Kathleen's Summer Creations

The summer of 2010 has taken me on the most amazing journey. I grew up believing that although there were many artistically talented people in my family, my talents lied elsewhere. That was until I found my medium, precious metal clay.

I first learned about PMC in May 2009. While traveling in England, I found a simply elegant strand of pearls with a beautiful heart pendant and matching earrings at Vinegar Hill, a boutique in Bath, England. I purchased the set with the hope of finding out how the artist had created such texture in the silver. I found the answer in a beading magazine I purchased while in England. It was made from precious metal clay! An online search led me to the PMC Guild. I took my first class in August 2009, and the rest is history. The International PMC Conference, held at Purdue University, was the high point of my summer of learning. There I was able to meet many of the people I have read about and done business with. I also reconnected with all of my previous PMC instructors. PMC Connection offered many pre-conference classes. I chose three:Level I PMC Certification – Ruth Greening, Pine Needle Casting – Sharon Gillespie, and Figure Sculpture – Vera Lightstone.

I learned so many new things from these classes, that there is not enough time to do them all. I met many new friends, including Mia Zoll, who took me under her wing and shared her knowledge, contacts, and experience. She lives across the country in Florida, but we plan to keep in touch and share our jewelry making experiences. Mia also makes beautiful glass beads.

The PMC Conference was beyond my expectations! I learned more in a few days than I would have in a year. I met many talented artists who work in this medium and hope to take classes from them in the future. I also purchased several pieces of art to wear from renowned precious metal clay artists.

My summer of learning has not ended. I am traveling to Cornwall, England at the end of August to visit with our friend Val Hawkins. While in England, I plan to work on new creations and reconnect with a few of the artists I met at the PMC Conference. I would also love to meet the creator of the elegant necklace that inspired me to try precious metal clay.

Kathleen

Imagine a Happier You

I found a new website today I would like to share with our viewers. I have posted links to the website and their news feed at the bottom of this page. Please click on the link and check out what they have to offer. It could change your life. I have included a short excerpt from Imagine a Happier You:

"Imagine A Happier You is an initiative created to help women achieve financial freedom through an engaging and interactive campaign. It is called Imagine A Happier You because its creators would like women to visualize certain financial scenarios that could be positive or negative depending on the preparation behind it (e.g. Imagine if you couldn’t take your grandchildren out of ice cream, Imagine if you could..Imagine A Happier You)."

Retrieved July 8, 2010 from http://imagineahappieryou.com/about

From this blog I learned about the Smart Women Smart Money Conference sponsored by Zions Bank in Salt Lake City. It will be held on Thursday, August 19, 2010 at the Salt Palace Convention Center. For more information check out this website:

https://www.zionsbank.com/womens_finance.jsp?cid=3557

Have a wonderful day!

Kathleen Skinner

A piggyback update

So Kathleen rocks for updating the blog. I was, indeed, occupied with my nearly obsessive compulsion to have everything clean and orderly before our third baby, Simon, arrived.

He was born a week and a half ago and my nesting instincts have subsided...completely. I don't want to hang a picture or clean a dish or do any more laundry than is necessary, though I seem to be doing those last two tasks much more frequently than I did pre-baby. Nonetheless, Simon is sleeping, my other kids are swimming at a neighbor's with my husband and my sink is not full of dishes at the moment. So, I am sitting at the computer for a few minutes and attempting to fulfill my obligation as blogger.

As Kathleen noted, she is off to Utah to hang out with her family and feed her muse. She took her little kiln, a bunch of clay, and abundant supplies to work on jewelry for the month of June. She plans to sit on her sister's back porch and soak up the gorgeous Utah summer. We are all a little jealous as we sit here and watch the thermometer creep up into the 100s.

Lynn is feeling the emotional and physical fatigue of breast cancer, but she is ever optimistic. She has informed us that she is soon to schedule her double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery in the next month or so. And she has an Edward t-shirt all ready to wear to show case her new rack.

Incidentally, she loves her doctor and knows he is absolutely the right person to treat her. He told her this last week that the two lumps they found on the right side were 8 mm and 5 mm respectively (I think I'm remembering the sizes correctly).

And Lynn's response?

"Oh, they're beads."

The doctor looked at her, puzzled. And her daughter, who had accompanied her to the appointment explained, "My mom is a bead artist. She creates all kinds of things with beads, so when you're talking in millimeters, it totally computes."

This is so Lynnie! She's going to be the spokes woman for early detection and regular mammograms. We are cheering her on and are confident that she's going to pull through this with flying colors.

Ami has designed the most beautiful business cards. I'm pretty certain that I have made mention of this before, but I can't help saying it again. They are beautiful! (And so is the soon-to-be-launched website.) About a month ago Ami was sitting near me at an event and she turned her head with a huge smile on her face and whipped her arm towards me with a chocolate colored card grasped in her fingers. I snatched it and proceeded to ooohhh and aaaahhh.

Seriously, they are gorgeous!

I think everyone else has her business cards except me. And this is because I'm still not sure what I should put on them as "irregular blogger" or "defunct blogger" doesn't sound entirely professional.

Any suggestions?

Summer Fun

It has been a couple of months since we posted any news. This is because we have been very busy developing business. Jayne (our regular blogger) is due to have a baby boy any day now and has been busy cleaning out closets and completing final preparations for her third child.

Lynn has been busy creating beautiful new earrings, planning jewelry for her son's wedding, and going to medical appointments. When her doctor told her she had breast cancer, she comforted him. Her faith is strong and she has been assured that God is watching over her. You are in our prayers Lynnie!

Amy T is planning to move to California this summer. She has decided to focus on making her beautiful headbands and beading mostly for fun. Being 23 and single, she has to maintain her day job working in retail to support herself.

Ami Jo is doing a fabulous job building our new website. We have decided to launch at the end of summer. We all have travel plans and beading seminars to attend. Who wants to stay home and fill the massive orders we expect once we start advertising on Google?

Finally, Kathleen is spending the month of June - early July in Provo, Utah visiting family and working on her PMC (Precious Metal Clay) creations. She then returns to Arizona for a short stay before leaving again to work on PMC. First, taking a class in New Mexico on Bronze Metal Clay and then heading out to the PMC Conference at Purdue University. She is also taking some pre-conference classes to learn new techniques.

We're branching out and we have an eggbeater

Here is an update:

Our packages made it across the pond to Cornwall, England. One was damaged and both incurred heavy taxes because of their size. To say the least, this is not exactly what we were expecting.

I think we were hoping that the packages would arrive virtually untouched and when our friend Val opened them, light would emanate from each box as it reflected off the surfaces of the sparkling gems that they contained. A few angelic pitches resonating in the background would not have been a bad touch either.

But, alas, this is not what happened.

However, Val is confident that the jewelry we sent will sell itself without angels singing simply because it is just that gorgeous.

In the future, instead of large conspicuous packages, we plan to send a piece or two in small envelopes several at a time.

And speaking of sending things in the mail, Lynn had some brochures made and sent them to Chicago to her sister to distribute amongst her co-workers and church congregation. And a friend of ours placed an order for some necklaces for her daughter and her sister-in-law in Denmark.

So, I suppose that you can say we are now in Cornwall and Chicago and soon to be in Denmark.

(Kathleen has noted that when the website launches, we'll be EVERYWHERE!)

Finally, during our very official and professional Monday meeting conversation, Ami was picking through a box of charms that Kathleen brought and found a rather curious one.

Ami plucked it from the slippery plastic packages and said, "An eggbeater?"

We all paused to look at what she was holding and started to laugh.

Over her own laughter, Kathleen said, "Well, you never know... I couldn't find a chef's hat so this was the next best thing."

So, if you are desperately seeking a lovely little charm bracelet equipped with an eggbeater charm, I know where you can find one...

The website is gorgeous!

We are making progress on the website. Well, Ami is actually.

Of late, our weekly meetings have been sporadic and mostly via email and phone calls as we are checking in with our little web master to see the progress. The colors and art seriously rival the jewelry the artists are creating. Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.

As for the rest of us...

Amongst other creative endeavors, Kathleen is tapping her inner teenager by working on a school spirit charm bracelet fundraiser with a local high school and making Twilight jewelry for the serious junkies. Each piece is rather fetching and likely going to be the delight of many a teenage princess.

Lynn is fending off a potential FBI investigation by ignoring the request of a sketchy Nigerian who sent a convoluted email to her etsy account requesting to purchase six gold and lapis rings. Lynn suspected that sending anything of the sort in the mail to Nigeria is a serious "No, No" and this was confirmed by the very solicitous woman at the post office. So, there will be no headline about an American grandma in federal prison for illegally sending precious metal and gems to Nigeria.

Amy is creating some pretty fancy hair adornments but cannot seem to find the same cloth wrapped headbands that were once so readily available at Target. Darn recession. So, she's on a search throughout the Internet and sundry beauty supply stores to find the right product. So if you see anything of the sort (thin black cloth headbands) let us know. Our Amy Darling will be much obliged.

And I am trying to make amends for neglecting my blogging responsibilities.

We'll see how that goes.

Compromise anyone?

We are feeling the full force of our varied tastes and opinions as we try to reach consensus about things like background colors, fonts, patterns, etc. Ami has been on the fast track gaining abundant amounts of knowledge about web design and polling us regularly about those very important topics of color and text. Poor thing! She asks five different people for an opinion and gets five different answers.

I'm designing a little two-page brochure (nothing compared to Ami's mammoth assignment) to send to our good friend Val in Cornwall, England, so that she can have something to provide potential customers with information about us in our absence.

(But don't we all wish we could actually be there across the pond peddling our own stuff?..............oh yeah..............)

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Huh? Where was I?

Anyway, everyone keeps apologizing for giving me feedback on the brochure, which is so like my very polite and thoughtful friends. I do appreciate their comments as this is to represent them more than me...that's kind of the point really. But I also empathize with Ami as she regularly receives five very different answers to each question she poses.

It is not easy to keep everyone happy, but we all know this and are ready and willing to compromise on many things. Except the quality of our materials and handiwork. On this we will never bend.

So here's to color, text, feedback and compromise. We can feel the launch of the website approaching....GO AMI!!!!

2010

Lynnie predicts that 2010 is going to be a big year.

Below are some of our preparations for this new decade:

1. After much debate and email banter, the artists have each selected individual logos to represent their pieces*,
2. Kathleen decided on a name for her line: Per Lei,
3. Ami is continuing to build the website, making color selections and carefully piecing together each component,
4. Amy the T has bolstered her headband designing and is working up some darling creations,
5. Lynn has created some absolutely precious pieces for little girls, some that will even adorn baby princesses,
6. Kami is lining up parties and recrafting her sales expertise to match our goals,
7. And I, Jayne, am trying to remember to post things to the blog once in a while.

* There was a ridiculously lengthy conversation about what to call and what to do with a part of one of the proposed elements of the design for Sparkling Elegance: was it a doodah? a flourish? a swoopee? And does the logo look better with or without this little addition?

There was also a resounding commitment to the following statement:

"We don't use no stinkin' silver plate!"

Actually, no one said it quite that eloquently. Lynn reported that she met a designer who had some success at a consignment shop because she started using silver plate to decrease the cost of her creations. The collective response, which included Lynn's own opinion was, "Well, good for her, but we don't work like that."

So, it is evident that these artists are committed to quality.

"It's all silver or all gold or nothin', Baby!"

And one phrase that causes us to swoop down, capes and all, from tall buildings in single bounds to provide relief to friends and potential customers who come bearing their jewelry quandries is

"I need something to match this..."

Yeah, we can take care of that for you.

Happy New Year!