Earrings in a Treasury!

My Midnight Dancer tribal chandelier earrings (pictured above) are in Beadmask's beautiful Labyrinth-themed treasury Dance the Magic Dance. Labyrinth has been one of my favorite movies since I was old enough to form opinions. We must have watched it at least once a year when I was a kid, and it's largely responsible for my love of the fantasy genre and the art of Brian Froud. I somehow never became a Bowie fan, though.

So please visit the treasury, click a few items, make a comment if you feel moved to, and definitely visit Beadmask's shop! I've loved Andrea's work since way before Etsy! She's so talented.

And while you're at it, pop over to my shop, Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs. Any purchases made within the next week will go straight to purchasing supplies at the gem, mineral and bead shows. My first shopping trip is tomorrow! Woohoo!

FAE Team Gift Swap!

Just like in 2009, in 2010 the participants of FAE Team's Etsy chat thread had a gift swap! This year I was fortunate enough to receive pretties from Lithia's Creations. Lith sent me three pieces of her great jewelry -- an adjustable black and purple ring with crystal accent, a cameo pin, and one of her brand new Gypsies Dragon Skin bottles! So cool! They all suit my Gothic steampunk sense of style and I am really happy that I will have them to accessorize with for Wild Wild West Con in March!

Plus she sent me the gorgeous absinthe mermaid by Jasmine Becket-Griffith, one of my favorite artists that I somehow never bought any prints from. This one is particularly cool because not only is it green, but I do enjoy the occasional glass of absinthe, and I love how delightfully creepy the mermaid is. She definitely looks like the sort to drown a few sailors, the little minx!

I bet you'd like a closer pic of the pretty jewelry...
Isn't it lovely?

Thank you, Meri!

You've probably seen Merily posting in my blog comments before. She's one of my wonderful teammates over at FAE Team, one of the crazy few who post regularly in our team thread on Etsy. The thread is a nice melange of daily life, random thoughts, and a little bit of self-promotion. Recently Meri decided that she wanted to run artist interviews on her blog, and today was my turn! Head over to Elbit Blog to read the interview and see the beautiful collage she made of me and my jewelry.

Make sure that you also visit Meri's shop. She does great work in jewelry, polymer clay, and crochet. I especially like these Autumn Leaf Rune Stones. If I were the sort to read runes, these are the ones I'd want to cast.

On completely unrelated news, Canon didn't want to let me install the camera software that I downloaded from their site without the CD (Dear Canon, if I knew wear the CD was, I wouldn't be downloading from your site), but I discovered that I can remove the photos from the camera without the software. Now I just need to install GIMP so that I can edit photos. Hopefully this means pictures in tomorrow's blog post!

The sun, it burns!

No pictures today, because I forgot my camera and Chris isn't here right now.

We went to the Nassau County Art Museum, except not really. We actually went to a museum on their grounds dedicated to miniatures, where they were having a rather disappointing Alice in Wonderland themed exhibit. Then we ate a picnic in their grassy field, visited their guest shop (where I got an awesome painted and embroidered scarf), and walked down one of their nature trails.

Once again, despite sunscreen, I managed to burn. It isn't a bad burn, doesn't hurt, but I don't like being red in the face. I fear it may be time to join the ranks of the hat-wearers, even though it drives me crazy to have a brim obstructing my view. I suspect that skin cancer would drive me even more crazy.

Also, we went to Utopia, the goth/hippie shop that we always visit. I almost bought myself a corset, but instead I just bought two faerie tanktops which were on clearance sale, and four packages of new scents of my favorite brand of incense.

Anyway, time to iron the things that got wrinkled in my suitcase.

Why I love what I do.

Ok, the header is a little misleading; there are a lot of reasons why I love running Erthe Fae Designs, and I'm only going to talk about two of them in this blog. But if journalists can have inaccurate headlines, then so can I!

One thing that I love about being a jewelry designer is the ability to make things to go with my favorite outfits. Today I made a great black, purple and white necklace to go with a black, purple, and white blouse. They're perfect together and I can't wait for the temps to drop so I can wear the whole ensemble (it also involves a heavy purple stretch velvet skirt).

Another thing that I love is the ability to occasionally barter my products for the products of other Indie business owners. Over the past month I've had the opportunity to do this twice (three times, if you count the writing trade), and the second package just arrived today. I now have a handful of adorable "Cute as a button" hairpins from Gerbera Designs. Not only are they cute and well-made, but the base pins are a lot sturdier than normal bobby pins. If you love awesome hair accessories (and bags, and iPod cases), you should definitely check her site out.

My other trade was with Jenny at Kristine's Shower. Not only are her products amazing and professionally presented, but they're very well-packaged too. I had almost as much fun opening my package as using the items! Her Shea Butter Body Frosting is to die for -- even Chris likes it, and he's not one for frou-frou bath products. I've also tried the Lava Gloss and Soy Candles and have been universally pleased.

I hope that they both enjoy their jewelry as much as I enjoy my goodies!