just a little longer

The Plan was to give myself six months to get NikCo up and running.
At the end of that six months I found that I still had so much to do and had been frugal enough that I could give myself six more months.
In 21 days that six months will be over.
What to do, what to do.
It feels like things are finally starting to come together, starting to happen.
I have a clear vision of I want NikCo to be, what I want to accomplish.
Do I dare to keep to this path?
Do I dare to forgo the security of a real job?
Do I dare to pursue the dream?
You bet your bippy I dare.
This week's quote is from one of my favorite authors, Erma Bombeck. That lady could crack me up like no one else and in the next line bring me to tears.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.' 

note: Gotta acknowledge that I yesterday I was post-less. Congrats if you had July 9th in the pool. I'll see if I can get two out tonight to make up for it.

rose loaf

Part of The Plan is to spend a portion of my not-working-9-to-5 time trying various charities, trying to find the one(s) that fit my call to serve. In order to do that i have been branching out and meeting new people.
Thursday night i attended a recruiting meeting for Soroptomist International. I am tangentially aware of them as both the jewelry show back in February and the Flower and Craft show were sponsored by them.
It was a nice gathering of women from different backgrounds, but it was the sort of thing where you have to wear a name tag because you really only know the person who invited you.
At the end i stayed to help clean up.
While pulling tablecloths i noticed that there were flowers in the trash.
?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Perfectly good flowers in the trash?
It literally hurt my heart to see that.
Before i could stop myself or worry about what these women who had only known me for two hours would think, i reached in and plucked them out.
When the organizer saw that i had saved them she said, I was just gonna throw them out since they are so short [they had been arranged super cute, three to a juice glass in the middle of each table].
Oh no; i'll take them replies the girl who, like her mom, keeps cut flowers until they are falling to pieces around the vase and all of the ladies started piling the roses by my purse. In fact, one older lady smiled at me and said, i'll go find you a plastic bag. They didn't seem to think it odd that i'd gotten them out of the trash at all.
When i got them home i was in a quandary about what to do with a bag full of super short roses; there is no room in my house for a bunch of juice glasses to be sitting around. They'd just lay weird in bowls. I only own three bud vases.
hmmmmmmm...
I needed something that i could stand them up in and still be able to see them.
What is only a few inches tall with straight sides?

A glass bread pan!




I am so glad that i followed my ridiculous heart instead of my practical head because now i have a lovely loaf of roses on my table. 

...flowers in the trash... pahshaw

Welcome to NikCo! (again)

My Etsy shop is re-open for business!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/NikCo
Go now.
 Run.
WAIT!...
Before you go, here is the link to like NikCo on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/NikCo/361111847309832#!/pages/NikCo/361111847309832
Wait...
You should know that i only started with 80 items, but i am already planning my first shop update which include a bunch of cards.
Now you can go.
No... wait...
I'm sure i've explained that ReWearables are made from vintage and salvaged pieces and Quirkees are made from fun modern pieces, but i wanted to be sure you remembered.
Also, for October i have Halloween earrings in the Quirkees section and a special section for Pink Ribbon earrings.
When you go to the main store it is all mixed together, but there are buttons in the upper left-hand corner to go to a particular product line.
Okay...   i think that is everything... be sure to share this with everyone you've ever met!
GO!

you know who hates jewelry?

The Thwart-hog hates jewelry.
Beauty and joy and sparkles are like thorns in its paws.
The first photo shoot for NikCo was postponed because of weather on Tuesday and then again just this afternoon cause my model is sick in bed.
GAH!

Catonsville Arts and Crafts Festival 2012

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
That pretty much describes the Festival for me this year.
The thwart-hog continued to plague me all weekend with such highlights as Kinkos closing early and an injury in the wee hours of Sunday morning that left me hobbling on one leg, but with the awesome, amazing, indispensable help of Kate P i managed to be setup on time with product displayed in fun and creative ways.
It was kinda hard to photograph the booth as it was in partially in shadow all day, but here are some pics to at least give you an idea:


Hello! Welcome to NikCo on location. Come right in; it is nice to see you.

Please excuse me for not getting up; i have a hole in my foot.

The ReWearables earrings looked even better than normal as Kate grouped them by color family. I had intentionally made pieces to try to fill out and balance the color selection and her display on my handy dandy expandable screen benefited from that decision.

It is hard to believe, but it looks like i need more purple.

My music tree made another appearance for bracelets and the more delicate necklaces; all the other necklaces were spread across various tables.

New for this show was a line of earrings called Quirkees; made from modern glass and lampwork beads they are all fun, whimsical accents like hearts, stars, owls, seahorses, penguins, turtles, ice cream cones, etc. that i put on the old frame display (the original shadowbox display design was one of the things cut due to thwart-hog).
Closer pictures will be on the Etsy site (opening October 10, 2012!).

I was able to do a few theme specific Quirkees displays, including the Breast Cancer pink ribbon earrings (though the pieces are supposed to be on the ribbon instead of the glass in front of it; thwart-hog!), winter-themed earrings on a wooden filigree tree, Halloween earrings on a wooden wreath (this was going to be a gourd stack statue (cooler than it sounds), but you know, thwart-hog),

and both Orioles and Ravens earrings in the team colors on custom-made flags, shown here with the card basket and memo pad racks.



Sales were disappointing; there was a lot of foot traffic, but i noticed most people weren't stopping at any booths so i don't think it was just me. People who did stop and look at my pieces often made a purchase.Thanks to the incredible generosity of Reggie from Objects Found i didn't have to pay for my booth rental or insurance so at least it wasn't a financial loss.
I appreciate all of you who stopped by to say HI and support my fledgling dream, as well as you out-of-towners who sent well wishes

A very special thanks to Kate. I almost gave up and cancelled the whole thing at 4:30 Sunday morning when the thwart-hog sent me crying to my bed, bleeding profusely and unable to stand on my right foot, but i knew she was coming at 7 to help so i pulled myself together. Kate did almost all of the loading, unloading and setup herself with me giving instructions from my chair. She also carried and fetched all day, fighting the wind to keep displays upright and pretty. She didn't leave my side except to get us lunch. Without her help i would NOT have been able to be at this festival this year and would have missed my first goal.
Thank you seems insufficient for your contribution, Kate. Jason did the whole group a tremendous favor when he married you into the family.

There are a few little shows on the horizon, but the next big goal for NikCo is the re-opening of my Etsy store on OCTOBER 10, 2012!
Watch for announcements and updates.

committed to repurposing

Preparing for craft festivals means not only designing and creating more jewelry and paper goods, but working on table/booth layout as well. Just as i use found items in my paper crafting and broken pieces in my jewelry, I am committed to using repurposed objects for display.You might recall that at my first jewelry show i had a light fixture that i'd saved from the trash and turned into an earring holder and a candleholder -also saved from the trash- that i flipped to hang necklaces.
But even a year earlier when i did a table of found objects for scrapbooking at my friend's charity crop i used my own collection of vintage glass and relish dishes to display metal and glass:

as well as a wooden flatware divider (50 cents at a yardsale that i then hand painted with 3 colors of metallic paint - funny story: the next time i used it for the same display at the National Road yard sale someone asked if it were for sale so i sold it for $3) to show vintage postcards and Victorian scraps from the 1860s,

and a basket that we've had for eons -mom put napkins in it- that i dressed up with wire and a hand-colored silk flower.






The last show i did at the beginning of May i was supposed to share the booth with another jeweler so i designed the table layout for half a space and at the last minute she pulled out so i suddenly needed to fill a lot more area. The solution was a new earring holder made out of an adjustable window screen and 2 shelf brackets:

My covered memo pads and mini-memo books were set up in old CD racks,
while the flower pens were bunched in vases and mini pitchers.




Perhaps my favorite repurposed item so far is this display tree:

Unfortunately the before picture is lost, but try to image a wooden Christmas tree in 2 shades of green that had twinkle lights pushed through holes, with white rick-rack zigzagging like garland and large star sequins and pastel plastic bulbs with curling ribbon bows hot-melted on the front. It was hideous and lived in my screen room for 4 years since i acquired it a work yardsale for free.
All the junk had to be stripped off. The lights mostly pulled out okay, but 2 bulbs broke and had to be pliered out. The front was painted cream and decoupaged with vintage sheet music that i found at The Book Thing while the back and base were painted black. While everything dried i hit Home Depot to find wooden pegs which they didn't have in the size i needed so instead I bought 2 eight foot dowels of the correct diameter (yes, i measured and all, but i took a twinkle bulb with me to be sure), cut them into 4 inch lengths and rounded the ends with my Dremel.
The pegs can be moved around to display bracelets or necklaces in different configurations.
 Next i need to find a better, cooler way to show rings.
Does anyone know where to find mannequin hands?

and thus a new era begins

After returning from Vegas in the first week of July I realized that with my back vacation pay and such I could take the rest of the month off.
You know, from life.
I worked on forming The Plan.
I read.
I slept.
And i grieved.
July was my month of mourning for the life i used to have, the life i loved so much.
I had some good days and was able to get some things done.
I had quite a few bad days where i didn't leave the house. Or get dressed. Or shower.
There was time to reconnect, but also time to just hide from everyone and everything.
Sometimes wearing sack cloth and lamenting to the sky is quite cathartic.
But you can't allow yourself to wallow in freakish misery forever.
Today - August 1st - is the first day of my six months of discovery.
Sure, there will still be times when i still get upset about this turn of events, days when i won't want to get out of bed, but the period of mourning is over so i will make myself pull on my big girl pants and sally forth.
This week's quote is my all-time favorite inspirational poster that one finds taped up in gyms (in my head i think of them as gympirational posters):

Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching?

Let's do this thing, people!

Welcome to my mid-life crisis

 I've worked at the same place since college (except for the 94-95 school season).
I spent my entire 20s and 30s there.
 On the last day i was in the office my boss said that he felt like he had raised me from a pup.
What i'm getting at here is that my job was all i've known for a long, long time.
All you have to do is look at my blog's tag cloud to see how much i loved it and how central it was to my existence.
Losing it was like losing a chunk of me - a BIG chunk of me.
It was like losing my identity.
Almost a month later i am still struggling with the loss, finding myself starting to say "my museum" or "at work" or "we"and having to remind myself that i am no longer a part of that community.
I've had a job since i was 17; sometimes 2 or 3 jobs at a time in fact. The longest i've been unemployed was a horrible 2 week stretch in 1995 that i luckily don't remember very well.
I was at a loss of what to do or where to go or who to be.
As you know, Douglas whisked me away to Las Vegas so that i could by turns dazzle and distract myself and mope in luxury.
 It was good to not be alone.
 After a week we were able to start talking about what i should do. He asked me a lot of tough questions like what did i want and what do i love and what would i do if i could do anything and what are my dreams and what keeps me from following them. Sometimes i over thought things and became distressed. Sometimes i had no answers. But all of the talking led to some epiphanies and the formation of a plan.
This is a hopefully comprehensive short-term plan to help me get to a long-term plan.
Besides my former profession, the things i love the most- that truly move me- are art and charitable service.
In part one of The Plan i focus on my art by reestablishing my Etsy store, participating in several craft shows/fairs and finally looking for a permanent physical location to house and sell my wares.
Part two of The Plan has me volunteering at various local organisations. What i really want is to save the world, but that is simply not practical. To make a real difference, one has to have a specific cause, population or idea to champion and by volunteering at places like the Maryland Food Bank, Art for Heart and the Red Cross i will try to see if the non-profit world might be my next step.
The Plan is set for a six month duration (August-January) as that is long i can afford to give myself over to chasing my dreams.  I realize that six months is not very long and that especially the art portion won't take off big in that time frame. However, it will let me at least dedicate myself to trying and getting some things established that i haven't had the time for until now.
Who knows what will become of me in February.
I won't even speculate.
I do have two backup plans, though - move in with Ron and become a server at the Eldersburg Pizza Hut or move in with my Grandpa in Ohio - so no matter what happens i feel confident that i won't end up homeless.
The next six months will be the chance i've been waiting for or unmitigated disaster.
Either way, it is sure to be an adventure and probably a good story to tell at family gatherings 20 years from now.

coming right along

Still here.
Still planning.
Still preparing for this path.
Almost ready to share.

But i can tell you that i just bought my first new computer.
Yep.
2012 and i just bought a computer.

To help you adjust to that shift in the universe,
here is a t-rex robot feeding a chipmunk (or vice versa):

found at Need Baby Chipmunk cause chipmunks make everything okay