It’s taken me a while to write my first post. I couldn’t figure out what to write about. How about a quick recap of what led me to this point? Well not the entire story, perhaps that would be a recap of my entire life.  🙂 Isn’t that how most things go. I’ll start with the jewelry making class I took last summer.

I saw a class offered called silver jewelry making basics. It seemed like a good opportunity for me to learn yet anther skill about how to make things for myself. I find a lot of fullfilment in making things with my hands and I enjoy collecting the skills to do so. The fact that this was the last time the class would be offered was also a pretty good push. I enrolled, spend a chunk of money buying all the necesarry tools, and began my short journey into learning some jewelry basics. During the class we were taught how to cut the metal, file, shape it with various hammering techniques, solder, and polish. At the time I didn’t really see myself continuing on with the skills I had learned so I made and finished as many projects as I could in our limited time. I practially could have started a little jewelery stand right there. 🙂

When the class was over I took all my things home and packed them away. I didn’t really think about them again until Christmas was nearing. As always I would try to figure out ways to make my gifts rather than buy them. Previous Christmas gifts involved a lot of knitted items. I knew I just wouldn’t have the time this year for a lot of knitting and it dawned on me I had a whole bunch of jewelry making tools that I could put to good use and make gifts my sister and mom would absolutely love! Duh! So out everything came and I started thinking of a few new designs and making jewelry for Christmas gifts.

As always I shared my new creations with the ladies at work and they were of course supportive and not only that were wondering if they could get some unique creations for their Christmas gifts. I figured since I was already at it why not? I made a few more things for people I knew and most likely would have stopped there if I had not recieved an interesting proposal from a friend.

The friend in question was curious if I few of us lady friends would like to pitch in on a first Thursday booth. Every first Thurday here in Austin down on South Congress there is a bit of a party. Businesses stay open longer, artisans congregrate in a attempt to sell their wares, and people come to mill about. We thought perhaps this is something we could try. My friend thought since I did a lot of knitting perhaps that’s what I could do. I knew I wouldn’t have nearly enough time to knit things but I could much more quickly make some jewelry to sell and yet again make use of all those tools.

In considering this upcoming craft show I was thinking this could be the motivation I needed to finally get an etsy shop going. Like I said I’ve always made things but up until this point I couldn’t see how it would be possible to sell anything since most of what I did was knit and it’s just too time consuming to try and put a price on it. So it seemed I finally had a product I could sell. This was around December and the craft show was planned for early March. So this was my deadline. I was going to start making jewelry, think of a name for my things, start an etsy shop, make business cards and so on. I might also mention that this was the busy season at my job and I was working overtime during this whole endeavure . It was exciting and stressful all around.

My birthday is on January 1st and I thought a good way to celebrate this years birthday would be to get my shop up and running by the end of January. So on January 31st my etsy site was finally born. It was a happy day!

Since then I feel I’ve improved my site quite a bit, I added myself to facebook pages, twitter, and look a blog with my very own URL! I’ve been plugging right along and it’s all been very exciting! My first few sales were friends of mine giving me their ultimate support and I couldn’t be more grateful! I also do remember the day I made my first stranger sale. I had this feeling I needed to check my etsy page and I had a notice and it wasn’t just a favorite it was a purchase! I was trilled! She bought a pair of my ginkgo earrings! Honest truth I’ve been just as excited for every singe consecutive sale. I feel blessed and honored.

Oh and in case you all were wondering how the craft show turned out. Lets just say the best thing to come out of it was the push it gave me to open my etsy shop and everything since!