Our Wedding...

OK, I know we just had our 2 year anniversary and I posted some photos last month, but I saw this post on Scoutie Girl today and just had to participate. How sweet! I love Tara's story and with every wedding there is a story...

I was a bit stressed the year we planned our wedding. I, like so many brides, wanted it to be perfect. There are so many people to please, so many decisions to make...and at times, it felt impossible. But, also lots of fun :). Invite designing, dress shopping, photographer picking, menu making, decorating...oh, the fun girly stuff!! You might think I spent time thinking about what jewelry I would make for myself...but you would be wrong. I spent time designing my mom's and my sister's jewelry and ended up making mine just a few days before we left. Now when I work with brides, I have so many ideas and so much excitement to make something perfect for them. Something I wasn't able to do for myself.

We decided to get married in Maui. I really wanted a small wedding and we had a hard time getting the guest list as short as we wanted, but getting married so far away definitely helped :). Don't get me wrong, I wanted all my friends and family there - but I also wanted it intimate.

It ended up being the absolute best time of our lives. That sounds so obvious - but it was perfection. Most of our 50 guests had never met before and a few days before the wedding, we snorkeled, whale watched, golfed, ate and of course drank lots of fruity drinks together and everyone became best of friends. That was definitely one of my very favorite parts was seeing all the people I love together and having so much fun.

It was simply a beautiful day and now I have the best husband a girl could ask for to show for it.

Can't wait for wedding season... :).

Feature Designer on Indie Design Studio

What an honor to be a featured artist on this cute blog!

I had a quick little interview with Indie Design Studio yesterday. They are a website design company for indie designers and also have a great blog - which the feature is on. Check it out.

Thanks so much for the feature!

Working...

I spent most of the week and weekend working...in the yard, in the garden and in the kitchen...anywhere but my studio! It's been awfully quiet in my Etsy shop the last couple weeks which makes it difficult to feel very motivated to create. I won't feel too sorry for myself or complain for too long...don't worry, but so slow! Sales just came to a screeching halt after a pretty good February. Anyway, I will always keep on keeping on.

We made insanely yummy pizza this weekend - eggplant, mushroom, mozzarella, goat cheese, roasted garlic and caramelized onion. Good god it was delicious. I also made a fantastic cocktail to go with it. I don't have a name for it, but it's sort of an herbed lemonade with vodka...so good - watch out!

Ingredients

2 oranges

2 lemons

2 limes

4-5 good sized sprigs of rosemary

1 bottle of lemonade

vodka

Cut the fruit up in chunks and drop in the bottom of a pitcher. Add in the rosemary and muddle all together. Add lemonade and stir. If you are patient, let it sit for 30 minutes or so. Put ice and however much vodka you like in your glasses and add top with the lemonade mixture. Drink up!

I've also used lemonade concentrate and only added part of the water, then topped the drink with some soda water for a little fuzz. Super fun and yummy.

Cross your fingers for me for some sales this week!

What a weekend!

I wish the weekend wasn't over! It went so fast and so much happened. I'll just dive right in...the hubby finally found a car. He's literally been car shopping for months (and just kinda looking for years...3 to be exact) and FINALLY bit the bullet. It's a much longer story than just this, but I won't bore you with the details. All that matters is that his new car is adorable...I mean totally bad ass. I don't think men want adorable cars. Anyway, it's a huge relief and I'm glad it's over. Buying a car is one of the grossest experiences I can think of. Hate it.

Sunday I ran the Mercer Island Rotary Half Marathon. I shaved about 18 minutes off my time from November. Good, but not great, especially since I stopped the first time for what seemed like 20 minutes. So, I probably didn't run any faster, but my official time was much better :).

It was a hard run, even harder because my running partner had to drop out of the race due to an injury - so I did it all by myself! But, it was great to see a smiling husband at the finish line.

The rest of the day I ate and drank champagne. That's right. Celebration time. Oh, and built another 8x4 garden bed. I can't wait to get my garden going. It's going to be twice as big and I have lots of plans for planting. I'm going to get my herbs and some hardy greens in this weekend. A little early, but the hardy stuff can handle it.

That's all for now. I'll be in the studio this week too, so will hopefully have some new works to show soon too!

New works - only for you!

I finished taking photos of a bunch of new work yesterday. I'm trying to stagger my uploading of new goodies to my shop - but I couldn't wait to share photos! I had been neglecting necklaces for a long time...I was on such a ring kick for a while...well, still am. So, I went nuts with a bunch of new necklaces. I find them extremely difficult to photograph. Sigh. Rings are my favorite - or studs. Anything teeny tiny I have a much easier time photographing. Earrings I still need work, but they are OK. Necklaces - so hard.

First, are the 3 items that I did end up listing last night - so go check them out!

Rutilated Quartz coins in Gold Filled Chandeliers

Gold Filled Curls on Oxidized Chain

Teeny Labradorite on Sterling Chain

Here are the rest of the bunch from this week. They will all be listed in the next few days!

Update + Rings

My blog posts have been pretty far and few between lately. I've been working on my websiteupdate a bit and can hardly wait for it. The designer is going to start on it April 8th and we hope to have it done in about 3-4 weeks. Needless to say, I've been neglecting this blog while thinking about, and planning my website. It's going to change A LOT! The branding, the layout, well, everything. It's where I will end up doing my blog postings and I will be more focused on my jewelry, inspiration, process, etc...than personal stuff.

Although my current site was built for me to be able to upload new products, make copy edits, etc...it's just so darn static. I rarely update it and I end up directing people to my Etsy shop to see my work. Well, that's just dumb. I have my own website! I should be excited to share it! So, I decided to have my Etsy shop be the shopping part of www.erinjanedesigns.com. My Etsy shop has become so easy to manage and it's where I add all my new products anyway. OK, I'm going on and on...there is so much to tell! However, I think I will wait to spill too many beans until I have something visual to share. It will make things much more clear.

In the meantime, enjoy some photos of new goodies. I am loving rings lately. They are so fun to make...and wear. Here are a few new ones.

Chrysoprase Ring

White Druzy Ring

Chalcedony Ring

Crooked Trails Trunk Show

What a nice weekend! It's been awfully nice in Seattle and I've gotten so much yard work done just in the last 2 weeks. I'm so ready to plant my garden and just can't wait for spring and summer. Sit on the deck, grill, drink vodka tonics...oh, I cannot wait.

Besides my warm weather dreaming, I had a trunk show at a great customer and friend's house. 25% of the sales went to Crooked Trails. Crooked Trails is a non-profit community-based travel organization helping people broadening their understanding of the planet and it's diverse cultures through education, community development and responsible travel. Yes, I took that straight from their website... :). Check out the website though. I think it's hard to sum up all that they do with just that little blurb. It's a great organization and I especially love their focus on responsible travel. I feel so fortunate to have been included in such a great group. It was a great event.

Plus, it just made me feel good. For some reason, I never really knew how exactly I would want to go about donating (besides the obvious donating items for auction). But, I loved having a portion of the trunk show sales be donated. I got to meet the people, everyone was terribly enthusiastic and I just felt so much more a part of it and connected that just writing a check or mailing off a piece of jewelry. A great experience and I intend to do it again...and again :).

I also have just 13 days until my half marathon, so I had to get a 10 mile run in yesterday. It was hard, but I was still able to do yard work afterwards and I'm not too sore today, so I know I can at least be able to cross the finish line. I'll hopefully get in one more long run before the 21st. Can't wait!

I have a few pieces to share...even some that already sold, but I want to share anyway. And, off to finish some rings, cuff links and more!

Pink Amethyst Earrings

This lovely herkimer diamond necklace is snatched up already...

And this gorgeous White Druzy necklace has also already found a home...

So had this Green Amethyst necklace...

But check out this Solitaire (Herkimer:)) Diamond Necklace!

Custom work + works in progress

I've been neglecting my Etsy shop ever since we got back from our anniversary trip to Vegas - I know, the most romantic place :). For the last week or so I've mostly been working on custom orders that sort of all came at once for some reason. I just finished up an order for a bride and her bridesmaids yesterday and have one more custom order (cuff links for a wedding!) that I will get to next week. Check out a few favorite custom pieces from the week...

But, that's not all I've been doing! I do have some new designs in the works! I usually only work on a few new things at once, but I was feeling like my shop was stale and I have so many new stones that I'm dying to work with, so I started a whole bunch of new work at once. I'm not sure if it's the amount, or just that I'm trying to work faster and trying things I haven't done before, but I've had a few super annoying moments of bezel melting, the bezel not fully soldering to the backplate, hard to set stones (oh, that one was bad - my arms were sore the next day), and things like that. Not that those things never happen, but they feel like they have been happening way more this week and sucking my time away...right when I'm dying to finish some things so I can get them photographed and up in my shop.

I WILL share new goodies soon! In the meantime, here's my pile of stones right after making all the bezels the other day. My bench is a disaster now - glad I took this photo before it got out of control...