SALE!!

As promised, we're having a sale on all the jewelry, claws, and hair pins to celebrate the new website at studio.nightshaderose.com! Its 25% off in both the etsy and artfire shops. Go check out the web site to get the coupon code!

It's Aliiive!!! (and some show announcements)

The new web site at www.studio.nightshaderose.com is live! Go check it out. It's pretty! There will probably be a celebratory sale in the Etsy shop this weekend.

In other news, I will be at Emerald City ComicCon at the end of March! I'll have a wide range of all my work, and I'll be sharing a booth with TM Originals, another jeweler-friend of mine who does fantastic steampunk-ish work.

Unfortunately I will NOT be in the dealer's room at Norwescon this year.

Website update, moving web address, and other online related news

As the winter begins to lift just a little bit here in Seattle and the sunlight starts coming back, big changes are afoot at the NightshadeRose Studio Website. Over the coming months we'll be moving to a shiny new site, with a slightly (but importantly) different address. I expect the new site at studio.nightshaderose.com to be live sometime in the next week. The new site will be cleaner and shinier, have better photo organization, be easier to navigate and update, and not look like it was hacked together on one vodka-fueled weekend by someone who only vaguely knew what they were doing (i.e. me). There will eventually even be an integrated online store, but that's another month or two off. There will probably be some overlap between the new site coming up and the old site coming down, but eventually the old address will just be a redirect to the new site. I hope y'all love the new website. I certainly do!

In other internet-related news, we've been posting daily inspirations of other people's art, design and craft, as well as gemstones and antique jewelry, over at the studio Tumblr (http://nightshaderosestudio.tumblr.com/). Occasional studio and sale announcements as well as musings about the nature of art, craft, and business go up over there as well. Studio/sale announcements and the daily inspiration also go to our Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Speaking, of studio announcements, I'll be making some fairly big show announcements in the next week or so as well.

I hope everyone's spring goes well, and y'all all get what you need.

website problems

Most links should be working again, but if you're trying to get to the main front page (www.nightshaderose.com) you need, for the time being to drop the "www. and just use "nightshaderose.com". This is only a problem for the main front page. everything else should be good with or without "www."
I'm in the process of migrating nightshaderose.com to a new web host, and there are a few things I'm still figuring out. This is why I'm an artist and not a sysadmin. :)

Black Friday, Cyber Monday sales!

Just a Heads Up for everyone: Everything in both the Etsy and Artfire shops is 25% Off through Monday. Protip: Etsy has more of the finished jewelry, Artfire has more of the buttons.

Fall into Winter

Well, the Seattle summer ended rather definitively, with the wettest September on record. That's not great for my energy levels, but good for longer kiln-running hours. I've been in heavy production mode lately, getting ready for the Northwest Bead Society Bead Bazaar this weekend. It's October 5th & 6th in the Hansen events center at Comcast Arena in Everett, WA. I've been making a lot of buttons, in various styles, but quite a lot of handpaint.

Works in progress

Hand-Painted Knots

I've also been working on a few special cloisonne pieces as examples of the custom work that I'm capable of:

Before firing #4

After firing #4

 I did manage to actually finish a few, too!

The tiny blue star, the derpiest jack-o-lantern, and the awesomest rose

I hope, if you're in the area, you come out to the Beed Bazaar! If not, look for a steady increase in listings on Artfire and Etsy as we get into the holiday season.

WorldCon

Well, that was big.

To be perfectly honest, I broke my one show sales record by a couple hundred dollars so I should be happy, but it's not as much as I was hoping for, given the expense involved. Venturing back home to Texas for a show reminded me that Fandom is not walled off from local culture. I was preparing for a Pacific Northwest show, with lots of claws and some hair pins and a particular jewelry mix, since that's what I was accustomed to, but it turns out that Texas fandom has different desires. I'm completely sold out of forged hair pins, both bronze and sterling, and could have sold more if I'd had them, but the great majority of my claw sales were to people from the PNW. This shows me that I need to do some more research into the fan culture in Detroit before NASFiC next year. Beyond that, I met a lot of interesting people and made a few new friends. I had a pretty good time, though I hardly got to Con at all. After the dealers room shut down, and I rested and ate, most of the panels were over. I did get to see the Masquerade, though, and that was fun.

I like my new booth setup quite a bit since I'm keeping so many  of the pieces in their tins all the time. It takes a little longer to set up and tear down, since all the display pieces have to come out of and go back into their tins, but I think it's worth it for the nice, slick look of the table.

The New Product for this convention (in the way that award badges/medals were developed at Norwescon) is Badge Lanyards. Pictures will be forthcoming in the next few days as I photograph and list the remaining pieces.

The Etsy and Artfire shops are back up, and will be slowly filling as I get caught up. There should be more hair pins in a day or two.

Next up: The Northwest Bead Society Bead Bazaar! October 5th-6th at the Hansen Conference Center at Comcast Arena in Everett, WA! This show will be almost exclusively buttons and findings (hooks/eyes, etc), so drop by and see what's come out of R&D this summer, along with a lot of handpaints and a little bit of cloisonné.