Jail Dogs, Fairy Dogs and Vampire Guinea Pigs! Oh My!

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  Happy Halloween! Today was a fun day. I got less work done than I would have liked, but the opportunity to parade your pets around town in costumes only comes a few times a year!

Furby, our Boston terrier LOVES dress up because she loves attention. She came from a home where the woman really disliked her. Furby lived knowing she wasn't liked for the first 6 years of her life, mostly sitting in a backyard trying to get people's attention through a fence. That is actually how I met her. I convinced the woman to allow me to start walking her and several years later, when she began running away from home, I adopted her.

Furby was a fairy dog today and she enjoyed  being showered with attention!

As for my other dog, Lancelot the rescue husky was a VERY NAUGHTY BOY yesterday. He took a good 10 years off of my life by bolting out the door as I was coming inside from running errands. I have had him for two years and he has never done this. He actually has extreme separation anxiety so I was shocked. (I think he was angered that I went out without him and without walking him first, as I usually do prior to errands). He almost ran into a traffic filled street and made me chase him all over the neighborhood! This was my absolute worst nightmare- I was terrified while he was loose. I was finally able to grab him by the collar when something up a tree distracted him and I pretended to also be interested in the tree activity. My trick worked, thank goodness!

Fortunately, I have the perfect costume on hand for recent events...the jail dog costume that says "Bad Dog" on the back. You can see him rolling his eyes at having to wear it, but I feel it is highly appropriate for right now:

As for our CEO, Puppy the Guinea Pig-while he is a highly skilled model and world renowned celebrity, he is not really into dressing up at the moment. So he is represented on social media via his virtual costume of Count Muskula:

Tonight we enjoyed having several trick or treaters stop by- I filled my walkway with color changing fairy butterfly lights to attract them! 

I hope you also did something fun today. I try to do something to make each holiday memorable. Life is for enjoying. I find that living life by honoring what was most important in childhood has a way of keeping joy in my heart. If we get too busy and take ourselves too seriously, before we know it the years will have passed us by with no joy-filled memories to cherish! These small moments matter.

Today's Creations:

A fun $4.99 starting price auction: Aqua Aura Spirit Quartz Wire Wrapped Pendant in Bronze

A Handmade Artisan in the Ecommerce Age

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Well, it’s been a looo-o-o-o-ng time since I posted on this blog! Why? Because when you make your living creating one of a kind treasures and then photographing them and programming them into online venues so they can sell....there are not enough hours in the day!

I love what I do! I am so grateful for our precious little business, Puppy Love Jewelry. I say "our" because I am not alone in this endeavor. I may be the only human, but I consider this business the baby of our little family which consists of me and several different kinds of animals that people had let down. I created a family out of rescues, and they are all part of this business. And if you hadn't heard by now, Puppy the Guinea Pig (International Rodent Superstar) is our CEO. He is an amazing being that fills my heart up in so many ways!

I have always been very active on twitter-it is where I share bits and pieces of my life. But recently I have decided to revive my blog and also become more skilled at pinterest and instagram. Pinterest is FUN...it is a giant sparkly happy black hole that will suck time out of your life if you love fairies, animals, crystals and creativity (so I'm pretty much doomed)!

Being an artisan earning a living from her craft is challenging. It requires skillful time management, if you are going to truly do all the things a business should do. Most people making a living at ecommerce simply buy what they sell from factories. Sometimes the stuff even comes with pre-manufactured photographs for them. As an artisan I spend the majority of my life making the jewelry, sourcing the materials to make the jewelry, photographing my work and then programming it into online venues. To keep up with search engine optimization and social media promotion too- it’s almost like having two or three jobs all going at once! 

But as I said earlier, I LOVE what I do. Handcrafted artistry is a fading presence in the ecommerce world because we are getting buried by junk from other countries selling for one cent. It has become more and more difficult to get customers to see what we are selling amidst all the fake garbage. I am sad to say that all the wire wrap artisans whose work I admired when I started this business are gone from ebay and many are gone from online selling altogether. Maybe they are selling locally-I hope so. 

While artisans struggle more and more to sell their wares on the major ecommerce venues, at the same time it seems there is a growing demand for what we create. But we cannot easily connect to the customers and the customers cannot find us amidst the sea of cheap mass-manufactured stuff. The big companies pay to direct traffic their way and are given contract advantages on the large ecommerce venues. Also factories have started trying to make their items look handmade (yes, there is machine/factory made wire wrap jewelry all over the internet for sale, trying to fool the less experienced shoppers...and don't even get me started on the glass and plastic being sold as gemstones and crystals.)

I just want to earn an honest living. I want to work hard at something I love and in the end feel satisfied at earning an honest living. This is the path I choose. Every day of my life I spend moments considering how fortunate I am to do this for a living. Most people cannot say they truly love what they do...most people suffer in unhappiness at their work. Most people have to compromise their ethics and values to some extent when they work for someone or something else.  So I'll take the lean times, the tech challenges and the constant struggle to keep current with social media....I'll take it all in stride with a smile because I know how fortunate I truly am!

I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to all of our customers who make this precious little business a reality!

Today's creations....

Aqua Aura Spirit Quartz Crystal Pendant in Sterling 

Giant Pink Lemurian Quartz Crystal Pendant in Sterling (the crystal has a channeled message from a crystal healer too!)

Aqua Aura Quartz Wire Wrap Pendant in Sterling

Bedtime for us now!