Things I have learned...

• You need to have nails for wirework, but you need to NOT have nails for polymer clay.
• Design work involves lots of yelling and cursing.
• I need to do more tutorials to put more "tools in the creative toolbox."
• I am a harsher critic of my work than my fiancee is.
• There are people out there who will actually buy my dragons. I just have to find them.
• I can make some really pretty jewelry.

I sort of let the crafting fall by the wayside a bit while I pursued my full-time-job passion - opening and running a game store (and eventually designing games). I have most of the business plan done, and I made a whole boatload of wonderful contacts, and everything's in place but the money. Ah, money. I've worked hard to repair my credit, and now the only thing that can help me is time. And since I'm in a holding pattern, I can devote some of that time to the crafting hobby.

During the lull, I figured out that I'm pretty good at making little dragons, and have since found the theme for the shop, and my own creative style: whimsy. The non-chainmail jewelry pieces I have done and have planned are all fun and, you guessed it, whimsical. The clay stuff, especially: dragons, face magnets... flowers and plants, eventually, once I get better at canes.

I was trying to design a piece based on my vacation in Sedona, AZ. I brought back a few rocks from the area and I'm trying to turn them into pendants. Apparently the one I'm trying to do now is a little too advanced for me to figure out how to do it. I wasted quite a bit of copper this evening. And as I write this, I think I figured out what I did wrong and how to do it right. Maybe I should blog more often.

In other news, I purchased a Showcase spot in the Dolls & Miniatures section on Etsy. Not sure it was worth the money, but it did drive some traffic to my shop.

Back to work.