Just like crack

For a while now I've been a longtime lurker at this diamond and gemstone site called Pricescope (the forum Show Me the Ring has all the good pictures of the diamonds). It started out as a site for educating people who are in the market for diamonds, but the forums soon evolved into a place for women to show off their sparklies. The "Show Me the Ring" forum is like crack, I tell you - I have to check it out almost every day.

So it was inevitable that I too wanted to post pictures of my wedding rings, but I could never take good enough close ups as the pictures always came out blurry and crappy. When I got the new camera I started playing around and, surprisingly, the pictures came out well enough that I may be able to post them.

Here are my Art Deco filigree engagement ring and diamond eternity band, taken with the super macro setting:



And here is the requisite Pricescope "hand shot":


Pricescope, here I come!

What's in a name?

...that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell just as sweet...


One of the first ideas I had when I started Hazel Designs was to name my pieces after girls' names to infuse them with more of a "personality." The logical next step was to name them after my female friends and family.

So I started doing this. But then, as I went through the names, I began to worry. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to match the "personality" of the necklace to the personality of the real person. One necklace was whimsical and had a sort of gentle look to it - does this match better with that friend or this friend? While this other necklace was more funky and bold and colorful - is this more of this family member or that family member? And does this one look more like a "Mandy" or a "Meridith"? And then, as if that wasn't enough to agonize over, I began worrying over the possibility that the person would get offended if the necklace I named after her wasn't to her liking.

I got a fierce headache.

So I scrapped the whole idea and instead went to a baby naming website and picked out names that I loved, and this seemed to work out very nicely. I received many positive responses and feedback.

I kept going back and forth, though, on naming the pieces after my friends and family, and when my sister also, independently, suggested this idea, I finally decided to go ahead and follow my first inclination.

So now, each new piece that comes out from here on will be named after my female friends and family (until I run out of them), and you might have already noticed that I started doing this with recent pieces "Mariel" and "Mary" (warning: I do have a lot of friends whose names begin with "M", as you can probably already tell!).

And to my friends and family, if you somehow end up not liking your "namesake", please don't be offended. You know I love you!

Cinnabar and music

Here is a preview of a new piece. This is "Mary," named after one of my good friends who was also one of my first customers (thanks, Mary!).

The pendant is a green cinnabar with white carved flower beads and a long sterling silver chain. I will post to let you know when she is available at the shop.

I downloaded four songs onto my iPod recently and I haven't been able to stop listening to them. The first two are by Jimmy Eat World, "Big Casino" and "Chase the Light." I swear, Chase the Light is so romantic! I don't even really know what the lyrics are saying (I never do) but it sounds so dreamy.

The third song is "Minority" by Greenday, and the last is "Shadow of the Day" by my new favorite group, Linkin Park. This one is very jangly pop, which sounds very different from their other songs like "Bleed It Out" and "What I've Done".

I keep putting them all on repeat. That might be bad, as I'll get sick of them in no time. But so far they're making my commute to work very enjoyable.

Purse lust

This is most certainly not from Target, and more's the pity because I absolutely adore, love, and covet it. It's the Yves Saint Laurent "Minaudiere" satin clutch, retailing for $1,395 at Saks. Hahahaha. I know. But still. It comes in red, too.

Because I love everything vintage (especially things that look like they came from flea markets), I haven't stopped dreaming about this purse.

Speaking of flea markets, if you ever find yourself in Paris there is a wonderful one there that you should check out called the Marche aux Puces de Saint-Ouen, on the 18th arrondissement. It's been billed as the world's largest flea market - I believe it, as I once spent a whole day there and probably only saw about a fourth of the whole thing.

Today I took care of one last (I hope!) business-related item, and that is applying for and receiving my Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN) from the IRS. This means I am now under the IRS' radar, which I have to say is a little scary. Ever since I registered Hazel Designs with the county tax office I haven't stopped getting a slew of mail from them consisting of official and scary looking tax forms of all shapes and sizes, so I can only imagine what the IRS will start sending me now.

Added

"Mariel" is now available! I just added her to the shop.

Enjoy!

Getting to know you

I'm happy to say that "Kate" has been added to the shop, so check out her new and improved pictures!

As for the rest, I spent a big chunk today getting to know my new camera, and boy was it a lot of work. Somehow I couldn't get the brightness to work against my usual green wall/hydrangea backdrop, so there is a dearth of the requisite bust shots with a lot of the new pieces. I had to get creative.

This new one is "Mariel," a cluster of dyed quartz on a sterling silver chain. She's named after my cousin who was one of my very first customers! The pictures turned out well:


I have not added Mariel to the shop yet because I still need at least a couple of more pictures (I must get a bust shot in here somehow), so I need to keep working on the brightness issue with the camera.

Almost back to business

I heard back from the camera shop and they told me that it was going to cost upwards of $100 to repair the broken camera (FWIW, it was a Canon PowerShot - in case you want to avoid this product). We decided it was more cost effective to get a whole new camera, especially since we still had some leftover Best Buy gift cards. The final cost came to a little more than what we would have paid to repair the old camera.

The one we chose is a super slim Olympus FE-340, 8 megapixels, and the best part about it is that it has a super macro mode. I always take pictures of my jewelry in macro mode, especially the close ups, so I'm excited to see how much better they will come out in super macro mode.

It also has other neat features such as face detection, digital image stabilization (another great feature when taking pictures of my products since I don't have a tripod and blurry images would often plague me because of this), a camcorder, and this thing called a "smile shot," where the camera detects a smile on the subject's face and automatically fires off three consecutive shots without you having to do anything. The salesgirl said this is especially great for taking pictures of babies and kids.

My sister's 5-year old digital camera is also an Olympus and it's still working great, so I have high hopes for this new one. After the battery finishes charging I will finally be able to photograph my new designs from the past two weeks and put them up for sale.

I can't wait to show you!