the two best in the competition. plus, victorya said in her exit interview that christian loves asian women. woot!

i think that means that the final three will be christian, rami and maybe jillian?

i this rami is very technically talented, but i'm not a fan of his designs. they are too one-dimensional and not quirky enough for me. i loved sweet p's last two dresses, but i'm not sure she really has an assertive vision like the others.

i'm so needing christian's motorcross-inspired jeans!!! they were so cute!! oh my gosh if they sell them on ebay i'm going to go broke bidding on them.

a side note, project runway is very inspiring for my own designing. one weekend, i watched the entire season two in two days, and finished about 15 designs of my own over that time period! it was probably the most productive i've ever been.

byebye victorya, i hope you start your own line, i'll definitely be a fan =)

xx

gosh i'm girly!!!

i've been wanting a pullip doll for a few months. i believe they are modelled after blythe, but made by a korean company and i think they look more asian than blythe, or at least the anime kind of asian ;). i was browsing flickr and came across user sevastra's pullips. i love her photography and her dolls! The images here are all hers.

how girly am i, huh, wanting dolls at 26? lol.

what's even more awesome, she handmakes the dresses that her dolls wear! you can read more about her and her dolls on her blog.


lovely!

shopping spree

one of my favourite gemstone suppliers had a large seasonal launch of new gemstones today. i really had to restrain myself from buying too many strands, as I am not selling my new designs until April, and cannot spend as freely on supplies as i usually do =(.

i did pick up a few new strands though! including lovely large honey quartz and a new stone for me, rhodolite garnet, to match a gorgeous new sterling pin I found.

yay!

x,
s.

kirsten dunst for miumiu

photos: notcot.com

I'm not a big fan of kirsten dunst, but I must say that I absolutely adore her latest campaign for miumiu (click the above to enlarge, each panel is mesmerising!). they remind me of art and ghosts' levitating girl.

new backgrounds?

I am working on prepping my new designs for the website, and one of the things I have been thinking about is new backgrounds for photographing my jewelry on. I went to a lovely paper store and found a few other backgrounds that I like. If anyone has any comments about what works and what doesn't, I would love to hear them!

The bracelet photographed is one of my new designs, a solid 14K gold vintage ivory rose pin paired with aquamarine, blue and green mystic topaz, white onyx, grey moonstone, baby blue sapphire, pyrite and prasiolite, all wired in solid 14K gold. I think I will call it (a tad uninspired) "shakespeare in love II", as its colours are inspired by my "shakespeare in love" bracelet =).


x,
s.

front page!

my golden girl earrings were on the Etsy front page last night courtesy of O2Martinis' treasury! Thank you so much! I actually didn't realise I was on the front page until I saw that I had 20+ new hearts overnight... so I went digging through the treasury and found a treasury I was in, and saw from the comments that it was indeed on the front page. It's a lovely golden theme, I love it. Again, the bottom is cut off =( I need a bigger screen.

YAY!

x,
s.

elly nelly wall graphics

i love these wall graphics from ellynelly!! i think i'm going to get the meadow wall graphic and the bunnies. so lovely!!

lust

argh i just bought my new macbook a month ago!!

pretty front page!

couldn't resist taking a snapshot of this stunning Etsy front page... what a collection! figs and ginger, tiinateaspoon, artandghosts, imogeneANDannie, and other super talented peeps!

couldn't figure out how to take more than one screen length's worth though, so the bottom three items were left out =(

The pequitobun.com website is coming along nicely, I love how Arianne is super organised, with the entire project mapped out in terms of milestones and to-dos on their project database. I have a list of items I am responsible for, and each time I am done, I can check the box next to that item and watch it spiral magically from the to-do part to the done part =).

So far, I've worked diligently on:

Design preferences- the colours, illustrations and “style” of the website, I love how Arianne allows me to input esoteric terms like romantic, whimsical, rich, artistic, etc etc… to describe what I want! I must have put like 20 adjectives, and I’m not sure they are even all compatible. Lol. I also looked through Lou’s portfolio and picked out my favourite elements. I really can’t wait to see what she comes up with!! =D

Site preferences- I actually couldn’t think of any other website that is similar to the feel I am going for. Oddly enough, the closest is the anthropologie.com website, and that is definitely too plain and clean. But, I like how it feels very open, and it is very well organized. It looks very elegant, clean, fresh yet “grown-up”.

Other things- shipping preferences, merchant account and gateway, etc.... gosh am I'm learning alot! i'm so excited, my heart skips a beat whenever I get a new email from Aeolidia!

=)

Time for bed!

x,
s.

step 1: domain registration

done! pequitobun.com is MINE!

goodbye, cyber squatters! =)

for those who might be thinking of building their own website too, i'm using dreamhost, as recommended by Arianne at Aeolidia. i am going to do whatever she says because the options and acronyms are too befuddling to fathom.

x,
s.

so psyched

About six months ago (I think!) I looked at how nicely my Etsy designs were doing, and decided that it would be the most marvellous thing to have my own website. However, I wasn't sure that I would be able to fork out the money needed to get it professionally designed, and so, instead, designed it myself. It turned out to look quite ok, but was a nightmare to update and upkeep, and so I soon went back to selling on Etsy.

Today, looking forward to growing pequitobun in 2008, I decided that is time to actually think about pequitobun as a coherent "brand", and get a professionally designed website that represents pequitobun the way I see it.

With regard to the web design aspect, the natural choice was Aeolidia, I've been lusting after a website designed by them for a while now, and I'm so happy that I am finally in a place where I can justify the cost! Arianne has designed so many FANTASTIC websites, and the testimonials on their website are so glowing, I have complete confidence in entrusting them with this baby =).

Even more excitingly, one of my favourite Etsy artists, Lou at artandghosts, agreed to do the art for the website! You can see some of her art in this post. I can't think of anyone I would love more to have create art to represent pequitobun, and I'm so so SO thrilled and excited.

YAY!! It's going to be a busy 3 months till the anticipated launch in April, and I will try to log the progress here. I will be saving all my new designs for the launch, soooo it'll be doubly exciting for me to show those designs too.

Happy New Year to you and me!

xx,
s.