Patting Myself on the Back

ok, i'm going to let a little cat out of the bag...a cat covered in lots and lots of jewelry :) my 'creative industry' i have mentioned before is my jewelry making addiction. i've always done something here and there. i look back at pictures from when i was much much younger and see myself wearing a necklace i made out of seed beads when i was a wee tike or wearing a bracelet i weaved on a loom - it is then that i realize that i've been destined to make jewelry. when i entered college, i lived with a dear old friend of mine in the female dorms and we started creating pieces together. we made a little movie area and began frequenting the bead shops in the town we were studying and BAM! a little jewelry business began in the dorms which, i must say, is a great place to sell jewelry :) sorority girls love a new necklace to wear to the upcoming frat party :) we would hang out necklaces on the corkboard meant to hang mementos of home and put signs in the elevator to encourage the ladies to come by and buy...and they did! our sales list from that year is pretty funny: hemp $5, beaded $10 and so on. i think our most expensive sale at that time was a $12 necklace. we thought we were millionaires. time moved on and we each continued to create pieces for gifts, for ourselves and for sales here and there all the while feeding off of each other's excitement for creating and learning new tricks. after college we each moved back to our hometown at separate times and began a life without college; one filled with 8-5 shifts, rent, bills, partying and many newfound responsibilities. it was within those first few years back home that we got the idea of setting up our stuff at the local flea market to see if we could make a sell! we got together with a couple of other friends who made their own brand of goods and did that very thing. sold a little bit but caught the fire of putting our goods in a public forum. we were hooked on another thing. the original two toughed it out and forever stuck through it all and created more goods, created a name - SheezKrafty -, created a logo, sought out shows and began filling some of our weekends with shows and sales. we gained confidence in ourselves and our creations and suddenly turned around and realized that we had been at the jewelry gig for ten years!!! our quality is wonderful, our imagination amazes me sometimes and our fire to do what we do have never gone away. people love what we do but most importanly, WE love what we do. this past summer, we acquired a tax id number and became an organized money making machine in the eyes of government.

fast foward. last saturday i did a show in a nearby town and it was great! sales were great, the booth looked great and had lots of people come through. it was probably my favorite show so far. wednesday night i checked our jewelry email which i don't check everyday (but totally should) and we had received and email from www.oklatravelnet.com who wants to showcase us as local jewelry artists for their christmas show! they would film and interview us and the segment would air from 3-4 minutes. we screamed and danced around a bit and then settled ourselves to reply to her email. we've yet to hear back but are hopeful that she hasn't found another jewelry artisian to do the piece. if she has, that's fine, we are just grateful to be recognized in such a manner! it makes me so proud of all of the work we have done for so many years and it shows me that it is really starting to pay off :)